After The Philadelphia Gay News ran a large blank space on its front page last week- next to an interview with Hillary Clinton highlighting the slight that they felt Barack Obama had given them by not speaking with the paper, Obama sat down with the Advocate to discuss what he feels he could accomplish as President to benefit not only the gay community, but the U.S. as a whole.

”I would never make this a litmus test for the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Obama said in an interview with The Advocate, a gay newsmagazine.

”But I think there’s increasing recognition within the Armed Forces that this is a counterproductive strategy,” he said. ”We’re spending large sums of money to kick highly qualified gays or lesbians out of our military, some of whom possess specialties like Arab-language capabilities that we desperately need. That doesn’t make us more safe.”

Speaking about the “snub” against The Philadelphia Gay News Obama said ”The gay press may feel like I’m not giving them enough love, but basically all press feels that way at all times.”  What else did Obama have to say in the article?

Asked what he could reasonably accomplish for the gay community as president, Obama said he can ”reasonably see” repeal of the ”don’t ask, don’t tell” policy as well as signing legislation to ban workplace discrimination against gays. He said he’d like transgendered people to be covered by the law, but thinks it would be tough to get such legislation through Congress.

Obama also said he’s interested in ensuring that same-sex couples in civil unions get federal benefits.

Having served with gays and lesbians in my time on active duty military, and while deployed to Iraq, I can say that any one of those troops lost from the unit over the matter of their personal lives would have been detrimental to the mission, and a true shame.  And having reported here in the past about the loss of the many specialty jobs in the military like Obama spoke of (arabic translators) I think the time is long past due to scrap the whole “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and as a whole see the military, hell- the country, move beyond this pettiness and view people based on their worth and qualities more than we worry about who they’re sharing a bed with.  If Obama can get that done as President, then more power to him. 

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