President Obama Has Not Betrayed the Gay Community

I am writing paper number two on the article President Obama Has Not Betrayed the Gay Community, written by Chris Geidner. Basically this article was written to show Geidner's point of view to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) community that yes President Obama has made many mistakes, but that he’s also made some progress, however small it may be it is still progress.

In this article Chris Geidner is defending President Obama’s actions against people like gay activist blogger John Aravosis. Chris Geidner puts a naysayer in his article to show that he understands why the LGBT community may feel that President Obama has fallen short of his promises to give the LGBT community equality. Geidner uses this paragraph to his advantage, he puts examples of negative media spread around by people such as Aravosis and then discusses why these things are either “old news” or false.

(for some reason I can't get it to indent properly, this is a excerpt from the article President Obama Has Not Betrayed the Gay Community)

“Then, this past Friday, I awoke to word at AmericaBlog, the Website of gay activist blogger John Aravosis, that "Obama defends DOMA in federal court" and "invokes incest and marrying children." I was appalled. Aravosis also wrote in another post that the DOJ was "lying" when it said that Justice "generally ... defend[s] the law on the books in court." Then I looked at the brief. I agreed with Aravosis that the brief went too far in some of the language it used in its defense of the statute. But, looking at the law and past cases, I disagreed that the Obama administration had a real choice about whether it would defend DOMA in court and that DOJ's brief "compared us" to incest and pedophilia. And, because some in the community have kept pushing those stories -- despite contrary opinions from Laurence Tribe, Nan Hunter, Robert Raben and others -- I've spent the past week attempting to dispute those claims..”

Geidner further discusses how the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is an issue from President Clinton’s years and that the LGBT community is making a big deal out of old news. Geidner is trying to push peoples minds to the future, to see the good that has been done thus far and to not dwell in the past.

I believe that using a naysayer shows credibility to the article as it allows the readers access to both sides of the story. The readers can see the facts and come up with their own conclusion. I believe that Geidner did a good job convincing the reader that the LGBT community needs to support President Obama rather than be negative about his shortcomings. There is always the possibility that after reading this article people will still believe President Obama has not lived up to what he has promised by putting more emphasis on his wrongs than his rights, I believe that Geidner is also trying to show his readers that in a short amount of time there has still been forward progress.