April 11, 2008

Some gay straight talk from Obama

Posted by: Chris

Barack Obama's wide-ranging Advocate interview posted yesterday confirmed again that he "gets it" on LGBT issues while avoiding the temptation to pander.

Asked what gays can "reasonably expect" to enact in an Obama administration, the Illinois senator set the bar higher for himself than Hilllary Clinton has thus far, including

• repealing "Don't Ask Don't Tell"
• passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act
• extending domestic partner benefits to gay federal employees

Clinton has committed to those same items, along with ushering through the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act. Most importantly, Obama also said he was "very interested in making sure that             federal benefits are available to same-sex couples who have a civil union."

Advocate News Editor Kerry Eleveld took that to mean repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, but it's actually much more sweeping. DOMA only blocks federal recognition of gay marriages, at this point are limited to Massachusetts, but says nothing about civil unions. That leaves the field open for Congress to extend to gay couples in civil unions all the federal rights and benefits of heterosexual marriage.

Given that two-thirds of the public either supports marriage or civil unions for gay couples, Obama's proposal is a clever way of extending vitally important federal rights while recognizing the states' prerogative to decide what relationships to recognize. The real question is why we are hearing innovative proposals like this from presidential candidates and not from our own movement leadership.

Along with the savvy legislative agenda, Obama craftily navigated several P.C. minefields. On ENDA, he said he supports trans-inclusive but says enacting it would be tough. "Obviously, my goal would be to get the strongest possible bill," he added. So why isn't that likewise obvious to HRC and the United ENDA crowd?

On gays in the military, Obama avoids the doodoo Al Gore stepped in back in 2000, when he said opposition to the policy would be a litmus test for any chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Obama has the advantage of eight more years of social acceptance within the military, but nonetheless gets it right:

I would never make this a litmus test for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Obviously, there are so many issues that a member of the Joint Chiefs has to deal with, and my paramount obligation is to get the best possible people to keep America safe. But I think there’s increasing recognition within the Armed Forces that this is a counterproductive strategy … That doesn’t make us more safe, and what I want are members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who are making decisions based on what strengthens our military and what is going to make us safer, not ideology

On marriage, Obama declined to take the bait on advising the movement to press for civil unions rather than full marriage equality:

I don’t ask them that. Anybody who’s been at an LGBT event with me can testify that my message is very explicit -- I don’t think that the gay and lesbian community, the LGBT community, should take its cues from me or some political leader in terms of what they think is right for them. It’s not my place to tell the LGBT community, "Wait your turn."       I’m very mindful of Dr. King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” where he says to the white clergy, "Don’t tell me to wait for my freedom."   

So I strongly respect the right of same-sex couples to insist that even if we got complete equality in benefits, it still wouldn’t be equal because there’s a stigma associated with not having the same word, marriage, assigned to it.

Not only is that respectful, it's the first time I've seen any viable presidential candidate state so succinctly the case for gay marriage over civil unions. Clearly Obama gets it, even if he's "operating in a broader political and historical context," as he puts it.

Eleveld also manages to elicit more background from Obama about where he personally traces his comfort level on gay issues; mostly from his mother's general tolerance and an openly gay professor.

Obama's weakest moments were at the beginning and the end of the interview. He defended his inaccessibility to the gay press as a general campaign bias in favor of "general press" or "specialty press." There are a number or problems with this, not the least of which is the frequent criticism of Obama as a feel-good candidate full of generalities.

Sticking with mainstream media interviews only perpetuates that, since reporters with a general audience rarely plum the details of specific issues like gay rights because they are covering the field. The Advocate interview, as well as several of Clinton's gay press chats, demonstrate how the specialty press will ask important detailed questions that the broader media will miss. Obama should embrace the opportunity to get into specifics, since the reach of the Internet opens even specialty press interviews to a much broader audience.

I'm also not buying the unsolicited analogy Obama made between ex-gay gospel singer Donnie McClurkin and his own pastor Jeremiah Wright. Obama argued that both were examples of the importance of opening the tent wide enough to embrace those who disagree on specific issues. Fair enough, as far as that goes. But Wright was removed from any official role in the Obama campaign, while McClurkin was invited to perform at official campaign events.

A more consistent approach would have been to either banish both from any official campaign connection, or leave them both be while distancing himself from their more radical views. Only the politics of the moment explains the disparate treatment and Obama would be better served simply acknowledging as much.

Tags: Barack Obama, civil unions, ENDA, gay marriage, LGBT rights, transgender