(Cross-posted at Clintonistas for Obama)

Some of you are going to be surprised to see these words coming from me, and I implore you to read the entire diary before you begin throwing flames.

I've been defending Obama at every turn since late March. I defended him against the people who were using Wright to attack him; I defended him against bittergate; I scoffed at fingergate. I defended him until I pissed off at least half the Clinton supporters on this site. I made myself pretty unpopular with people I once liked, but I didn't care. I felt I was doing the right thing by defending him because I thought it likely that he'd become the nominee. I was trying to be fair, attempting to be moderate. I probably spent more time criticizing Hillary than Obama because she was my candidate, and I held her to a higher standard. So through my efforts to remain rational and speak in measured tones, I gave Obama the benefit of the doubt - always - for approximately three months. I stuck my neck out for him on MyDD and in my personal life, much to the displeasure of my Hillary supporter friends and my Republican parents (who came to grudgingly respect my admiration for Hillary, but felt nothing but disdain for "the empty suit"). I defended him and didn't mind doing so. I kept my doubts to myself.

But I'm profoundly upset right now, and I refuse to lie or mask my disappointment.

Cross posted from http://www.21stcenturydems.org/blog.

Yesterday, as I reflected on the 44th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, I thought about how far we have come in the fight for equality and how much work we still have ahead of us. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence of the progress we have made as a nation all around us - none more visible than the Democratic Presidential Primary race between Senators Clinton and Obama. But even as we celebrate these victories we must keep in mind those who have been left behind in the struggle for equality.

As the recent California Supreme Court decision allowing gay marriage demonstrated, there are people and places in this country that are ready to correct the injustice being visited on gay Americans and support marriage equality.  Many of the most ardent opponents of gay unions claim to be "defending marriage" as though allowing two people of the same gender who love each other to get married somehow weakens the institution of marriage.

Ignoring the incredibly high rate of divorce in heterosexual marriages, they reject the simple truth that providing a legal framework for gay couples to marry would create MORE strong, supportive families - not LESS.  Would these people propose we ban divorce in order to protect marriage?  Moreover, the opponents of gay marriage are largely the same group who stood against making interracial marriage legal over 40 years ago.  How would Americans react today if we said interracial marriage should be banned?  I think Americans would overwhelmingly oppose such a ban.

Democrats have been the driving force in much of the social progress we have made in the last 50 years, but we must always remember that there are people and parties in our country who seek to advance their own agenda by scapegoating and demonizing those who are different. We must stand up against this kind of discrimination at every opportunity and support what we know to be right. As we celebrate our nation's independence this weekend we must remember not only what is great about our country, but how we can work to create a more perfect union.

A new generation of Americans is emerging and they generally don't think about race, religion or sexual orientation – when they make friends, date – or decide to marry. Hopefully the baby boomer generation and the depression era-WWII generation will learn from their children and grandchildren.

Mark Lotwis is the Executive Director of 21st Century Democrats.

Via John, Bill in Portland Maine celebrates his 15th anniversary:

Where were you on the night of May 30, 1993? I was in a Saginaw, Michigan bar called Bambi's, staring across the room at a tall, dark and handsome guy drinkin' a beer. Through luck of the draw Michael and I ended up as partners that night in a four-person card game (in Michigan it's more like a religion) called Euchre. A blink of an eye later and here we are celebrating 15 years of Wilde's "love that dare not speak its name" together.

We are, as I like to say, the religious right's worst nightmare: a same-sex couple in a long-term, committed, monogamous relationship. The state of Maine even recognizes us as domestic partners. Oh, how the fundies hate that. An ounce of legitimacy for us is worth a pound of discredit for them.

The Wisconsin in me knows that Euchre is quite possibly the most boring card game around. Romance in strange places...

Congrats to Bill and Michael - we wish them many more.

If you remember, a while back a Pastor Hayes Wicker of Naples had this to say about gay marriage:

This is a tremendous social crisis, greater even than the issue of slavery.

Not surprisingly, a lot of people, such as myself had some problems with that statement.  

Wicker, for some reason, took umbrage at the outrage against his hate speech.  Here's what he said in a letter to the editor:

For your information the race is still going on and the fight is now with the superdelegates. So if we, the Clinton supporters, do intend to want Hillary to be our nominee, we should advocate the superdelegates to vote for Clinton rather than Obama. Hillary needs our support now more than ever and we should show her that support.

You have to remember that it's the obama's camp which said that the blacks will riot and the Obamabots will vote for McCain or not vote if the superdelegates chose Clinton instead. You have to remember that it was the Obama camp which paint the Clintons as racist while dismantling the legacy of Bill. You also have to remember that the Obama camp spent more on negative campaigning than Hillary does. So don't talk to us about who's the one being bitter. And not to say that the 50 state strategy is now 47 states.

TaylorMarsh and Co is different than DailyKos. DailyKos was our left trademark and it exacts real influence. Not to say that the Obama's surrogates had from time to time appear on the news and bombard Clinton, accusing her for the things which the Obama's camp were doing. I still remember Donna Brazille stating that "Latinos and Working Class people does not matter". Only blacks matter.

Wow.  At first glance, that's all I can say about the comments from Pastor Hayes Wicker of Naples, Florida.  Here's what he said at an anti-gay event last week:

This is a tremendous social crisis, greater even than the issue of slavery.

Wow.  

I believe that the Clintons would like to do what's right with respect to gay rights.  I believe that, if it were up to them alone, they would be in favor of gay marriage and gay adoption and full partner rights, emloyment and housing rights, etc.  The problem is that it really is NOT entirely up to the Clintons, and they don't have a good record on the issue.  

No sooner had Bill Clinton gotten elected in 1992 then he tried immediately to implement a policy of full gay equality of participation in the military.  He believed he could accomplish this by executive order, forgetting that the US Congress also has a say in these matters.

The political right got together with military leaders like Colin Powell, and they rapidly built a solid wall of opposition to gay rights, mobilizing all of their forces.  Those of us who supported Clinton had not been mobilized at all.  We were not even informed beforehand that he was taking on this issue.  He just sprang it on the nation and assumed that everyone would go along because he had been elected president (with a plurality of the vote).

And then Clinton was forced, by stiff opposition in the US Congress and a significant part of the public, to accept "don't ask, don't tell," which effectively reified the discrimination that existed before Clinton tried to do anything at all. This would have been like Johnson trying to open the lunch counters to Blacks and whites and then ending up with a legislative reiteration of Jim Crow instead. Yes, Clinton's heart was in the right liberal place, but she was utterly ineffectual at implementing her vision that time.

When you think about it, this is actually very similar to what happened with national health care. Hillary Clinton believed that she could design a complicated health care regime in isolation, and then all of the forces who opposed the plan would go along with it just because she said so. So, she didn't effectively work with Congress to find out what was politically possible or to obtain buy-in from the essential Congressional players.

Let me be perfectly clear: I want Obama on the Democratic ticket this fall.  I want him in the White House for sixteen straight years, eight as VP and eight more as President.  So I don't want to bash him in a way that would damage that possibility.  What I do want to do is raise questions about whether he actually is as liberal as some of his supporters think.  For example, a lot of his supporters tell me they are voting for him because he is more liberal than Hillary, and refer to the recent National Journal ranking as proof.  So let's start by discussing that.