I was asked by the LGBT paper in my home state of North Carolina, Q-Notes, to do a brief piece on why I am now supporting Barack Obama for Presidnet, in preparation for next week’s primary: the below is also published at http://insidesource.q-notes.com/2008/04/30/carolina-leaders-speak-raine-cole-kevin-jennings/#more-37:
Like a record 81% of my fellow Americans, I believe our country is seriously on the wrong track. I believe we need a real leader, not just a politician, to turn things around. That’s why I am supporting Barack Obama for President.
The difference between a politician and a leader is clear. Let’s take an example of where politicians take you. In 1992 I, like many LGBT Americans, was thrilled by Presidential candidate Bill Clinton’s pledge to lift the ban on gays in the military. By mid-1993, my hopes were crushed when, swaying with the polls and the political winds, President Clinton signed a revised form of that ban called “don’t ask don’t tell” into law. That’s what a politician does: they tell you what you want to hear and then sell you down the river as soon as the going gets tough.
A leader tells you the truth even if it isn’t popular. In 2003, when politicians like Hillary Clinton were cravenly voting to approve Bush’s morally and strategically disastrous war on Iraq, Barack Obama stood tall and said that this war was wrong. On Martin Luther King Day in 2008, when he was invited to be the speaker at Rev. King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Barack Obama explicitly addressed LGBT rights in an address to an overwhelming straight audience, saying:
“For most of this country’s history, we in the African-American community have been at the receiving end of man’s inhumanity to man… And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean… We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity.”
It’s one thing to go to an HRC dinner and pledge your support for LGBT rights; it’s quite another to do it in a “straight” setting like Ebeneezer Baptist Church. But that’s what makes Obama different. It’s what makes him a leader, not just a politician.
I hope the voters in my home state will make the right choice and vote for a real leader, Barack Obama, on May 6.