Dear President Obama,
Since my late teenage years I have made an effort to be aware of politics in the United States, but it was not until media buzz began in 2006 about the possibility of you running for President, that I had heard of you. There was of course an abundance of discussion and information being spewed about you throughout the media at this time, however, I researched your history primarily using your campaign website among other reputable sources. For the first time in my entire life I felt truly inspired as an American citizen and, at the risk of sounding overly sentimental, I actually saw hope for the future of our flawed nation.
I am a college student, I am a man, I am white, I come from a working-class family, I am gay, and I am American. The labels I possess have undeniably shaped who I am. Like many Americans, I have struggled to accept and be proud of all of the aspects of who I am. Being a college student from a working-class family in America today means committing to a stressfully exorbitant amount of financial burden. I struggle daily with the unavoidable, socially inherent privilege of being white and being male. It was not until I worked hard enough to be able to study abroad this past semester in Europe, that I experienced very real difficulties with being an American. As Americans, we hear all sorts of things, mostly negative, about what other countries think about us and about our government, but it is not until one is actually displaced from the bubble of America that the discrimination towards our nation is truly felt. Through my experiences abroad, I became aware of the considerable differences in social views towards politics between most European countries and the United States. In addition to being critical of America, many Europeans are fiercely more critical of their own nations and governmental systems. It is this crucial common trait of questioning all media and government that characterizes many Europeans and that Americans unquestionably lack. This provoked me to feel genuinely and substantially ashamed and disappointed to be American.
When I first heard 1,138 as the number of federal rights denied to gay and lesbian individuals, I was astonished, to say the least. The core of this issue is the sole fact that because a tax-paying American citizen is a homosexual he or she cannot marry and thus is denied the same federal rights as heterosexuals. I have heard any number of arguments for why this is and every one is entirely unconstitutional. If I am correct, you feel this is right because of your own religious beliefs, which have taught you that marriage is only between a man and a woman. This argument, as I am sure you can agree, is unfair and wholly unconstitutional. What ever happened to the separation between church and state? It was not until June of last year, only six months into your first term as president, when the Department of Justice, which, as you know, falls under the Executive Branch, filed a brief defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), that I began to question your self-proclaimed allegiance to the gay community.
Many of your constituents argue that you are doing the best you can and that gay rights will just have to take a backseat while you focus on more important and pressing issues facing our nation. I am unable to wrap my mind around this reasoning. How can matters of social inequality be considered less significant and urgent than issues such as the state of the economy and the war in the Middle East? If this is the case for our country, than you are not the President I voted for or the President and fierce advocate you promised to be. Yet another federally supported discrimination towards proud gay American citizens is that of the Don’t ask, don’t tell (DADT) policy. I know your administration has issued a statement opposing this policy and that bureaucratic processes are largely responsible for getting in the way of eliminating this absurd and unnecessary law at this point. Until it is repealed, however, it is your responsibility to press congress to set a date to vote on the repeal of the policy or at the very least to be vocal about the unjustness of DADT.
As acclaimed columnist for The New York Times, Frank Rich, writes in his op-ed “40 Years Later and Still Second-Class Americans” for the Sunday June 28, 2009 edition of the newspaper, “The pretext [of a ceremony you held in June of last year] was the signing of an executive memorandum bestowing benefits to the domestic partners of federal employees. But some of those benefits were already in force, and the most important of them all, health care, was not included because it is forbidden by DOMA” (par. 14). If you are at all bewildered by the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community’s disappointment and outrage with your administration thus far, look closely at what little you have done for us. You cannot throw us some rights here and there and expect us to be satisfied or fooled into thinking we are legally considered equal to everyone else.
I want to acknowledge that you are far more educated than myself, more than twenty-five years my senior, and obviously extensively more experienced than me. I say this because I know these are issues that you are likely more than aware of. That being said, I am writing to you because even after all of your oversights since being elected, you are one of the very few political leaders I still truly believe in and admire. I have lived enough to learn that as humans we are vastly different from one another and inherently imperfect so differences and conflicts are bound to arise. I also do not want to sound as though I am completely denigrating your presidency, for I am aware of the overall progress you have made, but it is not enough. I believe in democracy, though our nation exhibits very little democratic qualities these days, and just as much as I believe it is partly your responsibility to help solve these problems, I know it is just as much my civic duty to do everything I can within the limits of our government to address and help fix these issues.
I am sure I appear to be just one of many members of the LGBT community who is infuriated with you and your administration’s undeniable lack of necessary focus on LGBT civil rights. The reality is, there are as many straight Americans who are just as frustrated and fed up. You know more than any previous U.S. president what it is like to not only face social prejudice, but to be legally discriminated against by your government. This may not be the 1960’s and LGBT individuals may not be physically segregated from society like African Americans were, but unjust laws remain in place. On November 4, 2008, LGBT Americans across the U.S., desperate for a political leader who would merely accept them for who they are and acknowledge them as equal citizens, placed their fate in your hands by voting for you. The fact that you, an African American, were elected as our president showed just how united our country seemed. This moment and feeling of union was only ephemeral and superficial. The reality is that our nation is not post-racism because you have been elected president, though it is certainly a sign that we are progressing away from racism. Homophobia and governmental discrimination towards LGBT Americans is ever present. You have been given the unique position of power to act on this inequality that a group of American citizens face every day and to make your mark in American history. I am calling on you to do just this, make actions that show your people the advocate I know you are because there is no better time than now.
Earnestly,
Matthew Forest
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