The Advocate's Kerry Eleveld on Obama's slience on gay issues

For the past several months, Kerry Eleveld has the Advocate's D.C.-based correspondent. She was detailed here a couple months ago. In that very short period of time, she's become an astute observer of the workings of D.C. She's the reporter at the White House briefing who asked Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about Obama's intentions on repealing the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which was a campaign promise. He didn't have an answer:

In addition to her regular reporting, every week, Eleveld writes a column, "View from the Hill," which captures the week's legislative and political news as it relates to LGBT issues. It's becoming a "must read." This week's column is titled "Obama's Silence" -- and captures what many in D.C. don't seem to grasp:

When the administration’s LGBT announcements come, I will be watching what the Amy Ballietts of the nation think, not what those in Washington say. Why? Because a cultural and generational shift is taking place that Washington politicians and even our LGBT organizations seem to be either missing, dismissing, or ignoring.

Here’s my thoroughly unscientific, crude analysis: Gay baby boomers typically stayed in the closet because they didn’t want their lives to be ruined; LGBT Gen-Xers expected that we (I'm an Xer) could be mostly visible without fearing life, limb, and job loss (depending on where one lived) but figured there might be some trade-offs in rights even if we knew it was unfair; a majority of millennials, LGBT and straight, just don’t get why we all pay the same taxes, work the same jobs, make the same contributions, but queer people don’t enjoy the same legal rights and protections in the military, civil marriage, employment, or anywhere else for that matter.

So while Washington tinkers around the edges of LGBT rights -- maybe trying to get gay couples counted in the Census, strengthening federal hate-crimes protections, or providing same-sex partner health benefits to federal workers -- our nation’s young may simply wonder why their best friends can’t get married or why their sisters and brothers died cloaked in the closet of our country’s uniform.

I’m quite confident that is not the “change” they envisioned at the ballot box last fall, and I do wonder, what will be the price of President Obama’s silence among the ranks of our nation’s future?

I think she's spot on. I'd just add one thing. Many gay baby boomers and Gen-Xers, who had been somewhat complacent, have become much more radical and intense after the Prop. 8 debacle. It's one thing to think we're working towards achieving rights. It's another to have newly secured rights taken away. More and more, I hear gay people talk in the same language I've heard NRA-types use for years. And, our straight allies are equally as fired up. We're engaged like never before -- and I don't think that's fully understood here in D.C.

By the end of June, we'll know if the Obama administration intends to defend DOMA in the GLAD lawsuit seeking to have Section 3 of that law found unconstitutional. That will be a seminal moment for this administration and its relationship with the LGBT community. I'm not sure if the great minds in the West Wing fully grasp that yet. My suggestion to the White House is: Don't bother with the small stuff and the Gay Pride proclamations if you're going to say in Federal Court that DOMA is constitutional and should be upheld. If you do that, it's over.