Bad joke from a colleague:

Q: What does a gay drive-by shooting look like?
A: A bunch of guys in a pink Ford Focus throwing Skittles out the window, screaming “Taste the rainbow, bitches!”

There’s been an awful lot in the press lately about the relationship between the Obama administration and gays (specifically, that there really isn’t one).

Andy Towle jumped on the bandwagon today, citing an appearance by Dan Savage on MSNBC in which the sex-advice columnist and go-to homo spokesman (who knew?) said that if he could give the Obama Administration a letter grade on GLBT issues, it would be an F.  By way of further discontent Andrew Sullivan is quoted in a scathing piece he wrote in the Atlantic about Obama’s administration.

I should point out here–because Towle didn’t–that I loathe Sullivan on a level that I normally reserve for the neo-conservatives who are gunning for my job and think that, as an employee of the University of Texas, I ought to be taking orders from the Central Intelligence Agency.  The simplest reason for this is that Andrew Sullivan is a neoconservative xenophobe.  Before he jumped on the anti-Bush bandwagon (which he did long after anyone with sense and reason had done so), he was a die-hard Bushite, supporting the invasion of Iraq and a “stone the Muslims before they stone us” foreign policy.  Just because he was never on the Obama bandwagon doesn’t make him any less than a bear in sheep’s clothing.

I don’t honestly have a problem with the outrage.  I just don’t share it.  When it comes to Obama and what he’s done for gay rights in the first 100+ days of his term in office, while combatting the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, trying to wind down the war in Iraq, trying to ramp up the war in Afghanistan and trying to figure out how not to get involved in a brewing civil war in Pakistan, dealing with a new, unco-operative adminsitration in Israel, a Congress that won’t play nice with itself, and get key Cabinet posts filled (among a few other things), I am … well, that’s just it.

I am reminded of a scene in Coupling where Steve, looking at fabric for sofa cushions, tells Jeff and Patrick, “I almost had an opinion about that one.”

I recall having a lengthy IM chat with my friend Michael back in primary season (gods, remember that debacle?) in which he expounded at some length his suspicion that Obama didn’t really care about gays.  (Which president has?)  On the other hand–and maybe this is really pollyanish of me–were people waiting in the wings to jump down Bush’s throat 100 days in about all the things he hadn’t managed to accomplish yet?  Part of me feels like there’s a lot of selfishness going on: everyone wants Obama to pay attention to their issues first.  It’s a logistical impossibility.

I’ll probably be stripped of my membership card and secret pink parking pass for saying that I just don’t understand the vitriol … yet.  It does, however, bring to mind some of the doubts that I had about Obama: I kind of wonder if he’s just too bloody nice to be president.  There’s something of Jimmy Carter about the man.  He who tries to make everyone happy makes no one happy.  Sullivan, Savage et. al. would argue that he isn’t making us happy, and I guess he isn’t.  Maybe I’m just happy that he’s not out to get us like the last guy was.

I’ve got other battles to fight closer to home, and I’m willing to wait a little while longer to see how things go.  But maybe not too much longer.

And I still think Sullivan’s a creep.

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