Dan Choi RIPS UP Obama Flyer: 'I WON'T VOTE For Obama If He Doesn't Endorse Marriage EQUALITY'

Run time: 01:33 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJS845QGX3o   Posted on YouTube: June 16, 2011 By YouTube Member: thinkprogress5 Views on YouTube: 150   Posted on DU: June 17, 2011 By DU Member: Segami Views on DU: 6949

 
:smoke: :smoke:

ThinkProgress:



NICK TSCHIDA (Obama volunteer): I can’t say I’m for marriage equality, but as a bisexual man, I would take a bullet for both of you.

CHOI: You say you’re not for marriage equality?

TSCHIDA: I can’t, no as a….



CHOI: Did you not understand? Here! I believe that I’m an equal citizen.

TSCHIDA: I understand that, but Obama hasn’t gone officially on record for it…

CHOI: Then, don’t tell me that I’m a bad person, go tell him that he should believe in my full equality and then report back.

TSCHIDA: Civil unions?



“I think if Obama doesn’t endorse my full marriage equality and my personhood in this country, then I have no business supporting him and I don’t think a lot of the people who are first time votes will either,” Choi said at a panel called ‘What To Do When The President Is Just Not That Into You.’



http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2011/06/16/247301/dan-choi-rips-up-obama-flyer-i-wont-vote-for-obama-if-he-doesnt-endorse-marriage-equality/

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for Obama. I figured that was just him.

Dan Choi Twitter:

" I'm not a Republican; I'm not a Democrat. 4 Dems voted against equality. Obama is closeted on #DADT. Wake the fuck up..."



https://twitter.com/#!/ltdanchoi/status/25159965853

I seen someone say that he was a Log Cabin Republican, but when I did a search I couldn't find anything.
So, I wasn't sure.

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The tweet in which he slammed Obama for not advancing repeal of DADT. Speaks volumes.

p.s. Please note - this comment has nothing to do with DU.

Edited to take the 'n/t' out of the comment title.

As I've said many times, I would love nothing more than if Obama stood up proud for full equality PRIOR TO election 2012.

But to deny his administration credit for the largest strides toward equality in our nation's history, and to threaten to withhold support (and therefore enable the knuckle-dragging Republicans), is absolutely :crazy:

Choi has every right to be disappointed. And it isn't even good politics. Nobody who wants gay people to be barred from serving openly in the military is going to vote for Obama anyway. Everyone who wants that is totally right-wing on everything else.

but he's delusional if he thinks a significant percentage of folks wont vote for him because he doesn't believe in full marriage equality.

Choi's effectiveness as an advocate as time passes. I fear he is becoming the equivalent of Cindy Sheehan whose advocacy eventually became more about her and then veered off into complete craziness. The current battleground on marriage equality is in NY. In my opinion, he should have been camped out there these past few weeks rather than travelling abroad for Gay Pride events. Personally I think Obama will endorse full marriage equality in 2012 but anyone who says they are interested in the rights of GLBT individuals and threatens to withhold a vote for Obama if he doesn't support full marriage equality is not being rational.

and sacrifices on DADT. Millions across the country wish to thank him. Now, about what you see as 'rational'. The President says he believes straight couples are 'sanctified by God' and gay couples can not be, this is his entire anti equality rational. Is that rational, or irrational? Answer, just to be fair.

I can accept that he is being recognized in the US for his advocacy on DADT but the battleground is now marriage equality. An issue that he apparently will base his vote on in 2012. Obama's current position is irrational. Having said that, has he delivered more to the GLBT community than any other president ever? Absolutely. Is there still work to do? Absolutely. Do I think that any republican can continue to move it forward? Hell no! I am one who has been swayed on the marriage equality issue and it was because of the advocacy and writing of folks such as Andrew Sullivan, Rachel Maddow and Dan Savage. Their approach to persuading and advocating on the issue was effective for me. Choi's approach is not.

Very refreshing. Thanks! :thumbsup:

we are on the cusp of things turning out well in this area, seems to me now is the time for a Maddowesque approach instead of a Choi approach.

Not sure I understand the anger level over a president who's far and away done more for gay rights in 2.5 years than have been done in the rest of the history of the country.
Is he at 100 percent? no. I can certainly understand prodding and pushing him to get there, but I don't get treating him as some sort of asshole who hates gays and is a bad person because he's only the most progressive president we've ever had on this issue.

Doesn't mean he deserves no criticism but good grief.

not to vote for him and gawd forbid if a goper gets in he and others may regret their decision b/c the gopers will throw their will on the America people thru their savior and any accomplisments that were made for equality of marriage and DADT will go directly down hill.

So if one gets in (goper) I hope I won't hear from Choi and others crying the blues.

Freedom can't be won in increments and there's no moral excuse for trying to find a halfway point between liberation and repression.

You can only be totally freed. Half-measures aren't worth anything on rights issues.

see how you like that! Convince the WH to defend the ban on gay marriage, instead of sitting on the sidelines.

Our obstacle is not the WH, but Conservative (Repuke and Dems). There are too many of them in Congress. Remove them and total equality will happen. Stop complaining and get off your ass to get Progressives elected!!! A Repuke president will make reinstating DADT, if not a full ban, one of their top priorities. So support Obama.

And yes, a massive effort to get the Right out of Congress needs to happen(although it's not clear that the administration actually wants progressives to gain any ground in the House and Senate before at least 2016, if ever)but, even when half a loaf was all that could happen at a particular moment, the administration needed to say NOT "LGBT people are obligated to celebrate this shit sandwich or else" but to say "yes, I agree that this is a shit sandwich, and, STARTING TOMORROW, we will fight and fight again to get REAL victory on these issues".

If they'd said that, not only after the tiny gains on LGBT issues but on all the other half-loaves, you'd see a totally different dynamic in this party. And if they'd spent all of the fall of 2010 saying that, Boehner wouldn't be speaker now. Even you would have to admit that everything would be better and nothing would have been lost by having the prez and his spokesflacks talk like I suggested instead of talking like they actually did...or not talking at all.

Obama arrested for protesting outside his house, and why he keeps saying that people like Obama should not be allowed to legally marry. All that sure shows a ton of hate, that awful Lt Dan, treating Obama like a second class citizen!

:thumbsup:

:thumbsup:

One person is denied basic human rights, has his career destroyed, etc.

Another person heard someone say something critical about his most favoritest politician.

These situations are not even remotely the same, but many people here genuinely seem to think they are.

Good for Dan for appropriately bitch-smacking that bigotry apologist.

There IS no half-measure that counts on that one. Civil Unions have been proved to be worthless.

He should not even be expected to consider voting for someone who has caused him so much grief and who will not recognize his status as an equal citizen.

that was no reason for Dan to be so RUDE.

This is still America and everyone still have a right to their own opinions - even when/if they are wrong.

Edited to add:

And what's up with the part where Choi says: " ... and then report back."

He ain't in the military anymore and shouldn't be ordering people around like that!

Civil discourse is a better way to go as opposed rudeness, in my opinion.

DOMA was Bush Jrs. doing, and passed, And Congress would not let it be over turned Under Obama,
Blame Republicans , not Obama on this issue.

It was a bipartisan effort passed by large majorities in both houses, and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on September 21, 1996

It takes all kinds of activism to move things forward, just look at the 60s and at the Civil Rights movement. You need the rude, shocking people who get the news because if we haven't all learned by now, that's about the only thing that captures their (media) attention.

The Gay Rights movement started as a violent protest outside the Stonewall Inn in NYC. The police went in to that gay bar, told everyone they were under arrest and the gays fought back and refused to be arrested. I'm guessing there wasn't a lot of civil discourse going on in that moment. During the last 42 yrs, the LGBT*.* community has tried every tactic at our disposal to move things forward and it seems it's coming back around to civil disobedience.

P.S. I don't like Dan Choi. He's done a lot for the movement and I applaud him for that but I just don't dig the guy.

attention, then that would make it doubly wrong in my opinion.

I just think that in this particular case there was no reason for him to be rude and disrespectful to a perfect stranger.

I believe that ALL people deserve to be treated in a respectful manner, a person shouldn't treat another human being other than they would want to be treated.

How is it Choi's "tone" is the real crime here and not the other guy's failure to support equality?

Priorities.

I challenge anyone to name another president that has done more.

I think we can all agree Reagan, Bush SR, and Bush Jr were all terrible.
Clinton signed DADT and DOMA so... also terrible.

Nevermind - the stupid is so hard to watch.

nevermind - the ignorance is so hard to watch

History of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"
http://www.soulforce.org/article/808
Instead of creating a loophole for gay, lesbian and bisexual service, Don't Ask, Don't Tell has actually made discharges for homosexuality increase. During most of the 1990s, dismissals far exceeded the annual rates of gay-related discharges that existed prior to DADT's implementation. In 2001 alone, a record 1,256 were discharged, a figure nearly double the homosexual separation rate of 730 in 1992, the last year before DADT.

Civil Rights can't be won in increments, as if they were privileges to be earned.

This is one are of politics in which compromise is never of value.

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I'm sure he'll be very happy with the outcome.

gays have made only tiny gains under Obama. And there's no difference between tiny gains and no gains at all. Why should LGBT people have to "wait their turn".

You know damn well that Barack Obama has no moral right to ask LGBT to vote for him again.

With tiny gains, you're actually making gains.

This isn't about waiting your turn, or other such nonsense. This is about critical mass. This is about coordinating political action into a wedge, and using that wedge to apply pressure to institutional boundaries until those boundaries break from the stress. It must be uniform, relentless, and constantly engaged. That is the way things are done in democracies. Diverse constituencies with similar interests organize themselves into political factions (or parties, if you like) to reach a set of communally-recognized goals. The process of cultivating such an alliance isn't an easy one. The biggest problem is that it takes time.

But recognizing that a process takes time is not the same as "wait your turn" or "be patient." It helps to clarify the dynamics of the problem and assist people in formulating strong responses to recurrent barriers. They can see where the weaknesses in an obstruction is, and adjust their tactics accordingly. It provides focus and clarity. It is what actually allows an activist to be impatient about what they're fighting for, because they have to constantly evaluate and reevaluate their actions to ensure that they are making the smartest move possible. This process is why support for marriage equality has risen by leaps and bounds over the past two decades.

I'm curious: How do self-indulgent fits of impotent rage advance the cause of LGBT rights?

And I don't think the LGBT community needs anyone to tell it to understand "critical mass".

Also, you really don't seem to get it about how offensive the Obama volunteer was in saying "I don't support same-sex marriage, but". That was just like a segregationist in Mississippi saying "some of my best friends are..."

My point is this: if it was condescending to say some things to the black freedom movement in 1963, it's equally condescending to say things that sound like those original things to LGBT people now. If you're asking a group to back you and you haven't delivered for them yet(or worse, if you've conspicuously dissed them on several occasions, like with that singer in the primaries and "it's just an invocation" and the rest, than the tone you need to take with that group, in order to persuade them to stay with you in spite of repeated betrayals, is "We get it. We've let you down and we're sorry. From now on in we'll never compromise on your issues again and we'll fight harder". How hard is it to say THAT?

I'm not explaining critical mass to the LGBT community. I'm explaining it to you.

Freedom Rides brought Northern white attention to Jim Crowe. It was essential to create the kind of critical mass that convinced northern Senators to push and back Civil Rights legislation. The sacrifices they made, up to and including being killed by segregationists, brought the problem of white supremacy into the the light, where the entire country could see it. That's not self-indulgence.

John Lewis's speech that included fiery castigation of Kennedy and the Democratic Party at the 1963 march, however, was self-indulgent. Until King made him take out. Because King was a grown up, and he didn't want to piss off his ostensible allies before a credible voting rights act was passed.



Considering the young man in question is a bisexual, would that be a mixed-raced segregationist saying "some of my best friends are..."? I'm having trouble with the analogy.

More to the point: Whatever his objections to marriage equality, we'll never know them. Because Dan Choi had a petulant fit and told him to fuck off, opting instead to sneer and mug for the audience. You think that young man is going to be more or less likely to support marriage equality in the future, based on the response he got from a man who he professed to admire? I doubt it. Do you know how offensive that is to people actually working to change state and Federal law? I doubt that, too. One mind that needs convincing wasn't convinced. How many more will sweep by before its deemed enough, and the self-indulgent sanctimony of people like Choi is no longer considered a valuable asset to the movement? Ten more? A hundred more? A thousand? Ten thousand?



First, I'm not asking you or anyone else to have the back of Democratic politicians. I'm asking you to let them have yours.

Second, if a majority of the LGBT community made the choice of singer at a primary event the single litmus test of acceptable advocacy for a politician, which they don't, so stop pretending to speak for the entire population, then, frankly, they wouldn't deserve the people who are working hard on their behalf. And by work hard, I don't mean chaining themselves to fences or calling the Majority Leader of the United States Senate a "bleeding pussy."



How hard is it to say, "You know, we are facing a monumental challenge, yet have made more progress in gaining political and cultural headway into mainstream America in the past decades than a lot of gay and lesbian people fifty years ago ever thought possible. Maybe we shouldn't fuck this up over petty bullshit."

Because that's what this is: Petty bullshit.

1)If the guy self-identifies as bisexual, he has a particular obligation to back ssm, since, unlike gay people, a bisexual, like an extremely light-skinned black person back in the day, can "pass" by marrying a person of the opposite sex. This means he has no right to be against ssm and that Lt. Choi had every right to take his comment as a personal betrayal.

2)I suppose the comparision would be to an extremely light-skinned black who was "passing" saying something like "some of my best friends are"...especially if(as was sometimes the case)that guy who was "passing" was "passing" in part by being more segregationist than the segregationists.

And if this guy was actually saying "I oppose same-sex marriage" to someone like Lt. Choi, he had already established himself as a person who couldn't be won over and would never get it. There's no way to "bring around" someone like that.

People like that volunteer(and, for the record, I say this as a non-LGBT person)are part of the reason that a lot of gay men and lesbians, for years, have had trust issues with bisexuals-my sense is that they see them as the "house slaves" of the LGBT movement.

It's no more acceptable to expect LGBT people to "wait their turn" now than it was to expect it of blacks in the JFK era. Jim Crow is Jim Crow and oppression is oppression.

Good Lord... :crazy: Watch the video again and think about how silly that sounds.

And back in the day, I suspect you'd have said "Comparing that loudmouth Marxist Luther King with that nice, responsible mainstream Booker T. Washington...Good Lord".

Choi's right. It's totally unreasonable to expect LGBT people to "wait their turn". And that's what guys like you are doing. It was wrong to say that to blacks in 1963 and it's equally wrong to say it to LGBT people now. Get it?

It's immoral to do increments in the cause of liberation.

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Gains for LGBT people in this administration have been almost totally nonexistent.

Obama's half-measures on LGBT rights are just as bad as JFK's original intention to do nothing at all about civil rights until after he was re-elected(something he only changed his mind on because the Civil Rights Movement FORCED him to.)

There can't be an acceptable compromise between justice and injustice. "Half a loaf" is meaningless on rights issues.

On DOMA, for example, the Pentagon got out of giving the partners of gay servicemembers veterans' benefits OR of even having to let the surviving partner attend the funeral if a gay or lesbian soldier is killed on combat. Anything the Pentagon DID concede on the issue was trivial in comparison and will never lead to any improvements in the futures.

On civil rights issues, incrementalism is the same as surrender.

Civil unions are nothing and always have been nothing. And the "I'd take a bullet for both of you" line was insulting to say the least(to say nothing of potentially dangerous to the volunteer, given that Lt. Choi has had extensive firearms training).

Obama doesn't give a damn about LGBT people. You can't say you're on the side of an oppressed group and then at the same time say "we'll get to it later" about actually dealing with their rights.

...So he won't vote for Obama, so than Romney wins the election, or whoever get's the nomination on the Republican side, what does he think, or anyone else that is saying they won't vote for him because of this. I am sick of this. Don't vote for him and whatever gains were made will now be set back even more years.

is sickening.... and as for those who claim he and others should be patient, you better hope you never lose your rights. Rights you obviously take for granted unlike Choi!

I guess all the other presidential candidates that Choi voted for in the past were... somehow... different.

This one gets a different standard.

You know damn well he'd have said the exact same thing to a white Democratic president with the same record who'd been elected in 2008.
Including one who wears a pantsuit.

Everyone he's ever voted for before was just fine.

And there's no reason for you to imply that there's something noxious going on here.

The gentleman has apparently found it possible to vote for presidential candidates in the past, and WILL vote for a presidential candidate who does not support marriage equality. Those are plain simple undeniable facts.

He is not saying he will only vote for a candidate who supports marriage equality. He is saying he will NOT vote for Obama if he doesn't. Those are, logically, two different statements.

It is Mr. Choi who is not being fair in suggesting that Obama should be disqualified on a question where Mr. Choi is obviously willing to give any other candidate a pass.

I would't expect a woman to vote for a candidate who was not 100% for her full civil rights.

I would't expect a person of color to vote for a candidate who was not 100% for their full civil rights.

And I sure as hell wouldn't expect Dan Choi to vote for a candidate who was not 100% for his full civil rights.

If you have no business supporting him, don't support him. I'm sure he'll understand.