A faint within a faint within a faint until it disappears?

This morning I read about the Obama administration’s DOJ submitting a brief against a law suit that challenged the Defense of Marriage Act. As I was reading the numerous items posted from the main stream media, to political blogs (http://www.americablog.com/2009/06/late-night-roundup-on-obama-and-anti.html), to LGBT blogs, I was reminded of a quote by the head of the Human Rights Campaign: After attending a meeting at the White House , HRC’s Joe Solmonese told the New York Times while the gay rights agenda might not be “unfolding exactly as we thought,” he was pleased. “They have a vision,” Mr. Solmonese said. “They have a plan.”
Given the DOJ’s brief on DOMA, which the administration notes is the law of the land and the DOJ job is to defend laws passed by Congress (AmericaBlog, a political blog with a gay presence notes differently:” In fact, George W. Bush (ACLU et al., v. Norman Y. Mineta – ‘The U.S. Department of Justice has notified Congress that it will not defend a law prohibiting the display of marijuana policy reform ads in public transit systems.’), Bill Clinton (Dickerson v. United States – ‘Because the Miranda decision is of constitutional dimension, Congress may not legislate a contrary rule unless this Court were to overrule Miranda.... Section 3501 cannot constitutionally authorize the admission of a statement that would be excluded under this Court's Miranda cases.’), George HW Bush (Metro Broadcasting v. Federal Communications Commission), and Ronald Reagan (INS v./ Chadha – ‘Chadha then filed a petition for review of the deportation order in the Court of Appeals, and the INS joined him in arguing that § 244(c)(2) is unconstitutional.’) all joined in lawsuits opposing federal laws that they didn't like, laws that they felt were unconstitutional.”), gay groups are angered that once promised a lot by the Obama candidate, they are seeing little delivered and a lot of same old same old.
Now this might be just a naïve reaction to a typical political situation, candidates and office holders rarely seem to be the same person. However, given that Obama’s main appeal was for change, the same-old-same-old indicates a failure by the president.
http://origin.dailykostv.com/w/001841/
And,getting back to Solmonese’s statement about them having a plan? I thought of the scifi novel DUNE, in which the characters were always on the look out for (and planning their responses to) “a feint within a feint within a feint.”
Some note that the DOJ went beyond just saying DOMA is law, they chose to use judicial decisions on cases about incest, that DOMA saved the government money, that DOMA doesn’t discriminate and that civil rights for gays are not akin to civil rights of blacks and other minorities.
So while Mr. Solmonese might feel there is a plan within their plan shown by this action (as well as their continuation of the discharges through DADT), beyond the anger over this issue, I notice in my reading and discussions that the LGBT community’s support for Obama is growing fainter and fainter. But there seems to be little concern among the administration.
Is this change or a continuation of a typical Democratic reaction? While, as the DOJ paper seems to say, our rights are not be equal to other minority rights, the Democrats seem to put us in the same place as other minorities (but put in much less effort to woo us except for election-time) – we are the only party that offers you any hope. The party knows (and has repeatedly used) the knowledge that LGBT citizens have no other party to give voice to promises to them. Promises of things that, if and when elected, they do not deliver.
An article in the “Village Voice” on this topic starts off, “Obama Defends DOMA, Pisses Off Gay People: Boy, this is turning out to be a shitty Pride Month” and goes on to list all the setbacks happening during (and some enacted by) the Obama administration The piece ends with “Oh well, enjoy the parade!” And that reminds me of times when gays took to the streets for reasons which the now social parades were started.
But they have “free speech” zones for those kinds of actions now. And, since the DOJ in the month it released this opinion also had an in-house employee event celebrating “Pride,” maybe they allow us to decorate ours (I almost said they would decorate it for us, but, according to this DOJ paper, discriminating against equal rights for gays saves the government money – except when DADT kicks out highly skilled members of the military that we have paid to train) with rainbow flags and other gay-related images, after all, we do have such a flair for the fabulous.

59 and still naïve

Today is my birthday and, after a subway to work reading of a review in the 'New York Review of Books,' I realize how innocent I still can be.
The book, “American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Woman Who Shaped Early America” by Edmund S. Morgan (Norton, 278 pp. $27.95) sounds like an interesting read and I hope to acquire it soon.
What struck me in the review was the author’s take on 300 years of American history that argues that a small elite group at Philadelphia created a fictional organism known as “We the people,” and that all successful government must be based on fiction.
As for representational government, Morgan’s analysis is that “Popular government in both England and America has been representative government, and representation is the principal fiction by which the larger fiction of popular sovereignty has been itself sustained.”
He adds, “All government, of course, rests on fictions, whether we call them that or self-evident truths.”
The reviewer goes on to note Morgan’s further comments: “Like all fiction, political fictions require a willing suspension of disbelief by those who live under them.”
And finally, Morgan states: “The sovereignty of the people was an instrument by which representatives raised themselves to the maximum distance above the particular set of people who chose them. In the name of the people they became all-powerful in government, shedding as much as possible the local subject character that made them representatives.”
Those of you who know my obsession with politics might wonder at calling myself naïve. I daily rant about things I feel are politically unjust or just plain stupid (to say nothing of the distractions that distract and cushion so many people from realizing just what is going on). As I read the review, in which Morgan makes his case and, while recognizing that all government requires consent of the governed and that people accept “plausible opinions to support consent” even though they are “at variance with observable fact,” Morgan considers the idea to work; straining credulity, but not breaking it.
So, my naivetes is in thinking that there is a way to make politics and government actually work.
So, while I know reading Mr. Morgan’s book will cause me to become angry and disillusioned (but I still will read it, it sounds intriguing as he reminds us that his heroes are those “who went their own way against the grain, regardless of custom, convenience, or habits of deference to authority. . . the Americans who sassed their betters and got into trouble, the people for whom the Bill of Right was written.”) I fall back on historian Howard Zinn: “No form of government, once in power, can be trusted to limit its own ambition, to extend freedom and to wither away. This means that it is up to the citizenry, those outside of power, to engage in permanent combat with the state, short of violent, escalatory revolution, but beyond the gentility of the ballot-box, to insure justice, freedom and well being,” as I continue my Quixotic mission.