The Advocate has an article that reviews the position of some of the presidential candidates (http://www.advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid51483.asp). Inasmuch as I was very harsh on Obama at the time of the McClurkin disaster, I thought it appropriate to post portions of the Advocate article where Obama responded to this. I recommend the article for information on the other candidates as well. Here are Obama highlights:
Sen. Obama made a telling comment at the very end of my interview with him last October. Dismayed over the level of attention the community gave to the McClurkin imbroglio, he said, “It is interesting to me and obviously speaks to the greater outreach that we have to do, that [my record on LGBT issues] isn’t a greater source of interest and pride on the part of the LGBT community.”
He seemed genuinely disheartened that people didn’t know more about his stance for full repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (Edwards also supports full repeal, while Clinton supports partial repeal), or the fact that he sponsored a gay nondiscrimination bill in the Illinois state legislature, or that he regularly addresses AIDS and homophobia in black and religious venues that are not particularly gay friendly.
When he spoke about HIV/AIDS to evangelical leader Rick Warren’s congregation at Saddleback Church in California, Obama said, “Like no other illness, AIDS tests our ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes – to empathize with the plight of our fellow man. While most would agree that the AIDS orphan or the transfusion victim or the wronged wife contracted the disease through no fault of their own, it has too often been easy for some to point to the unfaithful husband or the promiscuous youth or the gay man and say ‘This is your fault. You have sinned.’ I don't think that's a satisfactory response. My faith reminds me that we all are sinners.”
This is perfectly consistent with his message of bridging communities gay and straight, red and blue, black and white. But a big part of why many gays and lesbians don’t know Obama’s record here is because it wasn’t readily available. It required digging and a beat reporter covering his campaign at the national level – resources that are the province of mainstream magazines and big-city dailies. This is where a publication like The Advocate, viewed by many as essentially mainstream media, doesn’t actually have the same reporting capacity as those other outlets. Instead, the LGBT community and gay journalists were left to put together information piecemeal from sightings by bloggers at campaign events and the slow trickle of gay mentions that flow from the straight press.
Obama was very accessible to the LGBT press during his eight years in the Illinois state legislature. “He always was open, certainly with our newspaper,” says Gary Barlow, editor of one of Chicago’s gay weeklies, the Chicago Free Press. “He didn’t avoid phone calls and stuff like that. We talked on occasion. When we called, he responded. I think that says something about a person.” Barlow adds that Obama's campaign has paid close attention to the newspaper and been communicative throughout the race.
Though the Illinois Human Rights Act did not pass until 2005, when Obama had already graduated to the U.S. Senate, he did sponsor a bill to outlaw workplace discrimination that included both sexual orientation and gender identity while he was still a state senator. Barlow says Obama also lobbied other legislators to vote for the pro-gay bills being considered. “When we’re talking about an African-American legislator in the state legislature, to have someone of his stature lobbying his peers was important,” says Barlow.
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