Top gay magazine bemoans Obama
BY JOHN BYRNE
Published: August 5, 2009
Updated 2 days ago
Images sometimes speak louder than words.
Especially if they’re on the cover of the leading gay newsmagazine The Advocate.
President Barack Obama has been under fire from his gay supporters from the get go. Critics bemoaned his selection of Rev. Rick Warren for an inauguration prayer, citing the Christian pastor’s opposition to same sex marriage. Their frustration grew after the Pentagon made comments that there wasn’t an effort underway to reevaluate “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” a Clinton-era law mandating the discharge of gay servicemembers.
That frustration has jumped from the websites of political blogs and infighting-conflict-hungry news outlets to the cover of The Advocate.
In the latest cover story for the magazine, Michael Joseph Gross opens with the proposition that Democratic primary-goers picked Barack Obama over then-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) as their nominee because they thought he was different.
“Many gay leaders,” he writes, “the men and women with money and influence, whose success was built on cunning — looked at her and saw themselves: making her way by wile, unafraid to sacrifice integrity when the game demands it.”
“But truth will out, and many placed their bets on Barack Obama, and when he took the lead in the primaries, he won over most of the rest,” Gross adds. “He talked to us — and about us — more, and more explicitly, than any nominee before him. And not just when he had to. Not just at Human Rights Campaign dinners. At black churches, in his stump speech, on the night he was elected: He said the word that every major candidate before him had found every excuse not to say. He named us. He said gay.”
But that affection has waned, Gross argues.
“After his election Obama named someone else,” he adds. “The world’s most influential Protestant minister, Rick Warren, who campaigned against gay marriage, was asked to give the inauguration’s invocation… Momentum for gay equality kept building — in the courts, in legislatures, and in culture. Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine legalized gay marriage — which was, significantly, also endorsed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Dick Cheney too announced his support for marriage equality, as did top Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, who managed John McCain’s presidential campaign. Polls showed clear majorities supporting repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ even among conservatives and churchgoers — constituencies that had long been in favor of the antigay military policy. Still, through all of this, one word was conspicuously absent from the president’s vocabulary.”
“The hero,” he pens, “was a player after all.”
Reader comments on the piece echo the gay community’s disappointment with Obama, though some point to his focus on other areas as important.
“I’m sorry, the idea of continued state-sponsored apartheid of our population just doesn’t fit with the ideals of our country or his Oath of Office,” one commenter wrote. “He could more, much more, and sooner.”
“Obama told the Gay and Lesbian community what we wanted to hear, TO GET OUR VOTE,” another says. “He got our vote and the arrogance is clear. No more Obama support from this household.”
Others attack the premise of the piece.
“President Obama has only been in office for eight short months, dealing with some very serious issues that affect ALL Americans, whether one is gay, lesbian or str8: economy, healthcare, and war,” remarks one poster. “Remember those issues, or is our community immune to what is happening in the rest of the Nation? Leave it to fanatics in our colorful camp to create a strategy of alienating ourselves from the most pro-gay/lesbian President in recent history because we aren’t getting our way fast enough… We are becoming nothing more than just another ineffective, bleeding-heart special interest group.”
“I stand by Barack Obama,” writes another. “He’s not even nine months into his term, yet. I believe he could be a little more fearless on gay issues, but I choose to trust him. He has a huge amount on his plate right now.”
A third camp celebrates infighting among Obama’s liberal critics.
“As a conservative Republican deeply committed to seeing a Republican elected president in 2012, every time I go to this site and read the comments of all the Obama haters, all those in the GLBT community who refuse to support Obama, all those who accuse him of selling out, I become positively ecstatic,” one commenter proclaims. “Once again the Democratic party will form a circle as its own firing squad, and do the work my own party could never accomplish on its own. Keep up the good work!!”
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/08/05/top-gay-magazine-bemoans-obama/