Credit where credit is due

Lest I be remiss, it is time that I properly acknowledge President Obama for standing up for the LGBT community in his speech before the NAACP on the occasion of that organizations one hundredth anniversary.* Usually I am quite critical of the President. And I still don't think he's doing anything meaningful to advance the cause of LGBT equality and civil rights. Not that he explicitly promised to do anything for us. It was just the usual Democratic hollow words and implied but deniable promises to win our votes followed by empty gestures and snide public repudiation once they're in office.

But anyways, President Obama did make it a point to give us a line in his NAACP speech. And that line got a decent amount of applause. So, good for them. Not everyone in the NAACP is a homophobe, and the President will at least give us a mention as fellow human beings and citizens of equal worth (albeit if he has to be shamed into doing it).

Again, good for them. But while not everyone in the NAACP is a homophobe, I still find it pretty fucking disengenuous that an organization that has worked tirelessly over the course of one hundred years to advance the cause of equality for one group of minorities is comfortable taking the position that it's still okay to let the majority discriminate against another group of minorities. Classic case of "better him than me" I guess.

So once again, thanks for standing up for us Mr. President. And thanks to all the people in the audience at the NAACP who cheered so loudly: you folks rock. It's as good a place as any to start. But it's only a start to the struggle, not an end of the obligation.

* I just realized that in English we use the same words to describe ordinal and fractional numbers. Ahh, English. Delightful.