Obama Builds LGBT Family Expertise

Senators Obama and McCain have very different views of LGBT families, as I mentioned Monday. Yesterday, I received an e-mail from Obama’s campaign about the expansion of his LGBT leadership team. It only adds to his status as the candidate committed to LGBT families.

There will be five new national co-chairs of Obama Pride, which will build grassroots support for Obama in the LGBT community. One is Marsha Botzer, who co-chairs the Safe Schools Coalition, an organization aimed at making schools safer for everyone, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. She was also co-chair of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Board (2005-6), a founding member of Equal Rights Washington, founder of Seattle’s Ingersoll Gender Center, and works with Seattle’s Pride Foundation.

Heading the Finance Committee for Obama Pride is Joan Garry, former executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and a lesbian mom who blogs with her daughter Scout at Who’s the Grown Up. (Since she’s presumably been busy trying to make the country a better place for all of us, we’ll forgive her for not updating her blog in a while.) Kevin Jennings, founder and executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and co-founder of the very first gay-straight alliance (GSA), co-leads the committee with Garry.

That’s a lot of expertise not only on LGBT issues, but on ones specific to children and schools.

Other co-chairs of Obama Pride, with less direct connection to parenting (but with a significant impact on our community as a whole) are Mandy Carter, a former member of the DNC who has organized LGBT grassroots networks, especially of people of color, throughout the South; Jesse Garcia, a gay Latino activist and former member of the National Stonewall Democrats board of directors; Campbell Spencer, who has led LGBT outreach for Vice President Gore and John Kerry’s presidential campaigns, among other work; and Eric Stern, former Executive Director of the National Stonewall Democrats and Director of LGBT Outreach at the DNC in 2004, who has led Obama grassroots efforts since last February. Several of the above are coming to the Obama campaign after working for Hillary Clinton or John Edwards.

Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), who was Chair of Hillary Clinton’s National LGBT Steering Committee, and Tobias Wolff, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who chaired Obama’s LGBT Policy Committee during the primary, will be co-chairs of the new National LGBT Steering and Policy Committee.

The proof is in the pudding, of course, but it helps to start with a good team. I’m glad to see not only LGBT representation, but expertise across many parts of our diverse community.