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President Wades Into Gay Issues
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The Washington Post
6/18/2009
"President Obama moved yesterday to reset his relations with a gay and lesbian constituency that supported him by wide margins in the last election and whose leaders have been disappointed ever since.
"The gay political agenda has proved to be a challenge for Obama, who since taking office has tried to drain the ideological fervor from the most divisive foreign and domestic policy debates.
"'We are working on a large amount of things,' White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters yesterday.
"Self-identified gay men and lesbians were 4 percent of general-election voters in 2008 and supported Obama by more than 2 to 1, according to exit polls. Leslie Gabel-Brett, the director of education and public affairs for the advocacy group Lambda Legal, said Obama 'as a candidate was very clear on a number of things' and 'inspired an enormous amount of hope in our country and in the LGBT community,' using the acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.
"'We are very frustrated, and we'd like the president to move faster to protect our community and work for equality,' Gabel-Brett said. 'I still think he can be a leader for our community. But we need to see these steps start happening.'"