Editorial: Right Direction on Gay Rights

Right Direction on Gay Rights

Detroit Free Press Editorial

With two wars, health care and the economy crowding his plate, you’d think President Barack Obama would have no room for another entrée-sized issue. But in his Saturday speech to the Human Rights Campaign, the president added gay rights initiatives to his near-term agenda.

If nothing else, the president’s attention reminds everyone that there’s still much work to do on this front. The federal Defense of Marriage Act (signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996) remains a serious obstacle to equal rights for gay couples. The military policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” has probably run the course of its usefulness and needs to be eradicated. And states are still all over the map regarding same-sex marriage.

If Obama can make headway on DOMA and military policy, as he pledged in his speech, it could represent real change in the lives of many gay Americans. And it might get the president a little closer to earning that Nobel Prize he picked up last week.

Even those who oppose gay marriage should be willing to concede, on an intellectual level, that a law excluding gay couples not only from marriage but also from federal benefits available to other citizens goes too far. It’s overkill, and an embarrassment to a nation that considers itself a defender of equality. The immediately lukewarm response from other Democrats (including Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow) to Obama’s suggested repeal of DOMA is equally embarrassing.

Obama may have an easier time moving the country past “don’t ask, don’t tell,” which was a workable compromise during the Clinton administration’s first term but now seems antiquated and a little silly. It’s OK to be gay in the military, so long as you don’t say so? There have been more than enough examples to show that allowing service men and women to be honest (while maintaining the same discipline that heterosexual soldiers are expected to uphold) is a better policy. The key will be getting military buy-in (much of which is already present) to prevent a backlash. That buy-in could also prevent opportunistic demagogues from hijacking what is, and should remain, primarily a military issue.

The president attached no timetables to his objectives. But speaking up for gay rights was and is the right thing to do, and if Obama can follow through, it will go a long way toward forging the presidency he aspires to pursue.