White House Not Budging on Gay Marriage

In a wide-ranging interview with LGBT journalists and bloggers Thursday, White House domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes said President Barack Obama had chosen to take steps at the agency level to eliminate inequities for same-sex couples and gave no indication he would move toward supporting full marriage equality.

Asked if the president would go beyond incremental fixes to address a lack of marital rights for same-sex couples before 2012, Barnes noted that the president “has consistently called for the repeal of [the Defense of Marriage Act]” and used his “executive authority” to help provide more benefits to same-sex couples through federal agencies.

“That’s the course that he has identified, that’s the course that he has supported,” Barnes said.

The Advocate
followed up with, “Just to reiterate, he still supports civil unions ... that’s a separate-but-equal institution — and I’m wondering if he’s at any point going to move to embracing full equality rather than these smaller steps.”

Barnes responded, “I understand what you’re saying, but that’s the course he has set forth.”

The exchange took place during a briefing in which Barnes fielded questions for a little over an hour from eight pro-LGBT outlets — The Advocate, AmericaBlog.com, Bilerico.com, Gay City News, Keen News Service, Metro Weekly, Pam’s House Blend, and Philadelphia Gay News.

In her opening remarks to the group, Barnes said the Obama administration had moved the ball forward on LGBT equality yet acknowledged a level of frustration among LGBT advocates.

"We believe that in the last 18 months … we have taken more steps and made more progress with regard to the LGBT community than past administrations have," she said. "We would not argue that change has come as fast as we would want it to or as quickly as we would want it to, but we would certainly argue that in other contexts as well – it took us a year and a half to get the health care bill done and the same with other pieces of legislation that are priorities for us."

During the course of the hour, Barnes was pressed on whether the president would push harder to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), why the administration has not been more communicative with the LGBT community, if the president believes the Defense of Marriage Act is constitutional, and whether the White House would fight any sort of poison-pill amendment that seeks to kill DADT repeal on the Senate floor. 

What follows are short excerpts from several exchanges:


The Washington Blade asked whether the White House could push to pass both “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal and the ENDA as the congressional session winds down.


Barnes: DADT is obviously further down the queue just because the House has acted and the Senate Armed Services Committee has acted as well ...

We believe given the work that we’ve done with Congress and the DOD as well as the leadership in the relevant committees and the leadership in both houses that that’s moving forward.

With regard to ENDA, the president has consistently said that he supports ENDA, he supports an inclusive ENDA. There have been members of the administration who have testified in support of ENDA ... [Tom Perez from Department of Justice’s civil rights division and Stuart Ishimaru, who chaired the Equal Opportunity Employment Office]

The leadership [of the House and Senate] will have to decide how they are going to use floor time to move things forward ... and how aggressively they are going to be able to move given the time that’s left. But we have certainly indicated our support of those — ENDA, and you know the activity that’s taken place around DADT.