Digging the Hole Deeper

It appears that while Obama's popularity is remaining high with the population at large, his tone-deaf reaction to the GLBT community is costing him some support (financial and otherwise) until his administration gets around to fulfilling campaign promises.

However, one group that should not be piling on is Democrats in Congress like Anthony Weiner who said:

President Obama’s decision displays the administration’s commitment to ensuring that certain basic rights and privileges are extended to all Americans.

While encouraging, this measure only grants same-sex couples benefits that have been provided by corporations for years and fails to reverse the administration's troubling refusal to fully recognize same-sex couples under the law and to allow lesbian gay bisexual trangender Americans to serve openly in the military.

The problem here is that its not up to the President to simply pick and choose whether or not gay couples can receive full domestic partnership benefits or allow gays to serve openly in the military, its up to the Congress, its up to Rep. Anthony Weiner, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the rest of the lot.

The President can't write an executive order or presidential memorandum which dictates that the Federal Government ignore statutes in the US Code put in place with the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" and "Defense of Marriage Act" bills passed by Congress and signed by then President Clinton. They need to be repealed or amended by the legislative branch.

Should the President be doing more to get these bills passed? Perhaps, but since when does Congress need Presidential authorization to move forward legislation? I remember a two-year period where the Democrats controlled the Congress and a Republican controlled the White House...I don't recall Speaker Pelosi asking permission from the President to pass bills such as an increase in the minimum wage.

So, the President can and should do more (including instructing Eric Holder to have his lawyers be a bit more cautious in their language regarding GLBT issues), but no Congressman should be complaining about the President's lack of actions when its entirely up to them to change the laws they created.