Obama's First 100 Days -- the Gay Perspective: Rainbow High

The Washington Blade (DC's weekly gay newspaper) headline this weekend is:

"High Marks for the President's First 100 Days"

The WashBlade asserts that "many activists" are "awarding President Obama high marks for his work in leading the country and addressing LGBT issues during his first 100 days."

The "activists" in question are leaders from HRC and the NGLTF.

Joe Solmonese lead activist of the Democrats HRC, would have praised Obama for moving on action items for the first 100 days his group submitted during the transition, including developing a plan to roll back Don't Ask Don't Tell. If Obama had actually moved on them (he hasn't). How Solmonese can give the administration"high marks" for not doing anything his organization asked him too seems a bit of a stretch. "Heckuva job, Brownie," anyone? Oh -- "high marks" Joe did praise Obama for appointing gay people to high positions. Okay, so Obama did the same thing my boss did -- he hired some gay folk.

I'm an Obama man and I give him high marks for his first 100 days. But not on gay issues. There his record is woefully incomplete. I'm willing to give him time -- and he's had a lot of things to deal with -- but history and our gay rights organization's tendency to think they're front groups for the Democrats instead of civil rights activist organizations makes me nervous. Their reaction to his inaction reinforces my nervousness. I think a more realistic analysis of his record on gay issues is 0. Here's the chart to prove it.

But let's look at the Gay Republican analysis of the first 100 days.

Jimmy LaSalvia, who is executive director of GOProud, a new gay Republican group, said, according to the Blade:

Obama has been a "disappointment" in the White House and gave him a "d-" for work on LGBT issues.

Right. Because you know that if the GOP was in control, DOMA and DADT would have been repealed long before now.

Jimmy, how would you rate Michael Steele's moderation of the Republican Party? How would you grade the GOP's ability to see that aligning itself with Evangelicals makes it a regional Party unattractive to moderate and younger voters in the 160 some days since the 2008 election. How is your attacking the President helping you move the GOP to a more libertarian position?

My wish list?

Gay "activists" who don't turn into apologists for disappointing Democratic politicians and Gay Republicans who understand their real problem is Evangelical base of support in the GOP. In this dream world Democrats would be held accountable for their pro-gay promises from the left -- and anti-gay opposition from the right would be weakened.