Much has been said about Barack Obama's "failure" to reach out to the GLBT community. I even inadvertently touched off a mini-firestorm last week with what I intended as a minor element in one of my other diaries. (You can read it here if you are interested.) But today's Advocate carries a full interview with the Illinois senator that touches on many issues that are very important to that community, and it is worth reading.
Among other things, Obama states that he will fight to repeal DOMA in its entirety if that is possible, that he will repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, but will not make acceptance of gays (or anything else) a litmus test for Joint Chiefs appointments, that he believes that the federal government should offer the same rights to those in civil unions as to those in marriages, and that he believes that it is LGBT people themselves, not politicians, who should be leading the fight for full "marriage" rights. (He equates it to the elimination of anti-miscegenation laws, which, though heinous, were not an immediate concern of those pushing for civil rights in the 60's.)
So, the Obama Drama (GLBT Press version) is at least going to be able to move onto a different plane. We who are interested in the next President's opinions about these matters can stop worrying why he won't talk to us (as if we were high school girls wondering about a potential boyfriend) and get on to how we feel about what he is saying.
And what is Obama saying to the GLBT community?
I think the LGBT community has every right to push for what it thinks is right. And I think that it's absolutely fair to ask me for leadership, and my argument would be that I'm ahead of the curve on these issues compared to 99 percent of most elected officials around the country on this issue. So I think I've shown leadership.
He says that he will push for ENDA, but he does not expect a trans-inclusive version to be able to pass. He tells the Advocate that there will be no litmus tests. He makes no pandering promises. But he forcefully points out that his mission is not to satisfy fully the needs of any one constituency; it is to unify a nation of many, many constituencies.
And so nobody is going to be perfectly aligned with my views. So what I hope is that people take me for who I am, for what I've said and for what I've displayed in terms of my commitment to these issues, but understanding that there's going to be a range of constituencies that I'm reaching out to and working on issues that we have in common, even though I may differ with them on other issues.
Now I don't agree with everything he says here. I believe that President Obama should push fully not only to repeal the loathsome DOMA, but also to legalize civil marriage for all, divorcing the notion of marriage from the notion of religion in the eyes of the state. I may agree with him about the politics of ENDA, but I hope he would at least speak out firmly in favor of a trans-inclusive version. I would hope that President Obama would have the audacity to hope that he can help this country come to understand that it is so much more than the factions it has split into.
This is the Barack Obama that has captured the imagination of so much of America. This is someone who is not interested in saying what he thinks we want to hear; he is much more interested in telling us the truth. I think there have been some occasions, in other circumstances, where that Obama has appeared to slip beneath the surface in recent weeks, and it's good to see him in the same mode he was in during his powerful race speech of March 18: see the problem, accept it, confront it,but don't ever deny it.
Don't you wish all politicians were like that?