In a dramatic move just hours after author/activist Wayne Besen, founder of Truth Wins Out (TWO), posted a round-up of growing dissent among gay writers and activist arising from Pres. Obama’s lack of progress and even backtracking on gay issues, a decorated Air Force pilot came out of the closet on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and announced that he was being fired from the military today because of the Obama administration’s failure to act to rescind the ant-gay “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

Here’s an overview of the pilot’s career from Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, writing for the Huffington Post:

Lieutenant Colonel Victor J. Fehrenbach, a fighter weapons systems officer, has been flying the F-15E Strike Eagle since 1998. He has flown numerous missions against Taliban and al-Qaida targets, including the longest combat mission in his squadron’s history. On that infamous September 11, 2001, Lt. Col. Fehrenbach was handpicked to fly sorties above the nation’s capital. Later he flew combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has received at least 30 awards and decorations including nine air medals, one of them for heroism, as well as campaign medals for Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He is now a flight instructor in Idaho, where he has passed on his skills to more than 300 future Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force weapons systems officers.

Since 1987, when Fehrenbach entered Notre Dame on a full Air Force ROTC scholarship, the government has invested $25 million in training and equipping him to serve his country, which he has done with what anyone would agree was great distinction. He comes from a military family. His father was a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, his mother an Air Force nurse and captain. Lt. Col. Fehrenbach has honored that tradition.

And the Air Force is about to discharge this guy, a virtual poster boy for Air Force recruiting, because he is gay? Someone has to be kidding. This is sheer madness.

In his interview with Rachel Maddow, Lt. Col. Fehrenbach said that, until his appearance on her show last night, no one in the Air Force knew he was gay, except for superior officers and military lawyers working on his discharge.

In an email to supporters before Fahrenbach’s surprise announcement yesterday, TWO’s Besen offered a round-up of growing discontent among influential gay writers:

In the Washington Post, Bill Clinton’s former liaison to the gay community, Richard Socarides, very effectively raised this issue.

“In December, while trying to quiet the furor over his invitation of Rick Warren to take part in his inauguration, Barack Obama reminded us that he had been a ‘consistent’ and ‘fierce advocate’ of equality for gay and lesbian Americans,” wrote Socarides. “But at the end of its first 100 days, his administration has been neither.”

The frustration of some leading advocates is quickly spreading and beginning to boil over.

“I have a sickeningly familiar feeling in my stomach, and the feeling deepens with every interaction with the Obama team on these issues,” Andrew Sullivan wrote on his blog. “They want them (gay issues) to go away. They want us to go away.”

Pam Spaulding, the editor of the blog Pam’s House Blend, shares Sullivan’s sentiments. On a recent post, she reacted strongly to the Obama administration’s inaction on overturning Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, which prohibits gay service members from serving openly.

“The White House is backed up against the wall and cannot give a reasonable, logical defense to continue a policy that is hurting our military effectiveness,” wrote Spaulding. “He can stop the discharges right now, while Congress moves in its not-so-deliberate speed on the matter. This is embarrassing for the ‘fierce advocate’, but quite frankly it’s irresponsible as commander in chief to act as if he can’t do anything right now.”

The military issue has received heightened awareness since Lt. Dan Choi was discharged after coming out on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.” Choi, who is fluent in Arabic, wrote a letter to Obama urging the president not to discharge him.

“My subordinates know I’m gay. They don’t care,” Choi wrote. “They are professional. As an infantry officer, I am not accustomed to begging. But I beg you today: Do not fire me.”

Choi was canned.

Besen also noted that professional anti-gay propagandists routinely justify their opposition to gay marriage by touting the fact that their position is the same as the president’s.

During the presidential campaign season, Obama raised concerns among gay Democrats on two particular occasions. First, he invited an anti-gay gospel singer to perform at a rally in South Carolina, and then, after the election, he invited Rick Warren, an infamous homophobe and megachurch minister, to offer the invocation at the presidential inauguration.

Unfortunately for their gay constituents, there is little risk to politicians who ignore gay causes and abuse the trust of gay supporters. Backtracking on gay civil rights issues by Washington politicians barely causes a blip of concern outside the gay community and their close supporters — and throwing gays under the bus can even be helpful to liberal pols who feel they need to curry favor with right wingers and gay-unfriendly independents.

The classic instance of this was in October 1996, just days before the vote on his reelection, when Pres. Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act — a law that had been designed specifically as a wedge issue to separate him from his gay supporters. Despite Clinton’s signing DOMA into law — an act made deeply hypocritical by the fact that he was engaged in an extramarital affair at the time (as was House Speaker Newt Gingrich) — he handily defeated the Republican ticket of Bob Dole and the late Jack Kemp.

Still, the fact that Clinton chose to pander to the right at the risk of upsetting his gay supporters — just as Pres. Obama appears to be doing now — underscores the reality that on issues like the senseless discharging of thousands of qualified, dedicated and expensively trained servicemembers like Lt. Col. Fehrenbach and Lt. Choi, gays need back up from liberals and civil libertarians in order to hold the leaders of the Democratic establishment, including the president, accountable in the protection of their civil rights.