I was in Africa when President Obama ran in 2008. From the outside, we were the "Bush America" and loathed by international human rights experts. I endured their constant criticism until my sense of patriotism was gone.
And then a black man came to the foreground, won, and revived our global respect with grace and intelligence. He led by example, not political force. And he gradually and methodically changed the world for LGBT people.
If we look at before and after, the contrast is stark. But in the middle, LGBT people broke into mainstream acceptance, as discrimination became stigmatized, and LGBT liberation became the next great civil rights movement.
Leading this quest, Obama maneuvered the U.S. military into ending DADT with brilliant finesse, and actually attached the Matthew Shepard Act, a federal hate crimes law, to a military funding bill! He turned the Department of Justice into an equality machine churning out historic legal arguments for our equality under the Constitution.
He appointed lesbians to the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, both of which have led the fight for justice. The Civil Rights Commission issued groundbreaking analysis on the harm LGBT people endure under discrimination, including suicide, building the basis for Congressional protection. And the EEOC launched the fight that "sex" includes "gender identity" under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The President also took the side of transgender school children, which the republicans then played as a religious rebellion in 2016. And all of this is now headed to the Supreme Court. I repeat: our protection under the Civil Rights Act is headed to the SCOTUS. Could we actually win and be protected federally? If so, this will be his legacy.
Internationally, the United States made LGBT equality a core aspect of our diplomacy and foreign policy. I feel I should retype that sentence, because just writing it sends a chill through me. This is a huge deal. If in 2008, as I lived in fear as a gay man at the United Nations in Ethiopia, you had told me that the U.S. would soon be leading this campaign, I would have never believed it. But President Obama and Hillary Clinton did exactly that and it changed the international debate over LGBT people from a religious-entitlement to hate, into one of LGBT human rights under international law.
Of course, the president had to be prodded steadily, because he had many priorities and political challenges. And he had to be pushed into marriage equality. But he was the first sitting president to do it. And while doing so, he put our movement squarely in the context of "who you love" - coining our struggle as one of "love" - which is really the highest place of honor possible in this insane debate about our dignity.
His Department of Education tackled safe-schools and bullying. The Department of Housing protected us in public housing. The Department of Health in hospitals. And he outlawed by Executive Order discrimination by federal contractors. Each step extending the protections of the Civil Rights Act in areas of housing, education, and employment.
He was effectively granting us the protection of the law methodically and systematically. Like a law professor, he engineered equality in fact, until it was granted in law. The brilliance of this can not be overstated. All the while most people never knew.
President Obama and I shared a term of office. These were my eight years of in-the-trenches activism for LGBT equality. And I too am stepping down from that role. But it was a good run at an historic time.
Going into it I believed that President Obama would be our great liberator, and often felt disappointed that it wasn't bigger and faster. But I fought the impulse to blame Obama because of what the republicans did to him. No criticism of Obama is fair against that treason.
Toward the end, I ended up demonstrating inside the White House, a heart-wrenching decision that pitted my sense of respect and admiration against my desperation for equality. I pressed him holding his hand until he barked at me that day, but his staff later reached out and affirmed their support for a full equality bill. And The Equality Act was filed and endorsed by the President.
President Obama did all he possibly could have done for LGBT liberation. Now, the future is clear. He has shown the way. And we're never turning back. Bravo and thank you great man! #HatsOff2PresObama #LGBTcivilrightsHERO #The2015EqualityAct