That fired up a few participants at the Birmingham meeting.
“It’s ridiculous that our alleged secular leaders would punt to un-elected religious clergy when it comes to an issue involving healthcare for all Americans” said Danny Upton, Executive Director at Equality Alabama, the state’s largest LGBT civil rights organization.
Still, in a phone conversation this past Tuesday evening, Artur Davis press spokesperson Corey Ealons affirmed the Congressman’s statements saying that the extension of domestic partner benefits by an insurance company is a community issue.
“The individuals who will more than likely drive the discussion on domestic partner insurance benefits will be the clergy” said Ealons.
Equality Alabama’s Upton, who participated in the Democratic meeting said that after Kellog had offered his company’s excuse and Davis, and Davis had said the Preachers would be the folks who decided if and when the gays would get domestic partner benefits, he just got up and left.
Upton says he felt let down and betrayed by the Congressman’s statement, that the very idea of asking preachers, the people who have told you all your life, that your very essence is immoral and wrong, to advocate for domestic partner benefits for same sex partners, was absurd.
And with this, a greater question arises, who does, or more importantly, who will advocate for LGBT Americans when it comes to the real nuts and bolts issues that impact folks outside of the liberal more officially gay friendly bastions like New York or California .
It has became more obvious that LGBT activists have been wasting valuable time hammering Presidential candidates during glossy television debates over the broad definition of the claimed heterosexual treasure called marriage. Thats not to say that a number of nuts and bolts issues on the ground have seen some slow but real progress, even in this era of Bush, tangible acceptance of LGBT people where real benefits have trickled down to gay people and fought for even in more “conservative” places like Alabama.
But, the unfortunate reality seems to be, with each state that passes a gay marriage ban amendment, now at twenty, same sex marriage looks increasingly like a reality for another gay generation.
But there is still the chance for true and effective change.
With outspoken leadership from up above, in Washington, leadership that advocates and lobbies purse strings, social and religous groups and business leaders, not only for domestic partner benefits, but also foreign citizen partner sponsorship, adoption rights, gay youth homeless, job discrimination, tax relief for same sex couples and a number of other real and tangible protections that provide gay people and their relationships with a much needed sense of legitimacy beyond what they watch on network television shows or read about in other countries.
The hope is that Alabama Obama campaign chairman Davis’ shirking of leadership is not representative of the candidate for President. But the greater hope is that whomever wins among the Democratic Presidential Candidates, all who have all been marketing themselves as agents of change and progress, will take on the nuts and bolts realities of change, and once elected, take a stand, and not make the mistake that Congressman Davis made when he punted his position as a leader to the Preachers of Alabama and elsewhere.
