President Obama’s excuses last week for delaying action on gay segregation rang hollow.

Despite all our efforts at equality since Stonewall, federal and state governments still practice institutionalized forms of anti-gay discrimination. Until this changes, gays and lesbians will be targets for hate crimes, GLBT students will be bullied, and GLBT employees will suffer job bias.

Pick your history: segregation of blacks by the government or segregation of Asian-Americans during World War II. If the government says it’s OK to show bias against a group, then many feel they have license to hate.

Today’s institutionalized forms of bias are popularly known by acronyms: DADT (the federal policy that prevents gay and lesbian military personnel from serving openly; DOMA (the federal law that prevents federal agencies from recognizing same-sex marriages performed in the handful of states that have them; and now mini-DOMA (Proposition 8), which allows states to discriminate against same-sex married couples or those in domestic partnerships.

While passing a federal hate crimes law is necessary, let’s not kid ourselves; this is hardly going to be a significant deterrent to hate crimes. We need our leader to set an example from the top: that our society will not tolerate violence against any people, whether it be in the form of physical attacks or withholding civil liberties.

Of course, the good news is President Obama was elected. His election has meant replacing anti-gay federal officials with gay-friendly ones, and other subtle changes are coming. But not soon enough for the discharged or dead sailor, the couple that cannot marry, or the couple that can marry but doesn’t get equal treatment under federal law.

Despite President Obama’s comments about his justifications for delaying action, some of his reasons seem disingenuous from a legal perspective: In defending Proposition 8 against a federal challenge, led by a former Bush administration lawyer Ted Olsen, the Obama administration takes the view that it must defend the law that is on the books. That’s not true. The head of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), which advises the president, is Dawn Johnsen. After serving in the Clinton administration as acting head of OLC, Johnsen authored law review articles in which she explained how the Clinton administration did not enforce laws it opined were unconstitutional. Even the Bush OLC opined that DOMA would not prevent the Social Security Administration from recognizing the second-parent adoptions of same-sex couples. Consequently, it would hardly be a stretch if the OLC now advised the Justice Department that DOMA is unconstitutional and illegal as applied because it harms the children of same-sex unions.

In short, there are plenty of cases that President Obama and Vice President Biden, both former law professors, know full well that it is unconstitutional to uphold: For example, they know that it is unconstitutional for federal and state governments to treat children born out of traditional wedlock (same-sex marriages) any differently from those born into traditional marriage; they know that it is discriminatory that same-sex married couples in Massachusetts cannot file a joint return and so save on taxes and have more family income to spend on their children. (Even the state of Massachusetts knows that! It correctly sued the federal government last week, contending that DOMA is unconstitutional. Filed by Attorney General Martha Coakley, the suit argues that 16,000 same-sex couples are being denied federal income tax credits, employment benefits, retirement benefits, health insurance coverage and Social Security payments.)

Unless President Obama is trying to help stimulate the legal economy, it’s a waste of time, money and good will to belabor a law that is unconstitutional, especially as applied to the children of these unions. So it’s difficult to believe he cannot say something that even Dick Cheney said two weeks ago.

On DADT, the president’s words of caution and patience lack sincerity. He knows full well that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled DADT is only lawful when the presence of a gay or lesbian soldier interferes with an important military objective. In other words, gay and lesbian personnel can only be discharged the same way a straight soldier can be: for engaging in sexually inappropriate behavior that results in harassment of others.

President Obama, to his credit, did not appeal the action to the Supreme Court. But he should instruct Secretary Gates to make the 9th Circuit opinion the law and to stop discharges for merely being openly gay.

Obama and the Democrats should understand why Dick Cheney and Ted Olsen are championing same-sex marriage. Married couples with children tend to favor Republican principles. They don’t want their kids inheriting deficits, and huge tax burdens. Stripped of its social issue appeal, the Democratic Party has become so beholden to labor interests that it is alienating the rest of its base.

Many have speculated as to why President Obama is not being more helpful. After all, he’s aware that he wasn’t the GLBT community’s candidate (the majority of GLBT Democrats backed Hillary Clinton, who has now done us proud in her role as secretary of state by ordering same-sex partner benefits for State Department employees and by signing a United Nations declaration condemning anti-gay discrimination worldwide). So what’s holding him back?

The reasons for Obama’s slow movement are many. Conventional wisdom is that he doesn’t want to follow in Bill Clinton’s footsteps by making gay issues a priority to the exclusion of matters relating to health care and the economy. Others opine that GLBT issues are simply not a priority because GLBTs have no other party to go to since Republicans, until Cheney’s very recent change of heart, had no place for us in their mindset.

Regardless, however, of why Obama is dragging his feet, he needs to stop.