Obama Talks About Learning About Gay Folk At Occidental College

In an excusive interview with The Advocate newsmagazine presidential candidate Barack Obama mentions learning about gay people by having a close friendship with an openly gay college professor at Occidental College!

Here are the excerpts:

Q: What event or person has most affected your perceptions of or
relationship to the LGBT community?

Well, it starts with my mom, who just always instilled in me a belief that everybody's of equal worth and a strong sense of empathy -- that you try to see people through their eyes, stand in their shoes. So I think that applies to how I see all people.

Somebody else who influenced me, I actually had a professor at Occidental -- now, this is embarrassing because I might screw up his last name -- Lawrence Golden, I think it was. He was a wonderful guy. He was the first openly gay professor that I had ever come in contact with, or openly gay person of authority that I had come in contact with. And he was just a terrific guy. He wasn't proselytizing all the time, but just his comfort in his own skin and the friendship we developed helped to educate me on a number of these issues.

Q: Did you have a chance to ask him about being gay?

I'm sure we did, but as I said, he was really comfortable in his own skin, and the relationship was a strong friendship and I never felt as if I had to get over any mental hurdles to be close to him or to learn from him. He's probably somebody who had a strong influence.

Q: How old were you then?

Eighteen ... 19. It does remind me, though, I remember in my first two years of college that was when I first saw students who were self-identified gay and lesbian come out and start organizing around gay issues, so that would have been in 1979 and '80. I think what's encouraging is just to see how much progress has been made in such a relatively short period of time.

The professor's name was actually Lawrence Goldyn, and an openly gay Occidenta alum and blogger named bernalman over Daily Kos wrote a diary discussing Prof. Goldyn and the gay climate on campus in the late 1970s.

As a gay man who went to Occidental with Obama, it was great to hear Obama mention that he was mentored on LGBT rights by Prof. Lawrence Goldyn. Goldyn was one of the few out professors at Oxy back then-- not only out, but Goldyn had written his doctoral thesis on homophobia in the legal system.

Back in the late '70's and early '80's, before the era of high school gay-straight alliances, one started college having never heard anything about homosexuality or gender identity in school. Back then at Oxy, posters for gay awareness week and for support group meetings would be defaced and torn down. A gay student was beaten in his dormitory. It was uncommon for a straight student to profess any interest in LGBT issues. Yet in my first year at Oxy, in 1978, some straight students wore buttons opposing the Briggs Initiative. And out gay and lesbian professors began educating students like Obama.

Hat tip to openly gay Professor Rodney Hoffman at Occidental Colllege for altering me to the Oxy-specific aspects of Obama's interview on LGBT issues with The Advocate. As the current openly gay head of the Mathematics Deartment at Occidenta College this is an interesting way to start the week!