Maybe I spoke too soon...

My last post was about America finally coming to terms with homosexuality. Then today, I read that Obama is getting ready to extend benefits for gay partners of Federal employees, but not full health coverage. Is he just pandering? Trying to be moderate? He promised the whole world to America, which was ridiculous, and surely we know he can't come through on all of it, but why stop short of full health coverage?

That pisses me off. I don't even blame Obama, necessarily. I know campaigning is just a massive marketing scheme--target your demographics, and market appropriately. And his campaign was the most successful marketing scheme I have ever seen or heard in my life.

I know he inherited a clusterfuck of a situation from Bush. He has a lot of shit to change, and there's so much going on in the world and in America that maybe this is going to get pushed to the wayside, but I can't be satisfied with only partial equality. I mean, it's great that he's doing something to push for gay rights, but at the same time... kind of reminds me of Jim Crow laws. Separate and (not really) equal.

Know what else pisses me off? I think the Patriot Act is still, at least partially, in place. The NSA still can monitor people's phone calls and e-mails without warrants, and do so on a broad scale, more broadly than we were previously led to believe. I'm not so naive to think that spying and secret government agencies are doing this shit and will always do this shit, but... you'd think he might put some restrictions on it. Maybe not, maybe I'm just idealistic about it... like so many things, or was. I'd also like to see him remove the ban on openly gay members of the military. Gay people can get killed in Iraq and Afghanistan just as easily as straight people. Okay, that's not helping my case any, but really... It's not like gay men are going to rape the straight men in the showers. It's not like the lesbians are going to hit on all the straight servicewomen. And if something does spring up, so what? That sounds like a recipe for an excellent battle buddy relationship. In fact, that was what the ancient Greeks thought--they encouraged homosexuality (within certain limitations, to be fair) for their soldiers because it made them work together and fight harder for each other. And let's face it, the Greeks were onto a lot of things...