His name wasn't on the press release announcing the White House's new "Advisory Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships," but one openly gay man has been appointed to the 25-member council. That man is Fred Davie, president of a foundation to help low-income communities.
Davie's staff said he was too busy to be interviewed for this article, and no gay leader had ever heard of him or anything he's ever done for or with the gay civil rights movement. Brian Bond, the White House's openly gay deputy director for public liaison did not return calls or e-mails concerning the council. Neither did another staffer this reporter was directed to.
In an executive order signed February 5, President Obama renamed the original "Faith-Based and Community Initiatives" entity created by President Bush the "Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships."
The faith-based council is of interest. Even under Bush, it has provided funding to such LGBT community entities as the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center. And so far, the Human Rights Campaign ( HRC ) is trusting Obama to keep his word about playing fair.
A Washington update from HRC last July told supporters that the Obama campaign had "confirmed that his faith-based initiative will not direct federal dollars to groups that proselytize or advocate for [ anti-gay ] reparative therapy."
"If elected," read the July 14 Equally Speaking transcript, "Sen. Obama plans to implement a council to provide secular social services to communities in need through faith-based organizations."
In its own "Blueprint for Positive Change," HRC said the new administration "must issue clarifying regulations that ensure that the government does not discriminate on the basis of religion" and "affirmatively clarify that the statutes containing charitable choice provisions in no way preempt federal, state or local laws preventing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity."
But there is at least one development that could make the cautiously optimistic nervous. To head the advisory council, President Obama has selected a Pentecostalist who lobbied hard for evangelist Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the inauguration.
Joshua Dubois will head the council. He has connections all over the map—born in Maine, raised in Tennessee and Ohio, undergraduate degree from Boston University, master's at Princeton and started law school at Georgetown. He headed the Obama campaign's religious affairs, according to Time magazine, though this reporter could find no one who knew whether he orchestrated the South Carolina gospel tour that featured controversial singer Donnie McClurkin. But Dubois did, reportedly, help engineer candidate Obama's appearance at the Saddleback presidential form, as well as Saddleback preacher Rick Warren's prominent inclusion in the inauguration.
Warren's inclusion as such a high-profile participant drew swift criticism from many quarters of the gay civil rights movement, and beyond. Warren had just helped support the anti-gay Proposition 8 amendment in California and then told a reporter that he "absolutely" equates gay marriage with pedophilia, incest, and polygamy.
But HRC saw reason to remain calm, too.
The executive order reconstituting the faith-based council says, "It is critical that the Federal government strengthen the ability" of faith-based, neighborhood, and "other nonprofit providers" to deliver services "while preserving our fundamental constitutional commitments guaranteeing the equal protection of the laws and the free exercise of religion and forbidding the establishment of religion."
"It's reassuring," said HRC President Joe Solmonese, "that in the recent executive order, President Obama is engaging civil rights experts from the Department of Justice and the White House counsel's office to review the policies implemented by the Bush Administration."
"We expect that President Obama will abide by his commitment and ensure that federal funds are not used to discriminate against the LGBT community," said Solmonese. "We look forward to a continued dialogue on how best to achieve this goal and reverse other Bush anti-LGBT policies."
In other transition news …
Gay counsel: Openly lesbian law professor Alison J. Nathan was appointed recently as one of 14 attorneys to serve as counsel to President Obama in the White House. Nathan, who graduated from Cornell Law School in 2000, was a member of the Obama campaign's LGBT Advisory Committee. Her new title is associate counsel to the President. And Nathan applied for her position through the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund's Presidential Appointments Project.
Inclusion: The Obama administration once again included three members of a gay business organization in a meeting of business leaders to talk about the economy generally. Justin Nelson, co-founder of the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, said he was invited to and attended a meeting with top advisors to the president. The discussion, he said, focused on the president's proposed stimulus package. "Our participation," said Nelson, "is a clear demonstration of the Obama Administration's work to actively engage the LGBT community on all issues of importance to LGBT business owners and their families. After being held at arm's length for most of the previous Administration's two terms, our inclusion is a clear signal that the Obama team knows that there is much more to LGBT people than just being LGBT." Co-founder Chance Mitchell, who also attended the meeting, said, "We let the president and his team know that he had our support in his plan to stimulate the economy."
�2009 Keen News Service
