Clinton and Obama
say they won’t run together. But LGBT voters can
hope.
In the days
leading up to the second Super Tuesday on March 4, a
fascinating narrative emerged that contrasted the
presidential candidates’ comfort levels on gay
and lesbian issues.
In one corner was
the new front-runner, Sen. Barack Obama, who in late
February placed, in four LGBT newspapers in Ohio and Texas,
what his campaign says is the first-ever LGBT-specific
advertising for a presidential candidate. The
full-page ads featured the handsome Illinois junior
senator alongside text that began, “While we have
come a long way since the Stonewall
riots….” At the same time, he also told one
Texas crowd that it was not very Christian to be
bigoted toward gays and lesbians. That’s very
much like the senator, his queer supporters insist:
Subtle, powerful, and effective, Obama is the ideal man to
divide the gap between black and white—as well
as straight and gay.
In the other
corner was Sen. Hillary Clinton, the New York junior senator
who had long been considered the candidate to beat -- at
least until her campaign’s near-meltdown and an
11-contest losing streak in February. But the Clinton
campaign recalibrated with an aggressive strategy that
included a rally in Houston’s heavily gay Montrose
neighborhood. The senator also granted interviews to
three of the four newspapers where Obama placed
advertising. “No community has been made more
invisible than the LGBT community by this
administration, and I want to change that,”
Clinton told Cleveland’s Gay People’s
Chronicle. She’s a fighter, her gay supporters
argue: Direct and sometimes in-your-face, she won’t
back down in the fight over the Employment
Non-Discrimination Act or expansion of hate-crime
laws.
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