Brody's Notes... President Obama Addresses White House LGBT Pride Reception

By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) June 23 | President Barack Obama with Vice-President Joe Biden at his side, hosted the second LGBT Pride Month reception of his administration in the East Room of the White House yesterday evening. In his speech to the assembled crowd of LGBT activists, lobbyists, and supporters, the President told them that: 

"We've got a lot of hard work that we still have to do, but we can already point to extraordinary progress that we've made over the past year on behalf of Americans who are gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgender."

The Administration has come under heavy criticism in recent weeks over a perceived lack of its being proactive in regards toward a full repeal of the Defence Department's Don't Ask-Don't Tell' policy by Gay activists. 

The President also reminded the crowd that he has issued an executive order extending;

"...as many partnership benefits to gay and lesbian federal employees as possible under current law" and said he would work for legislation to guarantee gay federal employees "the exact same benefits as straight employees -- including access to health insurance and retirement plans."

He noted that he has also ordered U. S. Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to implement changes in visitation policies for LGBT Americans ahead of the proposed rules that the Department of Health and Human Services issued to most U.S. hospitals to allow visitation rights for partners of gays and lesbians. 

The Advocate's Senior White House correspondent, Kerry Eleveld, noted in her piece last night at Advocate.com that the larger concerns like repealing the Defense of Marriage Act and passing the Employment Nondiscrimination Act to protect gay and transgender workers appear to have fallen off the map. Ending “don’t ask, don’t tell” is in process but the White House was a reluctant player in lobbying legislators for passage. Richard Socarides, former LGBT adviser to President Bill Clinton, isn’t impressed.

“Despite a steady trickle of these small scale positive steps, Obama shows no willingness to address our key issues,” said Socarides, who did not attend the event. “Marriage equality and employment anti-discrimination legislation are nowhere on the White House radar, while they willingly defer to the military on ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’” 

Eleveld wrote that;

"While many activists echo Keenan’s and Socarides’ thirst for leadership on the larger issues, Fred Sainz, vice president of communications for the Human Rights Campaign said the Obama administration is making progress."

“For those that have been denied their equality for decades change will never come soon enough,” said Sainz, who also was not at the reception. “But sixteen months into this administration, I think President Obama has a credible level of accomplishment on behalf on LGBT people."