Pretty Much The Least He Could Do

Yesterday, President Obama signed an executive order extending just-barely-non-trivial benefits to same-sex couples employed by the Federal government. It's better than nothing, but it's hardly treating a same-sex couple equally with a married opposite-sex couple.

Which is why the population intended to be politically mollified by this gesture, gays and lesbians, are the ones griping most loudly about it. As well they should. They were promised an effort to repeal DOMA and inclusion as a protected class in the Civil Rights Act. What they're getting is allocation of housing for overseas job postings.

President Obama says this is only "one small step" but has yet to articulate anything resembling a plan towards a multi-step approach to giving these Americans the same treatment from their government which their heterosexual peers all too often take for granted.