COMMENTARY: Can advisers be fierce advocates on LGBT issues without being LGBT? White House policy chief Melody Barnes argued they could when asked about the lack of a senior LGBT official in Obama's inner circle.
Senior White House adviser Melody Barnes was in the unenviable position Thursday of fielding questions from eight LGBT reporters and bloggers — a first-of-its-kind briefing 18 months into an administration whose commander in chief hasn’t given a single interview to an LGBT outlet nor taken a single question from one.
Yesterday I attempted to
squeeze the news from the meeting (other than the fact that it happened), which involved no new policy announcements and was essentially a reiteration of things most people who have been following LGBT concerns closely probably already know.
But one issue that surfaced several different ways in questions asked by Chris Geidner of
Metro Weekly, Pam Spaulding of Pam’s House Blend, and Joe Sudbay of AmericaBlog was why there isn’t a high-level LGBT adviser somewhere in Obama’s inner circle — either someone who is LGBT and has direct access to the president or someone who has direct access and is specifically responsible for advocating on behalf of LGBT people.
Barnes, who is as knowledgeable about LGBT policy as any one of us could hope and who has worked on gay issues for over a decade (including eight years in Sen. Ted Kennedy’s office) and who — I would hazard to guess — is probably the strongest advocate for LGBT causes in Obama’s cohort of senior advisers, gave a very thoughtful answer. It’s an answer that I don’t entirely agree with but that's worthy of debate, and so, at the risk of boring readers, I am going to run a good chunk of her answer before playing devil’s advocate.
Melody Barnes: “I think that there are a number of very senior members of this administration, whether it be Rahm [Emanuel] or Valerie [Jarrett] or me or Jim [Messina] that are not gay or lesbian for whom these issues are important and [who] have conversations and provide advice to the president on these issues. And I think that it is helpful and important to have people — and before you react to this I want to follow this up — who are not gay or lesbian or transgender who care about these issues and are advocating for them in the White House.
“It was Rahm who was pushing the hospital visitation piece. The chief of staff to the president went to the Oval Office and said, ‘I think that this is something important that we need to do.’
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