Why the LGBTQ community should get off the Obama/Clinton bandwagon
While President Barack Obama courted the LGBTQ community during his election period, he has since distanced himself from any real discussion of the issue. Once a non-supporter, Obama ‘recanted’. The LGBTQ community deserves the truth — that Obama has absolutely no interest in your cause.
As a supporter of the LGBTQ community in their campaign for acceptance in main-stream America and a registered Democrat, I honestly believed that Barack Obama may be what the ‘gay marriage’ debate needed. Then I started really paying attention to the man behind the Presidential suit and tie.
I admit, in 2008 I really wanted a shift in the politics in Washington. I heard Obama speak at a public rally and thought, “This guy is charismatic. He’s eloquent. He is a man of the people.” How little did I and many others know that he would go to any length to garner votes, including capitalizing on the Stonewall Riots in order to gain the “gay” vote? He appeared to be a crusader for causes; social rights for all Americans. But then he came out and said he only supported ‘civil unions’. What?
Recently, Obama’s own former political strategist, David Axelrod, revealed in his new book, Believer: My Forty Years in Politics, that Barack Obama purposely misled Americans, especially the LGBTQ community when he publicly claimed in 2008 that he was opposed to same sex marriage for religious reasons. According to Axelrod, Obama told him, “I’m just not very good at bullshitting.” The truth was that Obama was more fearful in 2008 of losing votes from the ‘black church’ than the LGBTQ community. As Obama came out in favor of civil unions, he told the public he was opposed to full marriages. Axelrod admits that he counseled Obama regarding the issue.
“History is replete with cases of some of our great leaders finding a way through the minefield of politics to get the country to where they felt the country should go, and he’s in that tradition,” Axelrod said, noting that he “never doubted where [Obama’s] heart was” on the issue.
Since Axelrod’s book release, Obama has used his famous tongue to try to right the view the LGBTQ community has of him ‘selling them out’ in 2008, only to say in 2012 that he favored marriages between same-sex couples. The LGBTQ community had wanted more from the leader of their country and so, after explaining that his daughters had a friend with “two mothers”, he was down with the whole thing, it was easy to jump back on the bandwagon and cheer him as a true leader for social change.
In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Obama said that he “always felt” that same-sex couples should be afforded equal rights and that it was “frustrating to me not to, I think, be able to square that with what were a bunch of religious sensitivities out there.”
As a state senate candidate in 1996, Obama filled out a questionnaire saying “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.” But 12 years later as a presidential candidate, Obama told Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church that marriage could only extend to heterosexual couples. “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman,” Obama said at the time. “Now, for me as a Christian — for me — for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix.”
I also support the freedom of religion and have absolutely no ill feelings towards those who feel that they cannot with good faith support same-sex marriages. Many of my LGBTQ friends and family members are Christians and have found it discouraging to be misjudged by their “own kind” when it comes to those civil rights. If you waved the rainbow flag, you were a champion of the cause. If you believed in any type of organized religion, you were labeled an enemy to that cause. The problem is this — even those who stood up at Stonewall wanted true equality for all people, not just recognition and freedoms for the select few in the LGBTQ community.
Obama has embraced a level of deception since 2008 when he promised to stand apart from other politicians who were willing to change their views as the political winds shifted. In 2010, Obama was already shifting or “evolving” on the same-sex marriage debate in favor of repealing the Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act. The fact that Obama didn’t publicly support the ‘cause’ until Vice President Joe Biden gave an interview with Meet the Press, admitting he was “absolutely comfortable” with the unions.
Hillary Clinton and Obama publicly debated, often in a very heated manner, for the claim to be the truly progressive candidate. I am still asking, “Progressing towards what?” Hillary’s own husband Bill was the one who put through the Defense of Marriage Act, yet now she too is getting ready to enter yet another political race since Obama will soon be departing the White House. In fact, Clinton is the leading Democrat in the race. But, hang on friends — she has admitted that she’s leave the decisions to the states despite what same-sex advocates and a large percentage of Americans now view it as a Constitutional Right.
Clinton was on NPR speaking to Terry Gross on Fresh Air trying to explain how she went from a “no” to a “yes” in the issue. At one point during the interview, Clinton accused Gross of not simply getting a clarification on her true position, snapping out, “I think you are trying to say that I used to be opposed and now I am in favor and I did it for political reasons.” It wasn’t until Clinton said, “For me, marriage has always been a matter left to the states…I fully endorse the efforts by activists to work state-by-state. In fact, that is what is working,” that I felt she was bailing out. Clinton doesn’t exactly offer a stamp of approval with her statements. Activists were hoping she’d honor the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.
This has caused many in the LGBTQ community and 52 percent of Americans (according to a 2014 Gallup poll) to wonder why Clinton would waver on the issue unless she is trying to use Obama’s rule book on being a ‘good politician’. Under Bill’s presidential guidance, laws were signed banning federal recognition of same-sex marriage; restricting gay people from serving openly in the armed forces. It has taken the LGBTQ community nearly two decades to reverse the damage.
“I have seen grown, adult men and women weep at the possibility of her becoming the next president,” said Fred Sainz, vice president of Human Rights Campaign, who said he has friends in the gay community who are saving money so they can afford to volunteer on a future potential Clinton campaign.
Nathan Schaefer, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda in New York, said he had not heard Clinton’s interview with Gross. But he did hear about her comments on marriage as a state matter from friends and associates, and disagreed with them, despite Clinton’s long record with his organization (she keynoted their annual gala back in 2000).
As the next election approaches, LGBT activists want to see a more comprehensive agenda that includes workplace, housing, and family protections for gays. While marriage recognition is still high on the list, many are more fearful in the current economy of losing their jobs due to their sexual orientation. Many states recognize same-sex marriages but do not recognize such rights as adoption by same-sex couples, the ability to be the primary decision-maker in medical care or workplace protections offered to heterosexuals, including those who are not married.
I admit, I think it is time to come right out and say it — Obama and Clinton are interested in the LGBTQ community for one reason — votes. Neither has stood up and approached the Supreme Court to finalize a ruling, though one could come from the court as soon as 2016. So, after reading this, do you still feel confident that these two high-ranking political figures have anything but their own agenda at heart?
I continue to support what I believe are basic human rights, including same-sex marriage. I am, however, doing a lot more soul searching in regards to the 2016 election. Haven’t the LGBTQ community and their allies been lied to and misled enough?
