Nov 07, 2008  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR  | COMMENTS     

Gay rights leaders called Tuesday’s election of Dem-ocrat Barack Obama as the nation’s 44th president a development of historic proportions for the advancement of gay and transgender civil rights.

Activists noted that gays played an unprecedented role in the Obama campaign, providing thousands of volunteers in states and towns across the country in an effort to help elect a candidate they believe to be the most gay-supportive presidential nominee in U.S. history.

“I think the election of Barack Obama and what will potentially be the makeup of the House and the Senate puts us in a position to achieve more in the next four years than we have in the last 40,” said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign.

“I think this is a milestone moment in American history and a milestone moment for the GLBT community,” Solmonese said.

H. Alexander Robinson, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, which advocates on behalf of black gays, called Obama’s election an “extraordinary development” for the black gay community as well as for all black Americans.

“There’s been an outpouring of excitement, emotions and real optimism from many of our members and allied organizations that we work with,” Robinson said. “This really marks a significant sea change, and I believe that we see in this an opportunity to have a more integrated conversation about our rights.”

Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, expressed a sentiment shared by many gay and transgender leaders when she said gay groups would join Obama in working on ways to address the current economic crisis and other pressing national issues along with efforts to address civil rights for gay people.

“Like all people in America, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are concerned with how the economic downturn will impact our families,” she said. “Like all people in America, we are worried about access to affordable health care.”

Carey called Obama’s election “the dawn of a new political era” in the country and said her organization would work closely with the new administration in moving gay and transgender rights initiatives.

She and other gay leaders, including Solmonese, noted that a Republican-controlled Congress blocked all pending gay rights legislation during President Bush’s first term and the first half of his second term.

Although Democrats gained control of Congress in January 2007, activists have said threats by Bush to veto gay rights bills impeded efforts to pass the legislation.

Gay U.S. Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) said that Obama’s election as president and the election of more gay-supportive Democrats to the House and Senate would open the way for congressional action on at least two important gay rights bills in the early part of Obama’s first term.

Both said a bill that would authorize federal officials to prosecute anti-gay hate crimes would likely emerge as the first gay rights measure to come up, possibly in 2009.

The two said the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which calls for banning employment discrimination against gays and transgender people, would likely be taken up next.

But Frank and Baldwin said they would leave it up to Obama to determine the best timetable for moving ahead with the two bills and other gay rights measures.

Among the other gay-related measures that have stalled in Congress and have Obama’s strong support are a bill to provide domestic partnership benefits to partners of gay federal employees and legislation to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Obama also has expressed support for repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage under federal law as the exclusive union of one man and one woman. The law also allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.

Another stalled bill deemed important by gay leaders calls for providing the same immigration rights to foreign nationals who are the domestic partners of U.S. citizens.

Under current immigration law, foreign nationals who marry heterosexual U.S. citizens have the right to become permanent U.S. residents and citizens, while same-sex partners who are foreign nationals are not recognized as spouses and refused similar immigration privileges.

Obama spoke in favor of all of these bills during his campaign for president and promised to push hard for their enactment by Congress.

But some gays involved with legislative efforts during the administration of President Clinton cautioned that gay groups should not demand that the more controversial measures be moved forward until the new Obama administration and gay advocacy groups put together a carefully crafted strategy to move those bills through the House and Senate.

Some pointed to what they called a “worst-case scenario” ...