Sen. Barack Obama
accepted his Party's history making nomination for
president Thursday night with a speech that was also
momentous for its inclusion of gays and lesbians.
In his speech
Thursday night centered around renewing America’s
promise, Democratic presidential candidate Barack
Obama made perhaps the strongest statement of support
for gays and lesbians in this country’s political
history, rousing a crowd of some 84,000 at Denver’s
Invesco Field to cheers and bringing the cause of
equality straight into the homes of middle America.
“I know
there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we
can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and
sisters deserve to visit the person they love in the
hospital and to live lives free of
discrimination,” the Illinois senator said on the
45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s
“I Have a Dream” address.
The affirmation
came as Obama accepted his party’s nomination for
president, in a passage where he squarely took on the
Republican values triumvirate of God, guns, and gays.
He started with a woman’s right to choose.
“We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can
agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies
in this country,” Obama declared. Gun control
was next: “The reality of gun ownership may be
different for hunters in rural Ohio than for those plagued
by gun violence in Cleveland, but don’t tell me
we can’t uphold the 2nd Amendment while keeping
AK-47s out of the hands of criminals.” Then came
the line about gays, which drew the loudest reaction of the
three.
The pointed
appeal was intended to bridge the gap between liberals and
conservatives, in keeping with the bipartisan spirit of the
Obama campaign. His message: Don't let social issues
keep you from pulling the lever for me come November,
we can find common ground on the most divisive issues
of the day.
Obama’s
remarks were the culmination of a steady drumbeat of
pro-LGBT rhetoric throughout the 2008 Democratic
National Convention -- and arguably went a long way
towards assuaging the disappointment and frustration
felt by many gays over the candidate’s
general-election strategy of framing marriage as a
union between one man and one woman, a belief he
reiterated just two weeks ago at the Saddleback Church forum
with his Republican opponent John McCain. Though he’s
clearly walking a fine line on LGBT issues -- during
the primaries, for instance, Obama specifically
avoided the one-man-one-woman phrase with its
Christian-right overtones -- the inclusion of gays and
lesbians in his call to take back America from George
W. Bush and the GOP ranks up there with Bill
Clinton’s 1992 campaign promise to repeal the ban on
gays serving in the military.
However
imperfect, the Clinton administration helped usher in
greater acceptance of gays and lesbians, bringing many
out into the open for the first time in their lives.
Will Barack Obama’s potential presidency push
beyond that to make LGBT citizens equal partners in the
American dream? His powerful speech -- and the
crowd’s enthusiastic response -- certainly
inspires hope.
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