Dear Mr. President:
I proudly supported you throughout your campaign. You are the first candidate for office (any office) to whom I’ve actually contributed funds. I continue to believe that your campaign will revolutionize the political process in the United States. I cannot express in writing just how happy I was last November when the final polling results came through, and we knew that you had won. It felt like the beginning of something new, a sea change in our national direction.
As a candidate, you seemed to be a passionate defender of human and civil rights for LGBT people like me. When the new whitehouse.gov launched on the day of your inauguration, I read the statements about your commitment to LGBT human and civil rights with tears in my eyes.
I understood that the first things you would address when you took office would be the economy, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I was pleased to see the sane, progressive steps taken on these two critical issues. I waited patiently while you and your staff adjusted to their new roles, and watched your cabinet picks with great interest.
Then, Mr. President, I and the rest of the LGBT community received a wake-up call. Two or three weeks ago, this website (whitehouse.gov), with all of its promises to the LGBT community, was suddenly washed clean of any but the smallest mention of our issues. We were given platitudes about “refocusing” on “progress” and “governance-related features,” but if there is one thing I have learned from the previous struggles for civil rights in the U.S., it is that allowing people to forget their promises is the first step to allowing them to break them.
In his speech at the Democratic National Convention in July of ‘48, Hubert Humphrey said “There are those who say to you, ‘We are rushing this issue of civil rights.’ I say we are 172 years late.” Mr. President, civil and human rights for the LGBT community are hundreds of years late. Given your administration’s recent gaffes on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, I and other LGBT citizens are beginning to feel that many more years will pass before we see true equality for our people. We are rapidly growing disenchanted with your administration as its rhetoric grows ever more hollow.
I urge you to reconsider your course, sir. Please do not get swept along in those “politics of yesterday” that we tried so hard to eradicate last November. This is a a test of your leadership, your character and resolve. In a message to congress on June 19th, 1963, John Fitzgerald Kennedy state that “There are no ‘white’ or ‘colored’ signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle.” Mr. President, there are no “Gay” or “Straight” signs, either. Prove to us all that you are the President you promised to be – take action to halt the unjust, senseless dismissal of LGBT servicemen and women. Find some way, if not on whitehouse.gov, then elsewhere, to assure us that you are still with us in this struggle.
Yours truly, Aaron Akins
