Obama’s gay revolt

last updated 8 January 2015

America in 2009 is broadly supportive of gay rights, so why is President Obama “living in 1993”? said John Aravosis in AMERICAblog. After ignoring all eight of his campaign pledges to the gay community, Obama is now going to extend some same-sex partner benefits to gay federal employees. “That’s sweet,” but also “awfully convenient” just as wealthy gay donors are starting to close their wallets. Gay people are too "pissed off” for “cute photo ops.”

The gay community has ample reason to be upset, said the Los Angeles Times in an editorial, as Obama’s Justice Department defends the “odious” Defense of Marriage Act and Obama shows a “curiously passive” attitude toward ending “don’t ask, don’t tell” and other gay-rights priorities. But Obama could be right that a “hasty march” toward gay rights could actually set the movement back by years.

Or maybe he just doesn’t care too much about the gay community’s “bitter disappointment” in him, said James Richardson in RedState. Sure, being “to the ideological right of former Vice President Dick Cheney” on his issue can’t be comfortable for Obama, but while the gay “pocketbook rebellion” will sting, the small number of gays—unlike Latinos and evangelicals, say—makes them a pretty “insignificant” political “identity group.”