Obama on Special Interest Communities

Barack Obama spoke to Advocate Magazine recently, and made a point that I feel compelled to share. When being questioned about why he hadn't spoken to more GLBT press, as Hillary apparently has, he gave the subject a broader context:

I guess my point would be that the fact that I’m raising issues accordant to the LGBT community in a general audience rather than just treating you like a special interest that is sort of off in its own little box – that, I think, is more indicative of my commitment. Because ultimately what that shows is that I’m not afraid to advocate on your behalf outside of church, so to speak. It’s easy to preach to the choir; what I think is harder is to speak to a broader audience about why these issues are important to all Americans.

If you read the context in the article, you'll see that what he's saying is that GLBT issues, or African American, or any other special interest communities like them, are every day issues, that shape his entire outlook, and don't concern him only when he's speaking to interested press. He doesn't have to pander to them as an audience, because these issues affect everyone in one way or another, and he brings them up often.

I very much appreciated his candor and honesty when being asked the "tough" questions on topics such as gay marriage and employment discrimination. His goal is to pass these laws as they should be, but that in each of them, he will take the issues as far as he can and still have them pass, even if they're not yet perfect. He isn't coloring his words to make them believe what they want to hear, and he's presenting his reasoning in a well-thought manner.

Later in the article he talks about how to have the difficult discussions:

I tell you what -- my campaign is premised on trying to reach as many constituencies as possible and to go into as many places as possible, and sometimes that creates discomfort or turbulence. This goes back to your first question. If you’re segmenting your base into neat categories and constituency groups and you never try to bring them together and you just speak to them individually -- so I keep the African-Americans neatly over here and the church folks neatly over there and the LGBT community neatly over there -- then these kinds of issues don’t arise.

The flip side of it is, you never create the opportunity for people to have a conversation and to lift some of these issues up and to talk about them and to struggle with them, and our campaign is built around the idea that we should all be talking. And that creates some discomfort because people discover, gosh, within the Democratic Party or within Barack Obama’s campaign or within whatever sets of constituencies there are going to be some different points of view that might even be offensive to some folks. That’s not unique to this issue.

And this is how he always is when talking about the difficult issues. Barack Obama will be a wonderful change from the lying bastard election stealing bigoted racist asshole currently occupying the White House.

Children's Rights?

I read this letter to the editor in Tuesday's Salt Lake Tribune:

In her Oct. 18 column, "Utah takes small, slow steps on gays," Rebecca Walsh asserts that the Utah Supreme Court recently denied a "lesbian mother's request for visitation with the daughter she had helped raise from birth."

As one of the lawyers who assisted with this case, I can state that this assertion is incorrect. The daughter in question had no biological, adoptive or legal link to the woman requesting visitation with the child. In fact, she was not the "mother," but at the time of the girl's birth, was a live-in partner with the girl's actual and biological mother.

If you take that rationale to its logical conclusion, a live-in boyfriend, who may have only known a child for seven months or so, could claim to be a "parent" and demand visitation. Once you start extending visitation rights to individuals who have no biological, adoptive or legal link to a child, you open up a Pandora's box of issues that will ultimately destroy the rights of biological or adoptive parents.

The issue was not denial of visitation to an "aggrieved parent," but instead was sleight of hand to advance an agenda that seeks to redefine the family until it has been reduced to meaninglessness.

Joe Infranco
Senior legal counsel
Alliance Defense Fund
Scottsdale, Ariz.

After reading it, I was frustrated as all hell. So, I decided to write my own letter to the editor, and it was published in today's paper.

Joe Infranco (Forum, Nov. 6) wrote about parent custody. I believe that denying equal rights to same-sex relationships is exactly where the Pandora's box comes from. If two women could choose to legally define their relationship, then the nonbiological mother would have either had the rights of a parent, or those of a live-in boyfriend.

By denying same-sex partner rights, the question of what makes a parent must be raised, or equal rights given to same-sex partners in all areas regarding relationships.

People, such as Mr. Infranco, who believe that this pursuit "seeks to redefine the family until it has been reduced to meaninglessness," must not understand what a family is. Families provide children a safe place to grow, learn and explore. Until they see this, they condemn children to having that safe place ripped out from under them when they are told that "Mommy isn't Mommy," and these children may grow up without understanding how to provide loving families for their own children.

Mr. Infranco would better give meaning to family if he would put the children ahead of his own intolerance.

Misty Fowler
Salt Lake City

The article by Rebecca Walsh is here.