Elliott, he’s a fan! “Jason Shaw – writes my socks off!”

I know this because a great number of my peers in this community are being terrifically loud about how upset, disrespected and betrayed they feel by the man who actively courted us from the beginning of his campaign nearly three years ago, President Barack Obama.

It’s important to note Obama didn’t conduct an especially effective courtship for most of that time.

To the extent that anyone can infer from evidence that is mostly anecdotal, the LGBT community supported his rival would-be nominee, Hillary Clinton, in numbers that were probably overwhelming, right up until the moment Clinton conceded at the Denver convention.

Once the nomination was official, though, our demographic dutifully moved its support, more or less monolithically, behind the man who promised to end “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” but held on to public opposition to gay marriage (and, for what little it is worth now, Clinton maintained the same position).

There were good signs early on. Obama spoke to us; he acknowledged us; he recognized our existence and our general right to exist.

(Of course, he also recognized our increasing skill for organization and growing economic power. He would have been foolish not to.)

He did better than threaten to merely “tolerate” us, as Sarah Palin did in her debate with Joe Biden; he promised that our fight would be his fight.

We believed him. We had to – what alternative did the opposition represent?

So we were as elated as anyone on Inauguration Day last year. I traveled to Washington, D.C. for the event and wrote about it in this space.

But I am a lifelong student of politics, and thus I am a realist, and I am skilled at the tempering of expectations.

I said the following, not in reference to prospects for LGBT citizens under Obama, but merely in reference to his coming presidency in general:

“Everyone accepts that over the course of the new administration, no one is going to get precisely his or her way. The nature of all things in government is compromise.

I am fine with that … I just want competence. Though we may each find ourselves disappointed in the direction of this policy or that, I believe we will at least find competence rather than indolence.”

That’s not asking much.

But the expectations of my LGBT peers were apparently much more demanding.

A year later, they haven’t gotten precisely their way, and many of them are furious.

To this, I have two responses.

Find out what they are at: The Daily Athenaeum!

“Is there going to be a transgender quota now in the Obama administration?” asked Peter LaBarbera, president of the anti-gay group Americans for Truth. “How far does this politics of gay and transgender activism go? Clearly this is an administration that is pandering to the gay lobby.”

“Simpson’s nomination was forwarded through to President Obama by a gay activist group, making it appear that this appointment of a male-to-female ‘transgender’ activist to a high level Commerce Department position to be payback to his far-left base for their political support,” a spokeswoman for Focus on the Family said in statement.

Matt Barber, associate dean at Jerry Fallwell’s Liberty University, said the appointment “boggles the mind” and said that while African-Americans might deserve special treatment, transgender people don’t.

“This isn’t like appointing an African-American in order to try to provide diversity and right some kind of discriminatory wrong,” he said. “This is about political correctness.”

More at HuffPo!

America is getting better at the individual level. The question is when will that translate into critical progress for the groups Parker and Obama come from.

Start with Parker. Houston became the largest yet in the United States to elect an openly gay mayor. Her sexual orientation meant less than her six prior citywide election victories for either city council or controller. The Houston Chronicle called her a grassroots “policy wonk’’ who “happened to be gay.’’

More at: Boston.com!

“That’s the kind of world I want to live in, where we’re not holding our own principles in judgement above someone or against someone.”

While supportive of most gay rights, Senator Obama does not support gay marriage.

“I support the notion that all people — gay or straight — deserve the same rights and responsibilities to assist their loved ones in times of emergency, deserve equal health insurance and other employment benefits currently extended to heterosexual married couples, and deserve the same property rights as anyone else,” he wrote in a response to questions put to him by the gay press.

Read the rest at pinknews.co.uk.

Read more of this blog at barackobama.com.

Barack Obama just gave what I would consider to be the best speech ever given. I agree whole heartedly with the Presidential candidate when he said, “America, we can not turn back!”

Read more at Gayagenda.com.