BY DAN FOTOU

(Cross-posted from The Advocate)

Ever since Wednesday, I can’t help but feel conflicted and a bit deflated. Don’t get me wrong – it was a good day and a strong step forward for President Obama to finally come out in support of marriage equality. We can anticipate gay rights being a major talking point during an election year; this time, not so much as a liability but, instead, as a voting block that has power. But, here’s the thing – when Obama articulated his evolution, he failed to acknowledge marriage equality as a civil rights issue. He fell back on the tired Republican line that “marriage is a states’ rights issue.” Does he not realize the heartbreak and destruction we face, as individuals and as a community, from one ballot measure to the next – and that with each vote against us we’re denied another piece of our dignity as full human beings?

Tuesday’s passage of Amendment One in North Carolina fed on the prejudices and paranoia we’ve had to overcome for decades. Then President Obama made room for hate by invoking the states’ rights rhetoric. It’s in these very states where we are repeatedly victimized, stigmatized, assaulted, humiliated and killed all in the name of God and freedom. It’s in these very states where we need federal protections. The president issued a statement ahead of the vote saying he opposed any measure that added discrimination to a state constitution. But if he’s going to stand on the side of marriage equality, then why half-ass it and leave room for hate and intolerance to thrive from one state to another?

Equally as heartbreaking is the fact that, over the past several years, the marriage equality issue has defined our community to the point that nothing else matters; to the point where most folks within and outside of our community think once we’ve got marriage, we’ve got it all. Marriage, in fact, is only one slice of a very large pie. And it would benefit a minority within the community. It’s important, but the sad reality is that in a majority of states we can all still be denied a job, denied housing, denied public accommodations such as emergency care, denied access to education, denied credit and denied federal funding for public programs just for being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. The president supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act but the call for full federal equality means full federal equality, not just simple lip service to pacify us once again during an election year.

With each new election season, it becomes ever so much clearer that the LGBT community continues to be played by our elected officials. “Hey, hey, look over there, look over there, that will make you happy and get you off my back!” Meanwhile, over here, the very issues that would significantly impact the daily lives of LGBT people get conveniently left behind in the news cycle, forgotten by us all, and a year later we ask, “Hey, what ever happened to…?”

Case in point: Over the past weeks a lot of media attention and activist energy focused on Obama’s refusal to sign an executive order that would protect from discrimination LGBT employees of federal contractors who receive more than $10,000 a year from the federal government. While the order wouldn’t cover all LGBT workers, research from the Williams Institute shows it would cover 16.5 million more workers – totaling 22% of the U.S. workforce – a significant down payment toward ENDA. This order has 73% approval of likely 2012 voters across party lines, including 61% support among self-identified Republicans, according to a poll from the Human Rights Campaign. And HRC found that 87% of Americans believe LGBT people already have employment protections, indicating that this move by President Obama would be a total yawn for the American public. It’s a no-brainer and certainly carries limited, if any, political risk. Yet, on Wednesday, with all the hype around Obama’s coming out for marriage equality, his refusal to sign the executive order had been forgotten by the press and the majority of the LGBT community who are now making campaign donations, calling him a champion and chastising anyone who questions Wednesday’s events.

There’s no doubt that Wednesday’s news moves us forward, but at what cost? We now have a public that believes we’re just a few yards away from full federal equality, a community that’s willing to rabidly take the scraps thrown at us from the gods while forgetting the recent past, and we have many lives that will continue to be impacted by profound inequality. So, while I say, “Thank you Mr. President for evolving,” I also say, “And…”

And we still need you to sign the executive order; and we still need you to stop the deportations of our loved ones; and we still need to be protected from housing discrimination, job discrimination, credit discrimination, education discrimination, public facilities and accommodations discrimination, and discrimination within the U.S. military. This is what full federal equality looks like, and we’ll continue to fight for it.

By Thomas Fitzgerald

Inquirer Politics Writer

As President Obama’s motorcade knifed through Seattle on Thursday afternoon, it passed a woman sitting on the grass, a baby on her lap. She held up a yellow posterboard with a message spelled out in black marker: “Thank You! Mr. President for standing up for my Mommys.”

It was a powerful reminder of the symbolic weight of Obama’s declaration of support for same-sex marriage last week, a historic political embrace of the cause of gay rights. By all indications, the move fired up the liberal base of the Democratic Party, caused supporters of the president to open their checkbooks – and mobilized social-conservative opponents who view same-sex matrimony as an attack on traditional values.

“The truth is, it was a logical extension of what America is supposed to be,” Obama said at a $15 million fund-raiser Thursday night in the Los Angeles home of actor George Clooney. “Are we a country that includes everybody and gives everybody a shot and treats everybody fairly?”

Yet for all the attention focused on Obama’s “evolution” to full-fledged support of gay marriage, he took no action to expand civil rights for gay men and lesbians, pointedly leaving the question of how to define marriage up to each state.

“Does that ‘evolution’ by the president make us more equal? No,” said Heather Cronk, managing director at GetEQUAL, a California-based group that presses for the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

“It actually doesn’t do anything,” Cronk said. Make no mistake, Cronk was thrilled with the symbolism. But she said, “The disappointing part is that he devolved back to the states’ rights argument – he didn’t even talk about this as a civil rights issue.”

Indeed, members of GetEQUAL picketed the White House on Thursday, the day after Obama endorsed marriage rights. They carried signs that thanked the president but said, “We still need employment protection.”

It was a reference to a draft executive order that would ban federal contractors from discriminating against employees on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity. An estimated 22 million people would be covered by such an order. Obama has so far declined to sign it.

“This would make a concrete difference in people’s lives,” Cronk said.

Obama spoke out the day after voters in North Carolina overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage or civil unions for gay people.

In November, referendums in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington state will give those states’ voters a chance to weigh in on gay marriage. Despite growing support for such unions in opinion polls over the last decade, opponents have won in all 32 states that have voted on the issue.

Earlier this year, the Democratic governors of Maryland and Washington signed laws permitting same-sex marriage, but opponents are already gathering signatures for ballot measures designed to forestall implementation of those laws; they are expected to qualify.

Maine voters repealed that state’s gay-marriage law in 2009, but advocates have succeeded in getting a referendum question on the ballot to legalize same-sex marriage.

At the same time, the issue is working its way toward the Supreme Court. In February, a federal appeals court struck down California’s Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage, as unconstitutional on grounds that it violates the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.

In addition, gay-rights advocates are challenging the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex spouses and says that states do not have to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states where it is legal. The Obama administration said last year it would no longer defend the 1996 statute in court.

Meanwhile, a host of other gay-rights battles remain to be fought in state legislatures across the country. Ted Martin, executive director of Equality Pennsylvania, said he’s not even thinking of pushing for marriage rights in Harrisburg. His group is hoping the legislature will move on bills prohibiting discrimination in employment and housing, as well as an anti-bullying program for schools.

“I don’t want to downplay the announcement by the president that he’s for marriage – it’s so important – but we have a lot of ground to cover in Pennsylvania before we get there,” Martin said.

Politically, Obama’s stand energized each party’s base, at least for the moment, bringing a fund-raising windfall.

“It was definitely a ‘ka-ching’ moment,” said Larry Ceisler, a Democratic communications consultant in Philadelphia. “I must have [received] eight to 10 e-mails trying to raise money off this.” They came from the Obama campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and various party committees, including those that support Houseand Senate candidates.

That the historic move could pose risks for Obama’s reelection campaign almost goes without saying: It could peel away older, working-class voters in battleground states such as Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, Democratic strategists acknowledge. But neither Obama nor Republican Mitt Romney’s campaign has much incentive to discuss social issues, given the dominance of the economy as the top concern of voters.

Polling shows the public about evenly split on same-sex marriage, and a USA/Today Gallup Poll released Friday found 51 percent approved of Obama’s position. Yet 60 percent of registered voters surveyed said his change would make no difference in their vote.

“I think that this issue is close to a wash in terms of impact,” said Chris Borick, pollster and political scientist at Muhlenberg College in Allentown. “It may energize a bit more support among young voters and progressives who had lost passion for Obama. The president’s decision stirs some juices that have gone flat, and may get a few voters to the polls who could have sat this one out.”

Borick said that the issue may make a few undecided voters “uncomfortable enough to move to the Romney camp.”

Perhaps that was why Obama went no further, taking pains to say he was speaking “personally” and proposing no federal legislation. He is hardly doing a Lyndon Johnson – that is, throwing the full weight of his office behind an expansion of civil rights.

Even so, having a president for the first time embrace same-sex marriage, casting it in moral terms, is not insignificant.

“As of his announcement, favoring gay marriage is now fully, indisputably, and permanently a mainstream political position,” said Jonathan Rauch, a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution who has written on the gay-marriage debate. “All hint of weirdness or stigma is gone.”

GETEQUAL Demands That Mitt Romney “Cut Out” LGBT Bullying

Washington, D.C: Today, GetEQUAL a prominent LGBT advocacy group, is demanding that Mitt Romney “cut out” LGBT bullying. As The Washington Post reported this week, Romney bullied Lauber for his “nonconformity” and “presumed homosexuality” throughout their time at Cranbrook. In one disturbing example, Romney rounded up a gang of students to corner Lauber in his room. Romney then tackled the young student, pinned him to the ground and, ignoring Lauber’s crying and screams for help, hacked off his hair with a pair of scissors.

Mitt Romney claims he doesn’t remember the event. But five former Cranbrook students cited in the article have independently corroborated the story. They have also all apologized. This morning, another former student and friend of Romney’s, Phillip Maxwell, came forward to ABC News to describe the “haunting memory.” Romney and his friends acted like a “pack of dogs” during the assault, Maxwell recalls. He told ABC that it was “bullying supreme.”

In light of the painful amount of bullying experienced by students across the country, GetEQUAL went to the headquarters of the Republican National Committee today to protest Mitt Romney’s continued bullying of LGBT young people and adults via his anti LGBT policies and campaign promises.

“It’s been clear to LGBT Americans for years that Mitt Romney is a bully by looking at his unapologetic refusal to move forward on LGBT equality — now, the rest of the country is seeing his bully tendencies,” said Heather Cronk, managing director of GetEQUAL. “Bullying doesn’t end at the graduation stage — people like Mitt Romney who cause pain to people simply for being different than them tend to take that worldview into the workplace, into churches, and into governance. Romney has an obligation to govern on behalf of all Americans — but he’s made clear that he is incapable of treating people equally.”

According to the National Education Association, “Students who are targets of repeated bullying behavior experience extreme fear and stress, which can be expressed as: fear of going to school, fear of using a public bathroom, fear of the bus ride to and from school, physical symptoms of illness and diminished ability to learn.”

• Everyday 160,000 students stay at home from school due to fear of being attacked or violently bullied.
• 282,000 students across the nation are physically attacked at school every month
• In 85% of bully cases, there is no intervention or effort to stop action from taking place.

According to the National Youth Association,

• 9 out of 10 LGBT students have experienced physical harassment or bullying at school.
• LGBT teens are bullied 2 to 3 times as much as straight teens.
• More than 1/3 of LGBT kids have attempted suicide due to bullying.

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GetEQUAL is a national, direct action lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization. Emphasizing direct action and people power, the mission of GetEQUAL is to empower the LGBT community and its allies to take action to demand full legal and social equality, and to hold accountable those who stand in the way. For more information on GetEQUAL, please visit: http://www.getequal.org. You can follow GetEQUAL on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/getequal, on Facebook athttp://www.facebook.com/GetEQUAL, or on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/getequal.

Job discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is already illegal in Washington, D.C., and 21 states, including California. A presidential order would protect employees of contractors hired by the federal government in the other 29 states.

A nondiscrimination order “would give concrete, real-life workplace protections to people who work for federal contractors like ExxonMobil that refuse, year after year, to add those protections on their own,” said Heather Cronk, managing director of GetEqual, one of several gay rights groups pressing for action on the issue.

Two weeks ago, she said, former Bay Area activist Cleve Jones approached Obama and handed him a binder with more than 40 stories of workplace discrimination to help make the case for presidential action. Obama accepted the binder without saying anything, Cronk said.

Worker harassed

One case that captured public attention involved DynCorp International, a military contractor based in Virginia, whose laws are silent on antigay bias. DynCorp agreed in January to pay $155,000 to settle a civil rights complaint on behalf of aircraft mechanic James Friso.

While stationed in Iraq, Friso – who is heterosexual and married – said he was regularly called “faggot,” “queer” and similar names by a male co-worker. When he complained, he said, the company simply transferred him to another post and did nothing to his co-worker.

DynCorp did not acknowledge any wrongdoing in the settlement, but a month later adopted a companywide ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Federal contractors employ tens of millions of Americans to build everything from roads and dams to missiles and satellites. They’ve been subject to presidential antidiscrimination orders since 1941, when Franklin D. Roosevelt barred racial and religious discrimination by military contractors, 23 years before Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. Since then, presidents have issued at least a half-dozen similar orders.

Obama once promised to follow in their path. As a candidate in 2008, he told a gay rights group in Houston that he would support a ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity by government contractors, according to a document unearthed recently by the gay publication Metro Weekly.

Spurred by the DynCorp case and others, gay rights groups have held several meetings with administration officials and came away saying they were encouraged that an executive order was imminent.

But on April 11, Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett told advocates that the president had no immediate plans to outlaw job discrimination on his own. Press secretary Jay Carney elaborated at the next day’s White House media briefing.

Legislation instead

Carney said Obama “is committed to securing equal rights” for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans and has long supported the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would protect all LGBT employees, public and private.

Rather than issuing an executive order, Carney said, “the approach we’re taking at this time is to try to build support for passage of this legislation, a comprehensive approach.”

What he didn’t mention is that the legislation has no chance of passing in the current Congress. Even when Democrats controlled both houses in 2009-10, Obama’s first years in office, the bill had hearings in House and Senate committees but was not brought up for a vote, despite testimony in support of it from Obama administration officials.

An executive order, on the other hand, needs no congressional approval.

A presidential decree would apply not only to the 10.5 million employees who work on federal contracting projects but also to everyone else who works for those employers – an additional 17.5 million, according to a study in February by M. Lee Badgett, research director of the Williams Institute for Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at UCLA.

About 60 percent of them are already covered by state laws or company policies against antigay discrimination, Badgett said, and 41 percent are similarly protected against discrimination based on gender identity by laws in California and 15 other states in addition to Washington, D.C.

But for millions of contractors’ employees, an executive order would have an immediate and far-reaching effect – at little or no political cost, according to its advocates, who say polls show strong public support.

Obama’s silent refusal to act last month brought immediate protests.

‘Turned his back’

Log Cabin Republicans, the gay rights group that led the legal fight against the “don’t ask, don’t tell” exclusion of openly gay and lesbian military personnel, said Obama had “turned his back on 1.8 million LGBT workers” and “failed to deliver on a policy that has broad, bipartisan support among the American people.”

Tico Almeida, who as a congressional staffer helped to draft the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and now heads a group called Freedom to Work, called Obama’s inaction “a political calculation that cannot stand” and announced a campaign to pressure the president on the issue.

He said the effort received an immediate $100,000 contribution from liberal donor Jonathan Lewis, who accused Obama of “craven election-year politics.”

But a number of advocates have softened their tone in recent weeks, particularly after Obama’s historic endorsement Wednesday of equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians.

“Because President Obama has such an exceptionally strong record on LGBT equality,” Almeida said after the announcement, “I remain confident that he will sign an executive order in the next few months, and if not, then fairly soon after the election.”

Fifteen activists came from around the country to participate in the demonstration, staged the day after the President declared his support for marriage equality. There was a strategic decision to engage in a manner that would not result in arrests. From the organization’s statement:

Rather than organizing an arrestable action at the White House as planned, we shifted course — still believing that we need to push the president to create real, concrete change for LGBT Americans. After a significant amount of soul-searching, we decided as a group that we can be grateful while still asking for our full equality — no compromises, no excuses. We considered changing our target, but decided that the power to change LGBT lives across the country lies in the hands of President Obama, and we would take our case back to the White House.

So we headed to Pennsylvania Avenue, posters in hand, to send one clear, simple message: “Thank you — and we’re more than marriage.” Our signs read: “Thank you, and sign the Executive Order!” “Thank you, and stop deporting our families!” “Thank you, and pass ENDA!” and “Thank you, and stop LGBT bullying!”

This action lifted up a voice that hasn’t been heard since Wednesday afternoon — an unrelenting, uncompromising call for full LGBT equality. Evolution on marriage equality is fantastic, but it’s not everything. We want to be fully equal under the law — and we’ll keep taking action until we get there.

As you can see by the black-and white-photos by C.D. Kirven, the action harkened back to classic protests of the past.

Obama’s decision to declare his personal belief that same- sex couples should be allowed to marry thrilled his supporters at a time when the president needs enthusiastic backing and campaign cash from his base, even as it stoked outrage among critics on whom presumptive Republican Party nominee Mitt Romney is counting to help him unseat the incumbent in November.

Still, Obama’s decision to tell ABC News that he’d decided “it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” doesn’t change the outlook for legalizing gay marriage nationally. That would take the elimination of a federal law that prohibits the government from recognizing same-sex spouses, and nullification of constitutional amendments in 38 states that don’t recognize such unions.

‘Symbolic Milestone’

“I don’t think it’s a milestone in the actual obtaining of gay rights — it’s a symbolic milestone,” said George C. Edwards III, a specialist in the American presidency at Texas A & M University in College Station. “But sometimes, symbolism is what people are looking for in politics.”

For Obama, it was an unusual instance in which he used the bully pulpit to take a stand on an issue that deeply divides Americans. Fifty percent of respondents said in a May 3-6 Gallup poll that same-sex marriages should be recognized as legal, with 48 percent saying they shouldn’t.

The president’s embrace of gay marriage isn’t as momentous as when President Lyndon Johnson pushed through passage of the Civil Rights Act, fully aware that Southern voters would turn against his Democratic Party. At the same time, it is a noticeable departure from the play-it-safe mode most incumbents adopt just six months from Election Day.

Heather Cronk, managing director at GetEQUAL, a group advocating for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, said Obama’s statement showed “great courage.”

Keep Up Pressure

“It’s not the only step — and we will absolutely keep the pressure on all our elected leaders to take concrete action toward legal equality for LGBT Americans — but it’s a significant day in our nation’s history, and we look forward to working with the president to make full LGBT equality a reality,” Cronk said.

Stu Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report in Washington, said Obama’s statement may not have a major influence on the campaign.

“There will be a lot of talk, a lot of huffing and puffing from both sides in the next 48 hours, but the election is still about jobs and the economy — not gay marriage,” he said.

That didn’t stop both sides from seizing on the moment and working it to their advantage.

Religious conservatives, who resisted Romney’s candidacy during the Republican primary and have yet to coalesce behind him, said Obama’s move would give the former Massachusetts governor the intensity from their community he lacks.

Two Happy Camps

“There’s two camps celebrating this today: Those activists who are advocating for the redefinition of marriage, and the Mitt Romney campaign,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. “The president just handed Mitt Romney the missing piece to the picture of enthusiasm for his campaign.”

Democrats said the president will make gains with important constituencies he needs to be re-elected, including young people.

“People against gay marriage weren’t going to vote for the president anyway, and he gets enormous credit with voters under 40,” said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist and former congressional aide. “There are places it will hurt him and places it will help him. Overall, people want a politician to say what they believe.”

That’s especially true of gay supporters of Obama who have been withholding donations for his re-election because of his stance on same-sex marriage.

Gay Political Donations

Juan Ahonen-Jover, who said he and his partner Ken Ahonen- Jover had planned to refrain from giving to Obama this year “to send the president a message” on the issue, said he made a $10,000 contribution to his re-election campaign — the maximum allowed — within 30 minutes of the president’s televised statement.

An adviser to some of the top lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender donors in the country through his website eQualitygiving.org, he hand-delivered a letter to Obama at the president’s first White House Cinco de Mayo party on May 4, 2009, that read: “When you say that you believe marriage is between a man and a woman, please know that those words feel like a knife going through our hearts.”

“People like us will donate immediately,” Ahonen-Jover said yesterday. “This is exactly what we’ve been looking for, the moral leadership that marriage equality is a right for everybody.”

Hours after the ABC interview was aired, Obama sent a letter to his campaign supporters explaining his reasons for supporting gay marriage. The letter closed with an appeal for donations.

Key Voting Constituencies

Beyond the immediate impact on the re-election’s campaign account, polls suggest the gay marriage issue could drive key voting constituencies.

Independents support same-sex marriage 57 percent to 40 percent, according to the Gallup Poll, putting them closer to Democrats’ views on the issue than Republicans’. And their resistance to same-sex marriage is declining quickly, according to the most recent April 2012poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Pew data shows a 7-point drop in opposition among independents over the last four years and a 15- point drop over the last eight years.

Romney could benefit with older people, because opposition to gay marriage tends to increase by age. Just 30 percent of 18- to-29-year-olds were opposed to gay marriage in the Pew survey, compared with 56 percent of those over the age of 65.

Driving Catholics

Catholics, already upset over passage of the Affordable Health Care Act and the White House regulations on providing abortion coverage to charitable institutions’ employees, also could move toward the Republican ticket in more numbers.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said Obama’s comments “in support of the redefinition of marriage are deeply saddening.” In a statement, Dolan said, “The people of this country, especially our children, deserve better.”

Finally, Republicans said Romney could also get a boost in politically competitive states. Ralph Reed, chairman of the Duluth, Georgia-based Faith and Freedom Coalition, called Obama’s statement “a gift to the Romney campaign” that would “energize the opposition” to Obama in Florida, Ohio, and Virginia.

The timing of Obama’s statement was hardly ideal for his campaign, coming almost immediately on the heels of his official campaign kickoff May 5. It was prompted largely by an impromptu declaration by Vice President Joe Biden in a television interview the next day that he was “absolutely comfortable” with gay marriage.

Supreme Court Action

The issue of same-sex marriage is working its way toward the Supreme Court and may come before the justices in the nine- month term that starts in October. In February, a federal appeals court struck down California’s Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage, as unconstitutional.

In a separate line of cases, gay-rights advocates are challenging the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex spouses. The Obama administration said last year it will no longer defend that statute in court.

After devastating blows Tuesday with a failed civil unions bill in Colorado and the passage of North Carolina’s Amendment One, the Dallas LGBT community celebrated President Barack Obama’s public endorsement of same-sex marriage at a rally Wednesday night.

Nearly 80 people gathered at the Legacy of Love Monument at Cedar Springs and Oak Lawn to protest the passage of North Carolina’s marriage ban, but also to rejoice in the victory of the first president to come out in favor of marriage equality.

The rally had been organized after the North Carolina vote to spur the LGBT community to action by calling on Obama and Mayor Mike Rawlings to end their silence on marriage equality, but became a celebratory gathering in light of Obama’s historic announcement.

Daniel Cates, North Texas regional coordinator for GetEQUAL, organized the rally. He opened the remarks to the crowd by quoting from Harvey Milk’s famous “Hope Speech” and encouraging the crowd to come out to everyone they know to bring attention to the number of LGBT people who deserve equality.

“Harvey Milk was right then and Harvey Milk is right today,” Cates said after reading the speech. “We must come out for what we believe and we must ask those that support us to come out.”

Poking at Mayor Rawlings, Cates called him and those like him — who support the LGBT community personally but refuse to take public stands — “closet cases.” Rawlings has refused to sign a pledge that hundreds of other mayors across the country have signed in support of same-sex marriage.

Daniel Cates, North Texas regional coordinator for GetEQUAL, speaks to the crowd about the importance of President Barack Obama’s support for marriage equality. (Anna Waugh/Dallas Voice)

“Members of Congress, come out! Mayor Mike Rawlings, come out!” Cates shouted to the cheering crowd. “We need everyone to follow the example that the president set this morning.”

The Rev. Stephen Sprinkle, an openly gay professor at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, spoke about his upbringing in North Carolina. He grew up there and was ordained as a Baptist pastor in the state, he told the crowd. Sharing several phone calls he received after the vote was announced, he told the crowd that a majority of voters in North Carolina said no to marriage equality, but the majority of the residents don’t believe in the hateful ban on LGBT rights.

The Rev. Jo Hudson, senior pastor at Cathedral of Hope, spoke about how “history bent a little more toward justice” and encouraged the crowd to stand strong amid inevitable backlash from conservatives and Christians who will try to use the Bible against the LGBT community.  She told the audience that the progress made Wednesday by Obama’s announcement would only continue and one day LGBT Texans would be able to marry here.

Omar Narvaez, president of Stonewall Democrats of Dallas, said he was proud “to say that President Obama has evolved.”

“Today is a day to remember. It is the biggest day in the modern day movement and the in modern day history,” Narvaez said.

Narvaez told the crowd that the victory won Wednesday was just the beginning, saying the coming months and years would bring more acknowledgement for equal rights.

“Today is not the first day,” he said. “It’s the biggest day.”

Several other local activists spoke to honor Obama’s announcement and to urge the crowd to tell family, friends and co-workers to take their voices to the polls.

A handful of audience members also spoke in an open forum after the rally ended with those in attendance joining in a singing of “We Shall Overcome.” Many of them shared stories of losing loved ones and not having any rights to keep their things or claim their true relationship, while others shared stories of progress in uniting an anti-gay neighborhood and overcoming their own struggles for equality.

Media Contact: Heather Cronk, heather@getequal.org, 202-491-7240

Hundreds Respond to Organization’s Call for Local Actions at OFA Offices

Nearly 1000 LGBT and Allied Americans Willing to Lobby Obama Campaign Offices for Executive Order Signature

WASHINGTON, DC — Late last week, GetEQUAL — an LGBT civil rights organization committed to using direct action and nonviolent civil disobedience to advance LGBT equality — asked for volunteers to go to their local Obama for America (OFA) campaign office and ask the campaign staff to request that their candidate, President Barack Obama, sign an Executive Order barring federal contractors from discriminating against employees based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

By Monday morning, nearly 1000 people had responded to that call — offering to go to their local OFA campaign office to talk with staff and volunteers there about why LGBT Americans can’t wait for workplace protections. Volunteers making office visits will be carrying symbolic objects with them — including ballpoint pens to encourage the President to sign the Executive Order, as well as plastic backbones to ask him to show leadership in the face of pressure to avoid pro-LGBT actions in an election year. Many of those volunteering to go to OFA offices were volunteers in Obama’s 2008 campaign, and are going back to the offices where they volunteered in order to push the president to act.

GetEQUAL Managing Director Heather Cronk said, “Honestly, we were stunned at the response to this call for volunteers. We thought that a hundred people might respond — this kind of response is a clear call to the President that LGBT Americans are looking for his leadership on this issue. With his campaign slogan — ‘We Can’t Wait’ — on the tips of their tongues, nearly one thousand advocates are fanning out to OFA offices across the country to ask President Obama to lead the way toward ending workplace discrimination by ensuring that government money is not used to fuel LGBT discrimination.”

Organizations from the Human Rights Campaign to the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force to the Center for American Progress have all urged President Obama to sign such an Executive Order immediately in order to provide workplace protections for approximately 26 million Americans who work for federal contractors. GetEQUAL has been ratcheting up the pressure on the White House over the past few weeks, and has plans to continue applying pressure this summer. As it becomes clearer and clearer that the only hope for progress is via executive pen in light of a stalled and gridlocked Congress, LGBT advocates are calling on President Obama to lead the way on workplace fairness.

This Executive Order has been embraced by The Washington Post, The New York Times, 72 Members of Congress, LGBT organizations, allied progressive organizations, and civil rights organizations. Recent polling indicates that 73% of likely 2012 voters support such executive action, and recent reports indicate that both the Department of Justice and the Department of Labor have approved language for such an order. Executive Order 11246 prohibits discrimination by federal contractors on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and was signed in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson. This Executive Order has been extraordinarily durable, resisting challenge by all branches of government for over 45 years.

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GetEQUAL is a national, direct action lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization. Emphasizing direct action and people power, the mission of GetEQUAL is to empower the LGBT community and its allies to take action to demand full legal and social equality, and to hold accountable those who stand in the way. For more information on GetEQUAL, please visit: http://www.getequal.org. You can follow GetEQUAL on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/getequal, on Facebook athttp://www.facebook.com/GetEQUAL, or on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/getequal.

Media Contact: Heather Cronk, heather@getequal.org

Washington Post Claims “No Principled Reason” for Obama to Drag Feet on Workplace Protections

GetEQUAL Challenges White House to Issue a “Down Payment” on ENDA by Signing Executive Order

WASHINGTON, DC — In another challenge to the White House’s refusal to sign an Executive Order barring LGBT discrimination among federal contractors, The Washington Post called on President Obama to sign this order immediately. This call by The Post is the second call from the newspaper — and heightens the pressure on President Obama to put his pen to paper without delay.

GetEQUAL Managing Director Heather Cronk said, “Today’s editorial says exactly what Americans across the country are saying — that the President needs to show leadership on workplace discrimination by refusing to allow government funding to be used to discriminate. While we applaud the President’s support for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, that piece of legislation likely won’t see the light of day in a Boehner-led House of Representatives. ENDA should have passed in 2010 when Democrats held the House and the Senate — and while GetEQUAL activists were being arrested at the Capitol to try and force Democrats to show leadership on ENDA, we didn’t see the President lifting a finger. The President can put a down payment on ENDA by signing this Executive Order.”

Today’s Post editorial states that “there is no principled reason for refusing to extend such workplace protections to millions of Americans.” The piece goes on to say, “ENDA, which would extend prohibitions against sexual orientation discrimination to all but the smallest private-sector employers, is a worthy piece of legislation, but its passage appears remote and likely will remain so if conservatives control either chamber of Congress or if the GOP candidate captures the White House in November.”

Cronk continued, “We also want an inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act passed through Congress — and this isn’t an either/or situation. In order to fully level the playing field for LGBT Americans, we need both ENDA and an Executive Order — and the White House knows that. We won’t fall for an election year bait-and-switch — we’re calling on the President to be the ‘fierce advocate’ he promised us he would be. We’re looking for the White House to be just as passionate about LGBT equality as they are about LGBT campaign contributions, which the re-election campaign has been happy to accept.”

This Executive Order has been embraced by The Washington Post, The New York Times, 72 Members of Congress, LGBT organizations, allied progressive organizations, and civil rights organizations. Recent polling indicates that 73% of likely 2012 voters support such executive action, and recent reports indicate that both the Department of Justice and the Department of Labor have approved language for such an order. Executive Order 11246 prohibits discrimination by federal contractors on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and was signed in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson. This Executive Order has been extraordinarily durable, resisting challenge by all branches of government for over 45 years.

GetEQUAL is a national, direct action lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization. Emphasizing direct action and people power, the mission of GetEQUAL is to empower the LGBT community and its allies to take action to demand full legal and social equality, and to hold accountable those who stand in the way. For more information on GetEQUAL, please visit: http://www.getequal.org. You can follow GetEQUAL on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/getequal, on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/GetEQUAL, or on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/getequal.

The White House disclosed the news during a Wednesday meeting between senior administration officials and several LGBT advocacy groups and left-leaning think thanks including the Human Rights Campaign, Center for American Progress, and the National Gay and the Lesbian Task Force. Those who attended the meeting told NBC News that some of the President’s top advisers including Valerie Jarrett and Cecilia Munoz were in attendance.

A senior administration official says, per Welker and Weinberg, that while the president will not sign the executive order this year, the White House will conduct a study of workplace discrimination against LGBT employees with the expectation of gaining further understanding of the issue and possibly more support for the executive order.

Winnie Stachelberg, the executive vice president for external affairs at the Center for American Progress acknowledged the “good work that has been done” by the administration but expressed frustration. “Today’s news that the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors will launch a study to better understand workplace discrimination against gay and transgender Americans is confounding and disappointing,” she said in a statement.

Joe Solmonese, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, had a similar response: “We are extremely disappointed with this decision and will continue to advocate for an executive order from the president.”

But Heather Cronk from LGBT rights group “GetEqual” was more critical. “For those who are looking for support from an Obama White House, this should send chills up their spine.” Cronk said the move was nothing more than election-year-politics. “The president is campaigning on a slogan of we can’t wait, but he’s asking LGBT families to give him his job, but to wait on their job protection. It’s unclear what Obama feels like we can’t wait for.”

A White House official pushed back saying the move had nothing to do with politics and pointed to the fact that the administration conducted a study before “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed. The administration has also expressed its support for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) which requires Congressional approval. The legislation would prohibit employers from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender. Shin Inouye, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement: “The president is committed to lasting and comprehensive change and therefore our goal is passage of ENDA, which is a legislative solution to LGBT employment discrimination – just as the president pressed for legislative repeal of [Don't Ask, Don't Tell].”

In other news….

The Obama campaign today is trying to push the anniversary of “Romneycare” with a tough video, quoting people who helped him create the law and with footage of him from the signing day on top of a podium on a stage with Romney saying, “This is a politician’s dream, you’ve got to admit.”

The Wall Street Journal: “Romney Faces Heat on Birthday of Massachusetts Health Law.” The state’s Democratic governor on Wednesday celebrated the sixth birthday of the Massachusetts health-care law — and took some jabs at its creator, Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney. The ceremony at historic Faneuil Hall was in the spot where Mr. Romney signed the legislation into law in April 2006 when he was governor of the state. He has promised to repeal the national version of the legislation. ‘I think he has a lot to be proud of, he contributed ideas, the individual mandate was one of them…why not be proud?’ said Gov. Deval Patrick, a co-chair of President Barack Obama’s national re-election committee.”