UPDATE: It doesn't even include health benefits and perhaps even retirement benefits, because of DOMA (gee, what do you get? the right to visit your dying partner in a hospital? Woo hoo!) and there is some discussion that as a "memorandum" and not an executive order, it expires when Obama leaves office. Gee, thanks.
Scrambling to do damage control re: the DOMA brief the Obama administration is throwing us a pathetic bone: benefits for federal workers. Wow. Give me a break! Says Alan Van Capelle of Empire State Pride Agenda: "Welcome to 1999." I mean, is Barack Obama for real? Check it out:
The executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, a large state-based gay rights group, Alan Van Capelle, greeted today's announcement sarcastically.
"Welcome to 1999," he told POLITICO. "How revolutionary of the White House to give benefits to same-sex couples, when two-thirds of conservative Wall Street are already doing it. What an achievement."
"It's just one of the things that should have been done in January," Van Capelle, who was among those taking his name off the Biden event, said, calling for a "comprehensive strategy." "If the President makes the announcement tomorrow, it will still fall short of what LGBT people are expecting from this administration."
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