Obama: Our First Gay President

President Obama has a long record of standing up for equal rights, not just in words but in deeds. Even in the Illinois statehouse he was the lead sponsor and a driving force behind passing the statewide non-discrimination bill. As president, he's stood up for equality on issue after issue -- Hate Crimes, DADT repeal, ENDA, presidential appointments, Supreme Court nominations, ending anti-LGBT teen bullying, ending discrimination in federal agencies and benefits, NOT defending DOMA, etc. He stands up for fairness on most of our issues. Our community should spend much more time advocating for equality among those who are not yet supportive than we spend lambasting our allies. While our friends need to hear from us, the people who are not yet supportive need to hear from us even more about why equal rights are the right thing. Want equality? Call your member of Congress and two senators at 202-224-3121; tell them to pass ENDA. We can whine or we can win. The choice is ours.

Some of you are very immature. Change happens gradually, not overnight. Do you believe that McCain/Palin would have done more for gay equality? Hell no, they wouldn't.

Actually, Morrison didn't mean by her remark what most folks even today think she meant by it. In 2008, in TIME, Morrison commented (in response to a reader who inquired whether she regretted the remark): "People misunderstood that phrase. I was deploring the way in which President Clinton was being treated, vis-à-vis the sex scandal that was surrounding him. I said he was being treated like a black on the street, already guilty, already a perp. I have no idea what his real instincts are, in terms of race." (http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1738303,00.html) Morrison wasn't describing Clinton's heart, mind, or deeds; she was describing how the world perceived him and was treating him.

Well, I wouldn't call him our first gay President(I thought it was silly to call Clinton the first black President) but he sure is the best advocate we've ever had. I do expect gay marriage recognition to become a reality(federally) under his watch. He will come out of the closet eventually and support Same-sex marriage openly. I have to trust that he's waiting on the perfect time. Yes, it's political, but he's a politician after all. He has to play the game in order to win. When he wins, we win.

@Joe: Of course we're here trashing the President's "support" of gays. He trashes US everytime he says "I am against gay marriage", every time he has his Justice Dept. file a brief comparing gay marriage to incest, and every time he discharged a gay soldier (well over 500 times so far... and STILL happening since DADT hasn't been officially ended yet). We're way past the Bush administration, so lets quit dragging out the tired and annoying argument that "He's better than Bush/McCain/Palin/Romney/Satan". HE is the President, his job is not just to clean up after the last guy, its to keep the promises he made. And finally, the idea that he (and Democrats in general) somehow CAN'T come out in support of gay rights for fear of Republican backlash in 2012 is offensive and ridiculous. Republicans ALREADY think Obama is a Gay-loving-Communist-Socialist-Kenyan, so why can't he just come out and support the things everyone on the right already thinks he's for? Who is he fooling? Not me.

This is moronic. Obama and Holder are still fighting against our rights in court even though they now state that DOMA is unconstitutional. At the very least, we've had a total failure of leadership from the president, and he's been dragged kicking and screaming into doing the right thing. Calling him our gay president is a huge insult to the countless advocates and activists who've actually made progess possible.

It's sad how delusional this "thought piece" is. Wishing it just doesn't make it so.

LOL. I knew that the comments section of this article would be filled with people trashing the President. We make it through eight years of a president who made the villainization of gays the crux of his reelection campaign, and finally elect a sympathetic character who is carefully navigating the cultural waters toward greater recognition of gay rights. He spearheaded the repeal of DADT, abandons support of DOMA, clearly signals by his "evolving" comments re: gay marriage that's he's setting himself up to be a supporter post-2012, but still this feigned outrage. I suppose some would prefer that Obama gun heavy for gay marriage this term, energize the Christian nutwing of the GOP, and then we get another religious fanatic like Huckabee in 2012? Please join the rest of us in reality. Anyway, I've discovered that most of the animosity directed at President Obama from the gay community comes from a vocal crowd of bitter Hillary Clinton supporters. As if she were some type of gay icon.

I know Toni Morrison, I've worked with Toni Morrison, Tony Morrison is a friend of mine. Charles Perez, you are no Toni Morrison!

This article represents the blind allegiance that too many Obama fanboys have toward the President. The President could come out tomorrow and declare his support for a nationwide ban on gay-marriage, and Charles Perez would eat it up and ask for more, justifying it as a "shrewd chess-playing move behind the curtains to back the Republicans into a corner" or whatever nonsense he described in this article. I don't understand how anyone could describe Obama as the "fierce advocate" he promised to be. Need I remind you that hate crimes and hospital visitation only help you if you are dead or close to it, and, wait for it, DADT is still in effect, not to be stopped for at least another year or more (there's no timeline for implementation). And he's still against marriage equality. I'm sick of hearing people say "he's better than the alternative" or "look what he's up against". The words that come out of his mouth don't get a congressional vote, so why hasn't he used his "bully pulpit" more?