Top Gay Explains Obama Actions On LGBT Issues

Lesbian reporter Kerry Eleveld interviewed OPM Director John Berry yesterday at an LGBT pride festival in Washington, D.C. and he gave this extended answer on behalf of the White House:

We have four broad legislative goals that we want to accomplish and legislation is one of these things where you've got to move when the opportunity strikes, so I'm going to list them in an order but it's not necessarily going to go one, two, three, four. Obviously, I think the first opportunity is hate crimes and we're hopeful that we can get that passed this week. We're going to try, but if not, we're going to keep at it until we get it passed. The second one ENDA, we want to secure that passage of ENDA, and third is we want to repeal legislatively "don't ask don't tell," and fourth, we want to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.

Now, I'm not going to pledge -- and nor is the president -- that this is going to be done by some certain date.

He also went on to discuss the controversy du jour, the DOJ brief defending DOMA:

Finally, I want to talk to you about the DOMA brief. Our strongest argument against “don’t ask, don’t tell” is that we stand with the truth. And that we, more than anyone, know the cost of lying and the terrible pain it invokes.

This president took a solemn oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and he does not get to decide and choose which laws he enforces. He has to enforce the laws that have been enacted appropriately and that he has inherited. It would be wrong for me or any of our community to advise him to lie or to shirk his responsibility. He’s doing his job. He has made clear that he stands for the repeal of DOMA. It will be part of this administration’s agenda to accomplish that act. We ought not waste energy and angst attacking him when we should be focusing the energy and effort on getting 218 votes in the house and 60 votes in the Senate, and that’s where we ought to target the energy and the strength of this community and this president is with us, this is our agenda and it’s his agenda.

I find it bizarre that the Obama White House thinks that it doesn't have the votes to pass legislation (DADT repeal and trans-inclusive ENDA) which has huge popular support.

However, what this John Berry interview reveals is that the White House strongly needs to hear the appeal by former Clinton adviser that they need to appoint a senior White House aide to deal with LGBT issues. It's not John Berry's job to be the mouthpiece for the Obama administration simply because he's the highest ranked openly gay Obama appointee. Berry is the head of the agency which manages the 1.9 million strong federal workforce. Someone else should be tasked with interfacing with "senior Administration officials" when LGBT issues arise.