Outside, we paused so I could snap a shot of my Joe holding up the president’s proclamation of “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month” with the People’s House behind him.Īnd then we woke up Sunday morning to the horrific news. So when my husband and I left the White House, we felt a glow of pride and wonderment. And discrimination, it’s so last century.” Obama spoke briefly and beautifully about the folks who “never imagined we’d come this far - maybe even some in this room,” and about the upcoming generation - “Malia’s, Sasha’s generation instinctively know people are people and families are families. It is especially appropriate that the greatest champion we have ever had in the White House is a black American, because the success of the gay liberation movement flowed from our emulation of the fierce bravery of the nonviolent civil rights movement. Sean Patrick Maloney of New York and former senator Harris Wofford of Pennsylvania, as well as powerful allies, such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California.Īnd then there was the African American president who has done vastly more for America’s LGBT citizens than all of his predecessors put together.
There too were openly gay legislators, such as Rep. They were referring to the executive order signed by Dwight Eisenhower in 1953 that prohibited the federal government and all of its contractors from employing anyone who was known to be gay - a policy backed even by the American Civil Liberties Union in the 1950s.įive decades later, we had the run of the second floor of the White House with champagne and smoked salmon and the company of Eric Fanning, the openly gay secretary of the Army. Twelve picketers led by Washington gay leaders Jack Nichols and Frank Kameny startled bystanders with handwritten signs reading “15 Million Homosexuals Protest Federal Treatment.” Indeed, Thursday’s White House celebration came 51 years after Washington saw the very first people ever to identify themselves as gay outside the White House. On days like this, it is especially important to remember that we are a battle-hardened movement. Then he fired into a Village bar and two other locations, killing two and wounding six. In November 1980, a former New York City transit police officer stole an Uzi and three other weapons. On the eve of that epidemic, a similar though much smaller shooting spree sent a wave of fear through Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, quite like the one felt in Orlando early Sunday.