From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-badash/what-americas-top-lgbt-leaders-think-obama-must-do-next_b_2094040.html
David Badash
11/09/2012
Barack Obama’s win of a second term was achieved not in spite of his support of the LGBT community but in part because of it. The question now is what President Obama should do next in his second term to move the civil rights of people in our community “forward.” I asked 10 of America’s top LGBT leaders what they are thinking. From GLAAD to HRC to GetEQUAL, leaders from some of the most active organizations, along with independent and grassroots activists and opinion shapers, shared with me their thoughts and plans for “Obama 2.0.”
The good news? A tremendous amount of expectations overlap, which translates into a more united LGBT front that hopefully can speak louder and work together even more effectively.
LGBT leaders want the president to sign an executive order banning employment discrimination against LGBT people working in the federal government and working for government contractors — the executive order President Obama refused to sign earlier this year. And they want ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, passed, and DOMA, the ban on federal recognition of same-sex marriages, repealed. Perhaps the biggest surprise I heard — albeit one absolutely on-target — is their repeated demand for a resolution of sequestration, the impending financial “fiscal cliff,” fears of which brought the stock market to its knees the day after Obama won reelection. And, finally, as I’ve been advocating for years, many want to build coalitions with other social justice movements.
Given the success of what our opponents, like NOM’s Maggie Gallagher, are now calling “the Obama electorate” (which is, in reality, just who America has become), coalition building seems perhaps our greatest opportunity for furthering the momentum this week’s elections created.
“The huge victories that the LGBT community achieved — on ballot initiatives, in the election of Tammy Baldwin to the Senate, in the increase of our LGBT caucus in the House, and in the reelection of a president who stands with us on marriage equality — must be seen in concert with the powerful statement that the American electorate has just made about women’s equality and women’s dignity,” Tobias Barrington Wolff, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, tells me.
Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-badash/what-americas-top-lgbt-leaders-think-obama-must-do-next_b_2094040.html
