While I was reading various articles about last Wednesday’s ruling on Prop. 8, I came across a piece on Huffington Post by Jason Linkins called “Prop 8 Ruling Exposes Democrats’ Weak Support for LGBT Community.” Here’s a quote from the article that stood out to me: 

Right now, LGBT citizens are trapped in a choice between a party that opposes their very existence and a party that, you know, kind of wishes them well. And so the typical policy among Democrats is to do as little as possible for as long as they can, figuring that if the Republican party never changes its position, they can string along the LGBT community for a long while before they have to lay their marker down and risk the vote of any single voter who opposes gay rights.

So what are we supposed to do? How can we support the people who don’t support equality, even if they don’t openly oppose it? To get specific, let’s talk about President Obama. Another Huffington Post article I read on this topic was “Obama’s Opposition to Gay Marriage: Genuine or Political Calculation?” I recently wrote about my frustration with Obama on this subject, but let’s take a deeper look. As Marcus Baram says in his article:

Some gay marriage proponents are skeptical that Obama personally opposes gay marriage.

"Every thing we know and admire about President Obama makes the claim that he doesn't support the freedom to marry very unconvincing," says Evan Wolfson, the director of the nonpartisan group, Freedom to Marry

The article also points out the curious fact that:

When Obama ran for the Illinois State Senate in 1996, he gave statements to a Chicago paper that expressed "unequivocal support for gay marriage."

Interesting, no?

Noting the president's opposition to DOMA, [Wolfson] asks: "If he's willing to be against 'against marriage', why can't he just be for marriage?"

Asks Obama's deputy campaign manager during the 2008 race, Steve Hildebrand, who is openly gay, :

"Where have you seen a reporter call him on that? He uses his religion to explain his views but he was a member of the United Church of Christ, which fully supports marriage for same-sex couples."

If Laura Bush and Cindy McCain can come out and say that they support marriage equality (after their husbands are either no longer President or running for President, but I give them credit anyway)- if these conservative, Republican women understand that LGBT people deserve the right to full, civil marriage- then what does a liberal Democrat like Obama not understand? If he’s against DOMA and DADT, and he’s for inclusive hate crimes legislation and an inclusive ENDA, then where’s the problem?  

As mentioned above, he’s said that it is his religious views that keep him from taking that final step to granting same-sex couples the word marriage. But honestly, I got the feeling during the campaign, and now during his presidency, that Obama, for political reasons, is making himself seem more religious than he actually is. I know that a lot of people in this country are people of faith, but when faith crosses the line from a comforting place of strength into something that causes you to harm others by denying them equal rights, then you need to reexamine your faith.

Obama is the leader of this country, and he needs to be a leader to all of its people. He is doing what we have seen him do so many times now- try to appeal to people who won’t like him anyway, at the expense of the people who really need and want his strong leadership. In Baram’s article, Evan Wolfson of Freedom to Marry is quoted as saying:

“I don’t think there’s a single voter that Obama would lose because he openly embraced freedom to marry instead of everything but marriage.”

I’m not actually sure I agree with him on that, but it doesn’t matter. The point is that the LGBTQ community and their allies deserve a President who isn’t politically afraid to say, on camera, that he supports full, federal equality in all matters governed by civil law for all people. Obama can’t just decide to call himself a “fierce advocate” and then be anything but fierce.

The reason that people are afraid of change is because it takes courage. But a President should have courage!- especially a President whose campaign was based almost entirely on change. Obama’s separate but equal attitude may have passed for fierce 50 years ago- heck, even 20 years ago- but this is 2010 and we demand better. We demand nothing more, but nothing less, than full equality. And if Obama wants to be our President, he better start acting like it.

~ Samantha 
Community Editor