THIS JUST IN... The Advocate: Obama admin violates judge's order, refuses to give health benefits to lesbian partner of fed employee

I guess some health benefits are more equal than others. Funny that we're all supposed to roll over and accept the President's capitulation to the Republicans and conservative Dems on health care reform, because providing people health care is just so darn important that you simply must find a way to make it happen. But when it comes to gay people getting health care, the Obama administration bends over backwards to find a technicality to, yet again, slap the community in the face.

This time the administration is saying the judge didn't have the authority to tell them to provide the lesbian benefits. You really need to read Kerry Eleveld's scoop in the Advocate on this. You can just smell that the administration did everything they could, twisted every word, to find an excuse for not providing the benefits. After all, if they give the partners of gay employees health benefits, then someone might accuse Barack Obama of being just a bit too friendly with the gays. And as we've learned over the last year, Obama doesn't do "controversial."

Funny, but that's the judge's job to decide, not some Obama appointee. You don't get to just decide that a judge doesn't have the authority to order you what to do. If you don't like it, you appeal. You don't just ignore it, a la George Bush. Even weird, the administration is now claiming that DOMA precludes them from following the judge's order.

Uh, would that be the same DOMA that candidate Obama called "abhorrent" during the campaign. The same DOMA that Obama promised to repeal. Yeah, not so much anymore. There's no plan to touch DOMA at all now. At least until Obama is re-elected, if he's re-elected. So now, yet again, we're told that because the President is refusing to follow through on his promise on DOMA, he can't do anything else for us because of DOMA.

Of course, it's interesting to note that DOMA came up during the review of this case, and the judge said DOMA wasn't even relevant. So now we have the Obama administration doing over the head of a judge to say that DOMA precludes them from doing something when the judge say it most certainly does not.

We reported this morning that Newsweek says Obama won't do anything on gay issues next year. Perhaps that's not entirely true. I have a hunch he's going to find the time to take a few more slaps at us, and then some.

NB Don't Ask Don't Give. Don't ask us for any more, because we're not giving until you keep your promises.