President Barack Obama can add another achievement to his long list after he has been labelled “ally of the year” and featured on the cover of Out magazine.
In a recent interview with the magazine, Obama gave praise to the first influential gay person in his life and openly discussed his views on the LGBT community.
Obama was initially opposed to the legalization of same-sex marriage and maintained that the sanctity of marriage should be reserved solely for a man and a woman. However on the 9th May 2012 Obama publicly made the decision to support gay rights, reflecting the changes that had occurred within society over the course of a few years.
Since that moment, what Out magazine describes as “extraordinary change” has been made to the lives of the LGBT community. With Obama’s support same-sex marriage has gone from being legal in just two states to being legal nationwide, a huge step in obtaining equality for the LGBT community.
Obama spoke about his change of heart being down to a “strong belief that every person is of equal worth.”
He told Out magazine:
“One of the reasons I got involved in politics was to help deliver on our promise that we’re all created equal, and that no one should be excluded from the American dream just because of who they are.”
He also gave high praise to an old college professor of his, Dr. Lawrence Goldyn, for influencing the way that he thinks about many LGBT issues. According to Obama, Goldyn went “out of his way” to support and advise the LGBT community at the college, something that was incredibly rare at that time and “took a lot of courage, a lot of confidence in who you are and what you stand for.”
When asked whether he thought there was a generational difference in accepting homosexuality as normal, Obama mentions his two daughters and said it makes him proud that:
“It doesn’t dawn on them that friends who are gay or friends’ parents who are same-sex couples should be treated differently than anyone else.”
In addition to pushing for other bills for the LGBT community, such as an end to harmful conversion therapy, Obama remains hopeful that other countries who are allies of America will follow suit in accepting homosexuality and recognize that it exists in all societies. Obama states that protecting the human rights of every individual “regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity” is a crucial element of America’s foreign policy.
Obama told Out magazine:
“When we talk about LGBT issues, we emphasize the importance of universal human rights — the right to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly and the importance of non-violence, non-discrimination, and equality under the law — and those don’t change or go away just because someone is a member of the LGBT community.”
Image by Fabio Gaglini via Flickr, available under this Creative Commons License.
