Washington, D.C. can feel like a fortress. Thick, imposing, off-white buildings line downtown streets, all the same serious height between seven and 15 stories to conform with municipal height restrictions. There are airport-like security lines everywhere: at the Capitol, government office buildings, and even museums and tourist attractions.
Nowhere is security tighter than the White House, where snipers keep watch on the roof. But as I lined up to gain entrance to the President’s LGBT Pride Reception last Thursday, the four-step security process including sniffing dogs felt anything but oppressive. When a late afternoon thunderstorm caught many of us without an umbrella, we set our hair drama aside and erupted with spontaneous joy.
We were headed into the White House, baby, at the invitation of a President whose support now feels as unconditional as a mother’s love.
I was the fortunate guest of Stuart Milk, who has been a frequent visitor to the Obama White House since he accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom on behalf of his Uncle Harvey in 2009. Not me as tourist or invited guest. So I worried that the teal shirt and tie I’d chosen to wear might be outside bounds. I need not have. Those wearing yellow, pink, lime green and rainbow-colored suits only contributed to the festive mood.
As more than 300 of us waited for the President to appear in the East Room cell phones set on camera mode I overheard a Washington insider say that she felt truly welcome at the White House, for the first time.
Since he came out for same-sex marriage, I’m not doing a slow mini-burn anymore, she said. It’s like a weight has been lifted or something.
And when the President appeared, with a beaming Vice President Biden at his side, he offered the verbal equivalent of a group hug.
From Minnesota to Maryland, from the United States Senate to the NBA, it’s clear we’ve reached a turning point. We’ve become not just more accepting, we’ve become more loving as a country and as a people, Obama said. We truly are created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.
His administration’s support of our community was reinforced earlier that day at a three-hour LGBT Pride Month Briefing at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. To ensure unrestricted communication, the meeting was off-limits to the press. But administration officials, including Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, addressed topics ranging from HIV/AIDS and immigration policy to getting a job with the federal government. Support was unequivocal. Many of the high-level speakers were gay themselves.
And that was my take away from this trip to the nation’s capital. Whether reflecting popular opinion or leading it, this administration and Democrats in general now feel free to support us without doing an offensive political cost/benefit analysis first. We’re equal citizens. Like our peers, anything that makes us more secure and hence more productive is to the good.
It’s as simple as that, and always should’ve been.
This unequivocal support was reinforced on Friday, over lunch with Rep. Alan Grayson at the Capitol Building. The firebrand Congressman had just made a rousing speech on the House Floor about the NSA surveillance program (As American as apply-spy) that’s become a YouTube sensation. But he was thoughtful when asked about LGBT equality and his philosophy of government.
It’s been co-opted by the Marines, but I like the phrase Be all that you can be because that’s what I believe government should do, it should help people be all that they can be, Grayson said. And that includes removing impediments to employment, health care, marriage, parenting all the things that matter. (The full interview, touching and provocative, will appear in a later issue.)
The same Friday, the White House announced the nominations of James Costos as Ambassador to Spain, Rufus Gifford as Ambassador to Denmark, and Daniel Baer as Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). If all three are confirmed, they would become the fourth, fifth and sixth openly-LGBT people to serve as U.S. Ambassadors.
Contrast that with pronouncements by Marco Rubio, made the same day, reacting to rumors that Democrats may seek rights for same-sex couples in a pending immigration bill.
This bill has in it something that gives gay couples immigration rights and so forth, it kills the bill, said the Senator from Florida, a potential GOP presidential candidate. I’m done. I’m off it.
In his most generous comments about LGBT equality to date, Rubio has said, The debate is about what society should tolerate.
Not at the LGBT Reception at the White House. Not for President Obama.
I hope that when we gather here next year, and the year after that, we’ll be able to say that together we made our fellow citizens a little more free. We’ve made this country a little more equal. We’ve made our world a little more full of love.
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