Gays and lesbians are still struggling for acceptance and equal rights in the United States, and President Obama has told them “I’m here with you in that fight.”
The president spoke to 3000 people at a black-tie dinner of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington October 10, and said he would end the U.S. military’s “don’t ask don’t tell” policy, which has allowed gays to serve their country only if they can keep their sexual orientation secret. He also said he expects Congress to pass legislation extending the definition of a hate crime to include violence based on sexual orientation so he can sign it into law. Members of Congress are also working to pass an employee non-discrimination bill that would prohibit a worker from being fired simply for being gay.
Obama compared the struggle for gay rights to the African-American Civil Rights movement, and said “we cannot — and we will not — put aside issues of basic equality,” despite the many other urgent challenges facing today’s United States.
“My expectation is that when you look back on these years, you will see a time in which we put a stop to discrimination against gays and lesbians,” Obama said. “You will see a time in which we as a nation finally recognize relationships between two men or two women as just as real and admirable as relationships between a man and a woman.”
What is the status of gays and lesbians in your country? Is sexual orientation an issue of public debate, a non-issue, or something that cannot be freely discussed?
Comments (24)
e.r estherberg
Location: new york usa
13 October 2009 at 18:03 EDT
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I am jewish and gay. My mother and father do not like my lifestyle and all my gay friends but I do not care what others think of me. It’s God who is the real judge.
so please all you anti gay and christans out their need to SHUT UP !!!
ma. tiara b. morada
Location: philippines
15 October 2009 at 01:16 EDT
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nothing wrong with u being gay.u r right God is the ultimate judge.and u also one of His created being…person like u is fun friend to be with.as long as u believe in God,be happy!
monte smith
19 October 2009 at 23:38 EDT
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No, nothing wrong unless you want to reproduce.
tahara jones
29 October 2009 at 10:25 EDT
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even that today is not a problem reproduction can be easily happen weather your a gay or lesbian
Jitendra Kaushal
13 October 2009 at 19:10 EDT
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President Obama is out to placate splinter groups of the present by stepping down from the pedestal of rectitude and probity, focussed on the future and posterity. A streak described by an earlier American politician as permissiveness of effete snobs.
Expediency is not a dependable tool of morale boosting. By equating gays with Luther Kings followers Obama did not heap laurels on his role model and mentor.
Heavenman
14 October 2009 at 09:01 EDT
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Lesbian is a person.
Person is special.
A person cannot evaluate a person.
A person isn’t the object for a person to evaluate.
A person is everybody equal.
We are the only.
This is the words that Jesus Christ does.
Heaven was made from you, and in the Heaven lesbian made lesbian.
Heaven loves all lives.
Do not decide on the world by your garbage knowledges.
All lives are equal, and All lives are am special.
It is comedy that the President judges man.
The Obama President isn’t God.
The Obama President is a person like a lesbian.
—————————–
my blog is
http://www.bubi.com
Heavenman
14 October 2009 at 09:08 EDT
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Heaven loves you and a lesbian.
The reason is as Heaven loves all lives.
All lives are what Heaven created.
ma. tiara b. morada
Location: philippines
15 October 2009 at 01:10 EDT
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i have nothing against gays and lesbians.they are also created by God.i just cant understand why society cant accept them…gays are fun to be friends.as long as they dont offend else’s lives,why reject them?
Tom Kalahand
Location: san maria ca usa
15 October 2009 at 08:54 EDT
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it is only these right wings who hate
gays and others. but you are right tiara
everyone needs to respect each other. it does not matter who you are or where you come from.
God bless us all on earth !!!
monte smith
19 October 2009 at 23:44 EDT
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Wrong, it does matter who you are if your purpose is to undermine traditional family values. It does matter where you come from if your mission is to destroy the infadels. How nice for Obama to observe diwali or whatever in the white house. The left wingers and aclu would freak out if he wanted to observe celebrate the resurection of Christ. Diversity my aunt fanny. The muslims want to take this country and now they have thier leader in place.
monte smith
19 October 2009 at 23:46 EDT
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God created mankind. Satan creates sin to destroy God’s creation by having them think they were created that way. What a clever deception.
r
15 October 2009 at 06:32 EDT
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It is good that Obama is on course to absorb Human Rights Campaign under the shadow of Vital Rights that are private in privacy. Disallowing legal judgment on it respecting lower nature that is endless in breeding for self recovery with independence is what one gets out of it as emerging.
On the above, I would quote: “ when the vital of America had exploded a nuclear device on the populated territory of earth that was experience to reckon then - that now stands with the concept of total disarmament at both the vital as well as the human level of nature through America for all. “Had that not happened, the world would not have been on course to retrace the step of it with concern on it for disarmament”?
? - Lesbians and gays is not a big issue and that is why he (Obama) had to say “I am here with you in that fight”.
The words spoken carry different meaning for different classes of people environmentally based – like no body can say I have understood bible and its teaching or have understood any other sacred book and its teachings to completeness?
? – the point that is under emphasis is that the Teacher of all is above the Nature and Nature is complex both in its private terms of lower nature for life and in legal terms of its acceptance or rejection that imperfectly holds for the conditioned growing morals under it. Well, if the past can go unchecked without biological discrimination of its true nature on the negative and positive of life being the giving of progeny whose immediate god like control is the atmosphere of earth for life and under that if gays together on the one hand as group are reckoned as positive indulging with the emotions of the negative artificially, that the atmosphere of earth of its exposed energy state to Supra Cosmos takes as un natural of nature in biological terms and the same thing applies to the group of lesbians on it.
Nothing I would say “as abnormal according to the lower nature of the Nature that is in play for the Mother of all Mothers as seed”. Here, I would come in to say that the language of human intellect spoken is also energy where right or wrong do not come into the picture because it is absorbed by the energy of the atmosphere of life in consciousness that in Supra cosmic terms is held for the Supra Cosmos and that is where, Unconscious state of life in its relation to the CONSCIOUNESS of life comes into the picture? – I had to say this with a question mark for life because there is the Ultimate good that stands over both the relative good or the relative bad of life that keeps striking as the hammer does to the wood?
? – Therefore, under relative governance, relative good or relative bad do present problems qualifying deeds – so, one would note “that is why he (Obama) has come to express on the legislation ending discrimination against gays and lesbians”. The reason for that is, “no body can remain complete on the subject through governance under governance for governance either legally or in private terms for life”.
Life through governance can only compartmentalize societies under the human stamp of life’s fire because vital in essence also belongs to that human stamp of life’s fire that also has under it the animal and its species running down the line where the basic flowers and plants as green full of colors also come in to rejuvenate minds on the “Whole” of biological existence of its material animal human/ human form that we all unmistakably call as the true existence of God where as it is not entirely so where we materially see compartmentalized because in that also comes the man made gross of harvest of its material consciousness of lower nature that remains subjected to transcendence.
God or Allah has provided its Seed for the human in the Spiritual of its Consciousness for correction with self realization on those states because that Seed is certainly not in those states. So why sacredness of Godhead should be sighted or quoted on it where pragmatism is the rule of the game for the convenience of the gross of it’s already built material wave length of recognition that is not of either Christ or God? Have I a right to say that and my answer to it would be no and yet I have said it why? – Because those reading this would have nothing to lose but the gain of it would certainly stand in my name in Supra Cosmic terms as Sri Gnash for life. That’s all to end this communication as comment.
Jitendra Kaushal
15 October 2009 at 10:45 EDT
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Hullo r
Only if you used fewer words and more paragraphs people like me with short attention span could better savor your thoughts.
r
15 October 2009 at 11:26 EDT
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Doesn’t matter just bear - I am not super human in language like you.
Jitendra Kaushal
16 October 2009 at 19:52 EDT
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Brevity is not a linguistic skill, it is clarity of thought and the ability to rein in one’s ego, constantly egging one on to pontificate.
My suggestion underscored my desire to grasp your thoughts for you often refer to things divine. If I caused you any pain I can only apologise.
Don’t we communicate to be understood by the listener or the reader? If so, then the limitations of the recipient of our message ought to be kept in mind.
Manuel Gerberl
Location: new mexico usa
15 October 2009 at 15:04 EDT
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this person has the right to write what he/she feels like even if it is long.
you do not worry about him/her. OK !!!
r
15 October 2009 at 23:06 EDT
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Thanks - May God be with you for candles to light.
monte smith
19 October 2009 at 23:48 EDT
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What kind of drugs do you have to take to come up this this much drivel. It reads like the koran and makes just about as much sense. NONE
Edward Grant
Location: Hollywood South Carolina
15 October 2009 at 14:45 EDT
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I just love my President and his wife, and reading about him and his feeling about mankind meaning all races brings tears to my eyes. I thank the holy father for you and hopes that his protection will always be with you my president: I have a mother name margert and she is 94 years old and can remember every thing from her child hood,to this day, everything about salvery. we are a poor family, but i would like my mommy to see you in person while she is still living, mom have 99 grands and great grands living. I am her son and I am 71, my oldest sister is 78, my oldest brother is 76 and we are all still living, here in hollywood. this is something my mother have never had and that is a trip to see our first black president, she and all of us came up through that error of hard time, because I as a little boy 6 and 7 years old used to follow mommy to the beans firlds to pick beans for 50 cents a bushel basket she use to pick 8 10 ten basket a day in bemming hot sun so her 13 children could eat. if there is anyway you could let my mommy and my sister and me visit the white house call me so i can surpise my mother. call me at XXX. if I had the money to bring mommy I would.
Stephen Kaufman
America.gov Staff
15 October 2009 at 15:21 EDT
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Hi Edward,
Thanks for writing and sharing some of your background!
I’m posting this for you and for anyone else who might want to visit the White House. I got this information from http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/tours_and_events/.
“Public tours of the White House are available. Requests must be submitted through one’s Member of Congress and are accepted up to six months in advance. These self-guided tours are available from 7:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 7:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Fridays, and 7:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Saturdays (excluding federal holidays). Tour hours will be extended when possible based on the official White House schedule. Tours are scheduled on a first come, first served basis. Requests can be submitted up to six months in advance and no less than 30 days in advance. You are encouraged to submit your request as early as possible since a limited number of tours are available. All White House tours are free of charge. For the most current tour information, please call the 24-hour line at 202-456-7041. Please note that White House tours may be subject to last minute cancellation.
“If you wish to visit the White House and are a citizen of a foreign country, please contact your embassy in Washington, DC for assistance in submitting a tour request.”
Hope this helps. You can write your representative and both of your senators, and hopefully one of them will be able to get you on a future tour.
Steve
Penny May
Location: phoenix arizona
15 October 2009 at 17:53 EDT
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it is good what our presdient is doing.
It’s stupid people like Glenn beck who
hate jews and gays and other races.
these lowlife like glenn beck will bring america down.
Renny
Location: Israel
17 October 2009 at 03:23 EDT
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Mr. Obama I agree 100% with you regarding working together but as long as people are ruled by religion, especially muslims wanting Shar’a law to rule the world, living in peace seems unreal. If you can persuade the muslim world to seperate religion from politics, which by the way we are trying to do in Israel unsuccessfully so far, there won’t be any democracy not equality. Therefore you have to look for another way to bring people together.
Jitendra Kaushal
17 October 2009 at 21:07 EDT
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How true. Only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches goes an old saying. Only if Benjamin’s clarity of thought could come to other world leaders.
Kaylee Larson
Location: Chicago, IL
15 November 2009 at 03:58 EST
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All right, folks. LGBTS and supporters, the time is right. The atmosphere is ripe. The Obama administration is doing their part, piece by piece, week by week.
Now it’s our turn to really step things up and do our part by showing our appreciation for these moves. It’s time we take to the streets, organize and show the world that we are deserving of these rights more than ever. It’s time to mobilize and get our butts in gear and do something monumental.
March.
Go door to door.
Make phone calls.
Show people that we can work as hard as we need to for what we want, what we need, and for what we deserve.
What are we waiting for??
If you’re seeking LGBT-related support, here are some helpful lesbian resources.