Gay Rights and Obama\'s Approach

Gay Rights and Obama's Approach To It

President Barak Obama: Gay rights

President Barak Obama's position on gay rights has often been difficult to decipher. On one hand, as the nation's first African-American president, Obama might be assumed to support one of the major modern civil rights movements' goals and objectives, such as gay marriage and an end to the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy regarding sexual orientation. The current president's overall moderate-to-liberal political views on all social issues would also seem to support such analysis. Yet Obama is also a member of a religious tradition, the African-American Protestant tradition, which has not always shown overwhelming support for gays, even though many gay men and women are African-American. His feelings as well as his commitment to the subject remain in doubt.

The ambiguity of Obama's attitude is exemplified in his inaugural address. Obama was criticized by gay rights activists when he chose spiritual leader Reverend Rick Warren to give the invocation prayer. Warren has "likened gay marriage to an incestuous relationship and polygamy, and supported passage of a controversial California gay marriage ban" (Gay bishop, on Top, 2009). However, openly gay bishop Rev. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, a long-standing Obama supporter, was also invited to give a prayer during the inauguration celebratory events for the president.

In 1996, as a candidate for the Illinois State Senate, President-Elect Barack Obama gave statements that expressed an "unequivocal support for gay marriage," not civil unions. Obama, as a child of an interracial couple, would also seem to naturally support minimal regulation of consensual marriages between adults (Linkins 2009). However, the official Defense of Marriage Act that prohibits same-sex marriage still stands, and in a speech to an LGBT group, Obama said: "I want to add we have a duty to uphold existing law, but I believe we must do so in a way that does not exacerbate old divides. And fulfilling this duty in upholding the law in no way lessens my commitment to reversing this law. I've made that clear" (Obcamb 2009).

For activists, Obama's policy seems anything but clear. If he is opposed to the law, why speak of upholding it? Obama consistently pursues a cautious, bipartisan policy regarding most major social issues -- despite the substantial lack of bipartisanship on the part of conservatives in the U.S. Congress. He has been willing to sacrifice the once-sacrosanct public option for health care, and does not seem to wish to raise divisive topics such as gay marriage before a legislature whom he is desperately trying to placate.