Obama: Our First Gay President

In 1998, Toni Morrison dubbed Bill Clinton “the first black president.” Advocate contributor Charles Perez says President Obama is on track to earn a title of his own.

By Charles Perez

COMMENTARY: Barack Obama could turn out to be America’s first gay president. Many of us thought it would have been Bill Clinton. It wasn’t. Excepting James Buchanan, our 15th and only never-married president, and Abraham Lincoln, who was rumored to have shared his bed with a male friend for reasons of economy and warmth, it’s beginning to look as if Barack Obama may be it.

Nobel Prize–winning author Toni Morrison dubbed Bill Clinton “the first black president” back in 1998. The first gay president may be the closeted Obama, who has stealthily hidden a very progressive gay rights agenda behind garments made of compromise and incrementalism. But now he’s stepping out. According to Andrew Sullivan in a recent Atlantic article, “He is coming through — more cunningly than most of us grasped.”

Two weeks ago, Atty. Gen. Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department will no longer defend antigay legislation passed by Congress and signed into law in 1996 by President Clinton. It was a bold move with little precedent.

According to the attorney general, both he and President Obama concluded that at least part of the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. At issue is the third section, which denies federal benefits to gay and lesbian couples married in states that recognize gay unions.

The decision came in part because of the marriage and death of Thea Spyer. Back in 1963, Spyer met and fell in love with Edith Windsor. The two went on to build a life together for over four decades, each wearing a pearl pin in place of a ring, so as not to give away their often-secret relationship. Finally, after a 40-year engagement, they were married in Canada.

Two years ago Thea Spyer died, where they lived, in New York State, leaving her estate to her wife, Edith Windsor. Though gay marriage is not legal in New York, the Empire State does recognize legal same-sex unions performed in other states, territories, and nations. The federal government, however, does not.

Spyer’s death not only brought an end to their 46-year relationship, it also brought a federal tax bill of $363,053. Windsor would have been exempt had she been married to a man. READ MORE HERE....

Remembering Coretta, Calling Bernice

Coretta Scott King, the beloved widow of Martin Luther King Jr., died five years ago this week. While King stressed that her husband's vision of equality extended to gays, her daughter Bernice doesn't take that view.

By Michael G. Long

Bernice King, the youngest child of Coretta Scott King, has declined an offer to become president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by stating that her vision did not align with the board’s and that she would begin to focus her time and energies on developing her mother’s legacy. Her explanation is curious, though, because her vision also does not align with a significant part of her mother’s legacy — an unwavering commitment to advancing gay rights.

Mrs. King died five years ago this week, and the gay rights movement has missed her ever since. For more than 20 years, Mrs. King offered public support for gay rights and sought to link the modern civil rights movement — and her husband’s legacy — with the gay rights movement. In 1983, for example, she made sure to include a lesbian speaker, the poet Audre Lorde, at the national march marking the 20th anniversary of the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. And just before the march, Mrs. King had publicly announced her full support for a federal gay rights bill.

After the shocking 1986 Supreme Court decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, which denied that gays had a constitutional right to engage in “acts of consensual sodomy,” Mrs. King increasingly added her crystal-clear voice to campaigns waged by gay rights organizations and gay-friendly legislators. In 1993 she held a press conference urging President Clinton to strike down the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the U.S. military. A year later she stood shoulder to shoulder with Ted Kennedy and Barney Frank as they introduced legislation that would have criminalized workplace discrimination against gays. And in 2004 she publicly denounced President George W. Bush’s calls for a constitutional amendment that would have effectively banned gay marriage.

All the while Mrs. King remained firmly convinced that her husband would have supported her campaign for gay rights. She frequently cited his claim that “justice is indivisible” and often noted that by fighting for gay rights she was simply helping to build the “beloved community of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream, where all people can live together in a spirit of trust and understanding, harmony, love, and peace.”

Bernice King is not her mother's daughter.

In December 2004, King joined Bishop Eddie Long — who is now facing lawsuits alleging that he used his riches and episcopal authority to lure young men into sexual encounters — in leading a march that opposed gay marriage. Just months before the march, which started at the King Center in Atlanta, she announced, “I know deep down in my sanctified soul that [Dr. King] did not take a bullet for same-sex unions.” And nearly a decade earlier she had decried “men who accept homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle.”

Unfortunately, there is not a shred of evidence that she will change her views anytime soon. On the contrary, King seems to be standing by her public statement that her views and vision line up with Bishop Long’s and that he is the rightful heir to her father’s legacy.

Long, who has mocked effeminate men from his pulpit, refers to homosexuality as “spiritual abortion” and preaches that God stands ready to “take out” gays who do not give up their sexual lifestyle. Like the bishop, King adopts a conservative approach to the Bible on matters of homosexuality and allows biblical verses that condemn homosexual sex to be her primary moral authority when assessing homosexuality and gay rights.

That type of conservative approach to the Bible was utterly foreign to both Martin Luther King Jr., and Coretta Scott King. Biblical support for slavery alone made them wary of an uncritical approach to the Bible and consequently they invoked other moral authorities, like the Bill of Rights, when inviting us to dream about the beloved community.

Bernice King has yet to follow. Doing so would require very difficult steps — rethinking conservative biblicism and seeing Bishop Long as standing far outside the tradition of her parents’ liberal Christianity, with its critical approach to the Bible. But until that happens, Reverend King will never grasp, let alone advance, the inclusive legacy of her mother’s warm welcome to gays long denied entrance to the beloved community. It was — and is — a legacy of love without boundaries.

Michael G. Long is the editor of Marshalling Justice: The Early Civil Rights Letters of Thurgood Marshall (Amistad/HarperCollins).

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The Year in International News

By Julie Bolcer

Delhi Gay Pride Celebrates New Era

Thousands of revelers flooded the streets of New Delhi in November to celebrate the Indian capital’s first gay pride parade since the Delhi High Court decriminalized gay sex in a landmark ruling in July 2009. Whereas protest marked the parade in two previous years, marchers in the third annual installment this year cheered the legal victory that struck down the provision of Section 377 in the Indian penal code, a remnant of the British colonial era. Religious leaders have appealed the ruling in the Supreme Court while activists adjust their focus to changing conservative social attitudes in the world’s largest democracy.


Malawi Couple Imprisoned for Engagement Ceremony
Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga captured the world’s attention in May when they were sentenced to 14 years in prison for holding a public same-sex engagement ceremony in December 2009. Following appeals from voices including UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Madonna, who adopted children from Malawi and funds orphanages in the impoverished southern African country, the couple was pardoned and released, but not before political pressure appeared to end their relationship. Monjeza and Chimbalanga, whom reports identified as a transgender woman, faced additional jail time unless they broke up, and by June, Monjeza announced that he was in a new relationship with a girlfriend. Chimbalanga sought asylum in Canada this fall.


Pope OKs Condoms for Disease Prevention
Pope Benedict XVI shocked the world and appeared to throw the Vatican PR machine off guard – again –in November with his statement that condoms could be justified in certain instances, namely, to prevent the spread of disease. In a book-length interview with journalist Peter Seewald, the pontiff offered the example of a male sex worker, using the masculine form of the German word for “prostitute,” when he said that condoms could represent a “first step” in taking moral responsibility. HIV/AIDS workers in hard-hit regions like Africa, where Catholicism is on the rise, welcomed the remarks, but confusion persisted in part because the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore used the feminine word for “prostitute” in its Italian translation of the interview. The Vatican has since clarified that the Pope’s comments apply to sex workers of any gender, but the Catholic Church does not condone prostitution, and it remains wholly opposed to the use of condoms for contraception.


European Court Rules Against Russia
The European Court of Human Rights rebuked Russia in October, ruling that repeated bans of the gay pride parade in Moscow violated the European Human Rights Convention and ordering the country to pay more than $40,000 in damages and legal fees to Nikolai Alekseev. The gay activist brought the suit following bans in 2006, 2007 and 2008 by the city’s former mayor, Yuri Lushkov, who had called gay pride parades “satanic.” In the weeks leading up to the ruling, Russian authorities pressured Alekseev to drop the claim, kidnapping and possibly drugging him for three days after detaining the activist at a Moscow airport. Despite the historic ruling, violence marred the St. Petersburg pride parade held in November, and in December, a top Russian judge, Constitutional Court Chairman Valery Zorkin declared the ruling culturally insensitive.


China Shuts Down Mr. Gay Pageant
In January, police in Beijing shut down the Mr. Gay Pageant, billed as the first of its kind in China, with claims that the event lacked the necessary permits for its nightclub location. Pageant organizers had assiduously avoided asking for government permission to hold the event, but unsolicited news coverage in state-run media prompted widespread attention. Forced to cancel, three pageant organizers and eight contestants met secretly later in the month and selected Xiao Dai, a 25-year-old from the Western region of Xinjiang who used the pageant name Xiaodai Muyi, to be the first person to represent China in the Worldwide Mr. Gay final held in Oslo in February. He took the spot of third runner-up. The cancellation illustrated the obstacles that remain for the burgeoning gay community in China, where gay sex was decriminalized less than 20 year ago, and homosexuality was removed from the official list of psychological disorders in 2001.

Gay Rights Rally at the United Nations
Following a vigorous lobbying effort led by the United States, the United Nations General Assembly voted in December to restore the words “sexual orientation” to a biennial resolution that condemns extrajudicial killings. Despite having been included every year since 1999, sexual orientation was deleted from a draft resolution passed by a committee in November, and replaced with more generic language introduced by Benin on behalf of African countries. The final resolution, with the words “sexual orientation” restored, passed the full General Assembly by a vote of 122-0, with 59 abstentions, including the United States, which abstained for reasons unrelated to the language it worked to salvage. Highlights of the lobbying effort included Human Rights Day speeches from Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who denounced the criminalization of homosexuality, which remains punishable by death in at least five countries.


Marriage Equality Wins in Portugal, Mexico City and Argentina
Marriage equality became law in Portugal, Mexico City and Argentina in 2010, overcoming the opposition of powerful conservative forces including the Catholic Church. In Portugal, facing the possibility of a veto override in the Socialist parliament, conservative President Anibal Cavaco Silva signed a marriage equality law in May, just days after a visit from Pope Benedict VXI in which the pontiff expressed his dismay. In Mexico City, a marriage equality law passed last year took effect in February, and Argentina became the first Latin American country to approve marriage equality when President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner signed the law in July.



Outcry Continues Against Uganda Bill
International protest continued to confront the proposed bill that would impose punishments including the death penalty and life imprisonment on gay people in Uganda. In the United States, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton singled out the brutal bill for criticism in speeches to the National Prayer Breakfast in February. David Bahati, the Ugandan parliament member with ties to American evangelicals who introduced the bill last year, was disinvited from the high-profile breakfast organized by the Fellowship Foundation, a conservative Christian group more commonly known as The Family, but he has vowed to pursue the bill in 2011. The Ugandan publication Rolling Stone, meanwhile, endangered gay and lesbian activists in October by publishing their photographs, names and home addresses under the headline, "Hang Them." A ruling on the matter from a judge has been postponed until December 31.

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