Following yesterday’s action at Sen. Barbara Boxer’s (D-CA) campaign rally in Los Angeles, GetEQUAL, Lt. Dan Choi and five other gay and lesbian veterans who were discharged under the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policy (DADT) “handcuffed themselves to the White House fence” this afternoon to demand that the President follow through on his promise to repeal the policy before the end of the year:

CHOI: We are handcuffing ourselves to the White House gates once again to demand that President Obama show leadership on repealing ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ If the President were serious about keeping his promise to repeal this year, he would put the repeal language in his Defense Authorization budget. The President gave us an order at the Human Rights Campaign dinner to keep pressure on him and we will continue to return to the White House, in larger numbers, until the President keeps his promise to repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ this year,” Choi said

It’s hard to say how effective all of this is. On one hand, the actions and the frustration of repeal advocates is certainly understandable. The White House, never very good at dealing with its base whether it be public option advocates or DADT opponents, has started pretending that asking for repeal is the same thing as pushing for one and has done little to advance the cause. DADT activists feel that inserting repeal legislation into this year’s Defense Authorization bill represents the best opportunity for repealing the policy and view the Pentagon’s study as an unnecessary delay tactic. GetEQUAL, Dan Choi and their allies hope that these kinds of actions bring new attention to DADT and pressure the administration to act before its too late.

But others feel that spectacular pronouncements of civil disobedience will alienate the military and the moderate lawmakers whose support is so necessary to pass repeal legislation. A prolonged fight, in other words won’t win over the likes of Jim Webb or Ben Nelson, if anything it may give them pause and make them triple guess their support. Military leaders like Gates, who are generally supportive of repealing the policy, but have repeatedly argued that Congress should not move legislation until a full review is complete, may also be offended by these antics.

Choi and GetEQAUL are trying to force the administration to move the debate forward, instead of simply sitting back and waiting for studies, and that goal is certainly is admirable. It’s way past time for Obama to throw his support behind Lieberman’s repeal measure in the Senate, since it includes language that codifies the Pentagon review process, and recommit to repealing the policy. But whether yelling at him is a better approach than engaging in traditional shoe leather lobbying and organizing, remains to be seen.

The House Education and Labor Committee is expected to take up the Employer Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) in the next several days and the bill will likely receive a quick vote in the full House in the coming weeks, Rep. Barney Frank (D-NY) told a group of gay activists on Sunday. “The speaker has promised that.” “We will get this done fairly quickly,” he said. The legislation — which has 199 co-sponsors in the House and 45 co-sponsors in the Senate — would make it illegal for private employers with more than 15 employees to fire, refuse to hire, or fail to promote employees simply based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Religious organizations and non-profit membership-only clubs are exempt from the bill.

But as Congress prepares to move forward with the legislation, conservative activists are quickly mobilizing against it. Over the weekend, Matt Barber of the Liberty Counsel and Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition warned attendees of the Freedom Federation’s Awakenings Conference that protecting transgendered individuals from discrimination would cause sexual assaults on disabled veterans and lead to the designation of sexual fetishes like “men that want to rub their bodies up and down women… Fecal matter. Their involvement with fecal matter. Or urine. Transvestism. The list goes on, I’m not naming all of them. Children. Animals. And so we really need to draw a line in the sand” as a special class.

Today, Lafferty cleaned up her argument for mainstream consumption and published it in Roll Call. The piece eschews some of her more flamboyant claims and focuses on the argument that transgender teachers would harm children by breeding “more gender confusion and enervate the educational experience“:

Expanding the scope of traditionally protected minorities to these groups will engender all sorts of problems…The federal government clearly oversteps its bounds when it places the privacy of a teacher above the right of the parents to look after the well-being of their child. These cases are not isolated, and hundreds of school districts nationwide could face similarly sticky situations if ENDA is passed…what type of education are we giving to our children when we present them with difficult questions regarding gender identity? These impressionable young students need a stable environment in which to learn. Forcing children, who are struggling to find their place, to remain in classrooms taught by teachers working through their own identity issues will breed more gender confusion and enervate the educational experience…

Dr. Jillian T. Weiss does a thorough take down of Lafferty’s argument here, but suffice it to say, Lafferty relies on popular anxiety about transgendered people to suggest that that their mere presence would somehow hurt children. As Weiss notes, “Lafferty does not cite any instances of harm occurring to children in those two cases. There is no indication that these children were scarred for life, or experienced gender confusion, or were subjected to inappropriate sexual comments.”

Roll Call has agreed to give Weiss space to rebut Lafferty’s argument and it might be placed in Thursday’s paper, but Lafferty’s column is probably the first of what will be many attempts by conservatives to clean up the language with which they try to derail the bill.

Gay rights activists committed to repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) before the end of the year interrupted President Obama’s fundraiser for Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) yesterday, forcing Obama to reiterate his support for ending the policy. Obama first pledge to repeal DADT in his State of the Union address, but repeal advocates have grown frustrated with Obama’s unwillingness to support including repeal legislation in this year’s defense authorization bill and reports that the administration may be urging some Members of Congress to delay a vote on DADT until next year.

Last night in Los Angeles that frustration translated into action as members of the group GetEQUAL shouted over Obama’s remarks and pushed him to address their concerns:

OBAMA: She’s passionate about fighting for jobs, jobs with good wages, jobs with good benefits. She’s passionate about fighting for California’s families. She is –

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell!”

OBAMA: We are going to do that. Hey, hold on a second, hold on a second. We are going to do that.

AUDIENCE: Yes, we can! Yes, we can! Yes, we can! Yes, we can!

OBAMA: Here we go. All right — guys, guys, all right. I agree, I agree, I agree. (Applause.) Now –

AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible.)

THE PRESIDENT: No, no, no, no, listen. What the young man was talking about was we need to — we need to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which I agree with and which we have begun to do. (Applause.) But let me say this: When you’ve got an ally like Barbara Boxer and you’ve got an ally like me who are standing for the same thing, then you don’t know exactly why you’ve got to holler, because we already hear you, all right? (Applause.) I mean, it would have made more sense to holler that at the people who oppose it. (Applause.) [...]

AUDIENCE MEMBER: It’s time for equality for all Americans!

THE PRESIDENT: I’m sorry, do you want to come up here? (Applause.) You know, the — all right, because can I just say, once again, Barbara and I are supportive of repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” so I don’t know why you’re hollering.

Now, the problems that we have here put a further strain on folks in this state, forcing painful choices about where to spend and where to save. And the challenges folks have been facing here –

AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible.)

AUDIENCE: Yes, we can! Yes, we can! Yes, we can! Yes, we can!

THE PRESIDENT: Barbara — I just — everybody, I just wanted to confirm — I just wanted to confirm — I just checked with Barbara, so if anybody else is thinking about starting a chant, Barbara didn’t even vote for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the first place, so you know she’s going to be in favor of repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” (Applause.)

Watch it:

“It was worth it to us,” Dan Fotou, one of the protesters, told the blog LGBT POV, and explained that the group is particularly angry about the policy review now being conducted by the Department of Defense. While Secretary Gates had emphasized that the review would study how to repeal the policy rather than whether it should be repealed, the Pentagon had sent a “letter to military families asking their opinion about repealing the policy.” “They weren’t asking the families about how to implement the repeal,” Fotou said angrily. “They were asking the families of servicemembers about what they think about the repeal. Why should our rights be going to a poll? The president can change all that by showing leadership and putting the repeal into the Appropriations bill.” “Fotou said Get EQUAL is pushing on DADT specifically because of Obama’s apparent desire to wait to see the Pentagon study on the repeal – which would take about a year.”

While the protest certainly showered new attention on the issue and brought the communities’ frustration with the President’s foot dragging to a national audience, the action is unlikely to expedite the process. After all, the President seems to think that calling for repeal is the same thing as strongly advocating for it. The protesters pressed Obama to specifically act on repeal, but he demurred, saying, “Barbara and I are supportive of repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, so I don’t know why you’re hollering.”

As Metro Weekly’s Chris Geidner observes, “I’m not sure Obama wants DADT repeal any more after tonight. Maybe he will do more, and maybe that’s enough to call this a success, but I can’t imagine that it made him more eager personally to support LGBT equality. I’m not sure about that, but I still think that’s the downside in taking on the President in this way.”