Continually, President Obama advances the Gay Agenda as his homosexualist base complains that his incremental approach to the destruction of society is too slow. This week, government agencies will now recognize same-sex relationships and homosexual parenting.
UPDATE 6/23/10: Obama Expands His Pro-Homosexual Agenda by Regulation, ‘Interpretation’
-- From "Obama uses powers to expand federal rights, benefits for gays and lesbians" by Michael D. Shear, Washington Post Staff Writer 6/22/10
In the past year and a half, President Obama has quietly used his powers to expand federal rights and benefits for gays and lesbians, targeting one government restriction after another in an attempt to change public policy while avoiding a confrontation with Republicans and opponents of gay rights.
The result is that scores of federal rules blocking gay rights have been swept aside or reinterpreted by Obama officials eager to advance the agenda of a constituency that strongly backed the president's 2008 campaign.
Among the changes: Gay partners of federal workers will now receive long-term health insurance, access to day care and other benefits. Federal Housing Authority loans can no longer consider the sexual orientation of applicants. The Census Bureau plans to report the number of people who report being in a same-sex relationship. Hospitals must allow gays to visit their ill partners. And federal child-care subsidies can be used by the children of same-sex domestic partners.
On Wednesday, the Labor Department is expected to announce that federal officials have rethought the Family and Medical Leave Act, concluding that under the law, a gay federal employee may take leave to care for a child with a gay partner.
Individually, none of the changes is especially dramatic. But taken together, they significantly alter the way gays and lesbians are viewed under federal law.
The administration's effort, made largely under the radar -- and outside the reach of Congress -- has alarmed opponents of gay rights, who accuse the president of undermining traditional marriage even as he speaks about respecting it.
But gay rights advocates have greeted the changes as evidence that Obama has not abandoned them -- even as he has frustrated some by failing to act quickly on campaign promises to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act and bring an end to the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
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From "Gay Workers Will Get Time to Care for Partner’s Sick Child" by Robert Pear, New York Times 6/21/10
President Obama will soon expand the rights of gay workers by allowing them to take family and medical leave to care for sick or newborn children of same-sex partners, administration officials said Monday.
The new ruling indicates that an employee in a same-sex relationship can qualify for leave to care for the child of his or her partner, even if the worker has not legally adopted the child.
On Tuesday, Mr. Obama plans to welcome lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights advocates to a White House reception celebrating June as “LGBT Pride Month.”
The Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group, worked with the administration to develop the policy on family leave.
Federal law does not recognize same-sex relationships. But Labor Department lawyers have concluded that people in such relationships may nevertheless qualify for family and medical leave when they act as parents, sharing the care and support of a child.
The 1993 law, the Family and Medical Leave Act, allows employees to take time off for certain family and medical needs, including the care of a son or daughter with health problems.
Under the law, “the term ‘son or daughter’ means a biological, adopted or foster child, a stepchild, a legal ward or a child of a person standing in loco parentis.” The law does not define “in loco parentis.” But the relevant federal regulations say, “Persons who are ‘in loco parentis’ include those with day-to-day responsibilities to care for and financially support a child.”
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From "Obama to Meet With Grassroots Gay Activists" by Associated Press 6/22/10
President Barack Obama is chipping away at his long list of promises to gay voters but has yet to earn the full-throated backing of the reliably Democratic voting bloc.
The Obama White House has accomplished more than any other on gay rights, yet has drawn sharp criticism from an unexpected constituency: the same gay activists who backed the president's election campaign.
Instead of the sweeping change gays and lesbians had sought, a piece-by-piece approach has been the administration's favored strategy, drawing neither serious fire from conservatives nor lavish praise from activists.
The White House boasts a long list of accomplishments to tout during meetings with gay and lesbian organizations, but their reach is limited.
For instance, Obama signed a hate crimes bill into law, expanded benefits for partners of State Department employees and ended the ban on HIV-positive persons from visiting the United States. He referenced families with "two fathers" in his Father's Day proclamation last week and devoted 38 words of his State of the Union address to repealing "don't ask don't tell," the ban on gays serving openly in the military.
Obama's allies say the small-bore changes are the best activists can hope despite Democrats controlling the White House, the Senate and the House.
"The reason why these policy changes are important is because we do not have ironclad LGBT majorities in either house of Congress," said Fred Sainz, a vice president at the Human Rights Campaign, Washington's largest gay rights organization, using the acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
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From "Climate of Uncertainty for Gay Rights" by Eve Conant, Newsweek 6/21/10
Gay-rights advocates have seen significant progress on LGBT issues, yet still are not celebrating. Why is that?
. . . here’s the catch—the bigger issues are consistently on the verge of happening, but never seem to be a done deal. There is a divide between Washington insiders who understand that government is painfully slow to move, on any issue, and a newly activated core of gay activists who want immediate change.
If you look at timelines detailing the milestones over the decades in the gay-rights movement, you’ll see more and more markers after 2008, with the gay-marriage movement gaining more states and President Obama allowing same-sex partners of federal employees to receive certain benefits. Yet sometimes being so close to success, when it’s not fully achieved, is confusing, and upsetting.
Still, Fred Sainz, a spokesperson for the D.C.-based Human Rights Campaign, says that attention must be paid to the fact that significant strides are being made. “We have largely been in the wilderness the past 40 years since Stonewall. To see this much progress in one and half years makes your head spin.”
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