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Obama’s 6 Gay U.S. Ambassadors Are Leading the Global Fight for LGBT Rights

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From Battling Bigotry in the Dominican Republic to Achieving Reality TV Stardom in Denmark, President’s Out Appointees Have Made Their Mark

President Barack Obama’s commitment to inclusion has been rendered concrete by his appointments, which have helped make the face of America’s government more representative of its people. In addition to a record number of racial and ethnic minorities, he has appointed a record number of LGBT officials, including judges and ambassadors who require Senate confirmation.

Before Obama’s presidency, there had been only two openly gay U.S. ambassadors. The first, James C. Hormel, was nominated by President Bill Clinton as ambassador to Luxembourg in October 1997. Although Hormel was eminently qualified for the post and quickly won approval from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he was subjected to an ugly confirmation battle during which he was defamed and belittled by homophobic GOP senators such as Jesse Helms and John Ashcroft. His nomination was effectively blocked by Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who refused to schedule a vote.

Finally, in May 1999, to the outrage of some Republicans, Clinton named Hormel ambassador via a “recess appointment.”Â

In 2001, to little public controversy, career foreign service officer Michael E. Guest was nominated as ambassador to Romania by President George W. Bush and became the first openly gay ambassadorial nominee confirmed by the Senate. Guest served as ambassador until 2003 and then in the State Department until his retirement in 2007.

At his retirement ceremony, Guest bitterly criticized Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice (and by extension Bush) for the discrimination faced by LGBT employees and specifically for the benefits denied to their same-sex partners. He made clear that his decision to retire was a direct result of this discrimination:

“For the past three years, I’ve urged the Secretary and her senior management team to redress policies that discriminate against gay and lesbian employees. Absolutely nothing has resulted from this. And so I’ve felt compelled to choose between obligations to my partner, who is my family, and service to my country. That anyone should have to make that choice is a stain on the Secretary’s leadership, and a shame for this institution and our country.”

Obama’s Ambassadors

In contrast to the difficulties faced by Hormel and Guest, the ambassadors nominated by Obama have had little difficulty in the confirmation process and received unqualified support from the State Department. In addition, they have been encouraged to make the furtherance of LGBT rights a key part of their portfolio. (Moreover, many of the benefits that Guest complained were denied to his partner during the Bush administration were extended by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2009. Others were added after the Defense of Marriage Act was ruled unconstitutional in 2013.)

As Hillary Clinton declared at the United Nations in 2011, under Obama official U.S. policy is that “Gay Rights are Human Rights.”

Obama has appointed seven openly gay ambassadors: U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa David Huebner (who served from 2009 to 2014); U.S. Ambassador to the Organization for Security & Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Daniel Baer; U.S. Ambassador to Spain and Andorra James Costos; U.S. Ambassador to Denmark Rufus Gifford; U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic James “Wally” Brewster; U.S. Ambassador to Australia John Berry; and U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Ted Osius.

Huebner discussing his role as Ambassador to New Zealand:

Costos introducing himself and his partner Michael Smith:

Baer and his husband, Brian Walsh:

Berry introducing himself, and discussing same-sex marriage and his husband, Curtis Yee.Â

Osius and his husband, Clayton Bond, on PBS Newshour:

The six currently serving openly gay ambassadors recently participated in a panel discussion — sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign, the Harvey Milk Foundation, and GLIFAA, an organization for LGBT foreign service employees — at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

The six participants shared their personal experiences and the obligations of representing not only their country but also the LGBT community.

Particularly interesting is the contrast between the experiences of Brewster in the Dominican Republic, which criminalizes homosexuality, and Gifford in Denmark, a notably gay-friendly country. In one, the ambassador and his husband are beleaguered and sometimes vilified as a gay couple and advocates for LGBT rights. In the other, the ambassador and his husband are celebrated and their wedding became a major social event.

Ambassador Brewster

Brewster, a Chicago businessman who has served as a National LGBT Co-Chair for the Democratic National Committee and on the Board of the Human Rights Campaign, was nominated as Ambassador to the Dominican Republic on June 22, 2013.

His nomination was greeted with hostility from the Dominican Republic’s influential religious establishment. In a press conference, the Dominican Republic’s highest-ranking Catholic official, Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez, referred to Brewster as a “maricón” — a derogatory term that is usually translated as “faggot.”

Another Catholic official, Monseñor Pablo Cedano, an auxiliary bishop of Santo Domingo, issued a veiled threat against the nominee. “I hope he does not arrive in the country because I know if he comes he is going to suffer and will have to leave,” Cedano said. He added that it was “a lack of respect” that Obama “sent … a person of this kind as an ambassador.”

Evangelical Christians were equally inhospitable. Ex-president of the nation’s Evangelical Confraternity, Cristóbal Cardozo, called the appointment “an insult to good Dominican customs” and said it is inappropriate to send such an ambassador to “a country where homosexual relationships are not approved, neither legally nor morally.”

On November 22, 2013, Brewster was sworn in as U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic by Vice President Joe Biden. Just a few hours later, Brewster married his longtime partner, Bob J. Satawake. The ceremony and reception took place at the Hay-Adams Hotel, overlooking the South Lawn of the White House.

Ambassador Brewster and his husband have persevered in a country that penalizes homosexuality and constitutionally bans same-sex marriage. They have refused to allow the hostility of homophobes to deter their commitment to equal rights.

They have engaged the attacks forthrightly and with dignity, always conscious that their very presence in the country gives hope to those who cannot speak out on their own behalf. They know that their openness as a gay couple itself makes a powerful statement:

Brewster especially infuriated his detractors when he and Satawake met with Dominican LGBT leaders, prompting the Dominican Republic’s Ambassador to the Vatican to protest.

In honor of Pride 2014, the ambassador produced this video:

In June 2016, Ambassador Brewster announced that he and his husband would participate in the Dominican Republic’s Pride Caravan:

Ambassador Gifford

Gifford, the son of a Boston banking family and a former film producer, came to political prominence as a prodigious fundraiser, first for John Kerry’s 2004 campaign, and then for Obama. In the 2008 campaign, he raised some $80 million as head of Obama’s Southern California fundraising operation. He subsequently became a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee, and then the finance director of Obama’s re-election campaign. In the latter capacity, he is believed to have raised more than a billion dollars.

Gifford was appointed Ambassador to Denmark in 2013 and quickly became a national celebrity, appearing frequently on Danish radio and television programs. In 2014, he appeared in his own six-episode reality show (or, as he prefers, “documentary”) called I am the Ambassador from America, which followed his professional and personal life over the course of three months.

In the show’s first episode, he said, “the most common question I get is what does an ambassador do, and the only way you can explain it to people is by living it.” Thus, the show attempted to answer the question by inviting viewers to follow him during his work and in his life more generally.

The show was a surprise hit and was renewed for a second season. It won the Danish equivalent of an Emmy and made Gifford a familiar face and personality, especially since he so freely shared so many personal aspects of his life, including his upbringing in a small, wealthy Massachusetts town, his coming out experience, and his relationship with his partner Dr. Steven DeVincent, a Provincetown veterinarian.

But as Danish media critic Mads Hvas Jensen has observed, the show did more than highlight Gifford himself. It also advanced American diplomacy. Gifford has understood the strategic use of television to present American foreign policy in a favorable light, especially to young people. From this perspective, even Gifford’s openness about his sexuality and his advocacy for LGBT rights can be seen a means of demonstrating the advances made by the Obama administration in recent years.

Among the major recent advances in American civil rights was the achievement of marriage equality throughout the nation on June 26, 2015. Hence, it was not surprising that in October 2015, Gifford and DeVincent decided to marry, and to feature their wedding on the television show.

They also made the decision to be married not in the U.S. nor even in the American embassy, but in Copenhagen’s City Hall, where they were wed by the Lord Mayor in the same gold-filigreed room in which the world’s first legally recognized same-sex civil unions were performed in 1989.

The decision to wed in Denmark was “to be a statement,” DeVincent told Vogue. “We got married in the town hall in Copenhagen because it was the location of the first same-sex civil union. We also very much wanted to have the wedding in Denmark, because once Rufus became ambassador, we knew that was going to be our home for the next three and a half years. It was going to be the longest we’ve ever lived in one place together.” He added, “Once we were there, the country was so welcoming to us and we wanted also to show our appreciation.”

In the video below, an episode from PBS Newshour, Gifford is profiled:

Ambassador Gifford has spoken in favor of LGBT rights and participated in Pride parades not only in liberal Copenhagen, but also in other less accepting areas of his purview, including Greenland and the Faroe Islands. For example,  Gifford and DeVincent and members of the embassy staff participated in the Faroese Pride Celebrations on July 27, 2016, which were attended by 10 percent of the population.

Conclusion

America’s openly gay ambassadors are an impressive group. Some, such as Ambassadors Costos and Gifford have been chosen, as is a long honored and bipartisan custom, because of their political and personal connections to the president. Others, such as Ambassadors Baer and Osius, were chosen because of their academic or cultural expertise. The ambassadors have different styles and face different challenges, but all have distinguished themselves in their jobs.

In addition to the customary diplomacy that they practice, however, they also serve as living symbols of American progress in human rights.

When they march in Pride celebrations, for example, they make an important statement about American values in general and about American policy under Obama in particular.

When Ambassador Berry answers a question about same-sex marriage, he is careful not to interject himself into Australia’s fractious debate on the issue, but he nevertheless furthers the quest for marriage equality by offering the example of his own marriage.

Similarly, the high-profile weddings of Ambassadors Gifford in Copenhagen and Baer in Vienna have also helped normalize same-sex relationships here and abroad, as has the example of Ambassador Osius and his husband and children in Vietnam. In August, Osius and Bond renewed their vows in a ceremony presided over by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and attended by several LGBT rights advocates. “We thought it might be meaningful not only to us, but to the LGBT community in Vietnam,” Osius said.

The dignity and resoluteness of Ambassador Brewster in the face of insult offers hope to those who are unable to stand up to homophobia themselves; and Baer’s denunciation of Russia’s anti-propaganda law gains increased credibility because of his openness as to his own sexuality.

The appointment of openly gay ambassadors helps fulfill President Obama’s campaign pledge to make the face of the American government more representative of the nation’s people. But it is does more than that. It also announces to the world that in the U.S., opportunities are not limited because of whom one loves, and it illustrates concretely that the country’s much-touted support for human rights includes LGBT rights.

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Jeffries Vows Democrats Will Ensure Ukraine Aid Passes as Johnson Defectors Grow

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April 19, 2024

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Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries vowed Friday the majority of Democrats will support Republicans’ Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and Gaza foreign aid legislation as Republican Speaker Mike Johnson lost support of another member of his conference to a faction determined to oust him.

“Democrats will provide a majority of our majority as it relates to funding Israel, humanitarian assistance, Ukraine, and our allies in the Indo Pacific,” Minority Leader Jeffries said. “It remains to be seen what Republicans will do in terms of meeting the national security needs of the American people, but it was important for House Democrats to ensure that the national security bills are going to be considered.”

Despite Republicans having a one-vote majority, more Democrats on Friday voted to move the critical and long-awaited foreign aid bills forward than did Republicans.

The 316-94 vote included 165 Democrats and 151 Republicans voting yes, and 55 Republicans and 39 Democrats voting no.

Axios’ Juliegrace Brufke posted the list of Republicans voting against their party’s legislation.

Calling it a “rare” moment in modern congressional history to have to rely on opposition party votes to pass legislation, BBC News reports Speaker Johnson’s “hold on power is tenuous, and the legislators who oppose him – and his bid to provide aid to Ukraine – occupy some key positions within the House’s power structure.”

Amid the procedural vote to move the foreign aid funding bills forward, U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, a far-right Republican of Arizona, announced he is joining Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and Congressman Tim Massie (R-KY) in formally announcing their will vote to oust Speaker Johnson.

Gosar, like Greene, is a Christian nationalist. In 2022 CNN reported his “lengthy ties to White nationalists, [a] pro-Nazi blogger and far-right fringe received little pushback for years.”

“We’ve been very honest in our assessment of the situation from the beginning,” Jeffries on Friday also declared. “At the appropriate time as House Democrats, we will have a conversation about how to deal with any hypothetical motion to vacate.”

“Moscow Marjorie Taylor Greene, Massie, and Gosar are quite a group. But central to our conversation is to make sure that the national security legislation in totality is passed by the House of Representatives.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

 

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Biden Amps Up Field Offices, Trump to Mobilize Thousands of Lawyers to Monitor Vote Counts

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April 19, 2024

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With less than seven months before Election Day the Biden campaign and the Trump campaign are taking shape, and like their politics they could not be more different.

President Biden is “scooping up record-making donations,” “flush with cash,” “building a behemoth of a campaign,” and “plowing the money into an expanding campaign operation in battleground states that appears to surpass what Donald Trump has built,” NBC News reported earlier this month.

Ex-President Donald Trump, struggling with donations, has “raised $75 million less for his presidential bid than Joe Biden and has 270,000 fewer unique donors now than at the same stage of his run for the White House four years ago,” the Financial Times reported Wednesday.

Now, as the Biden campaign invests in a massive ground game, Trump’s strategy is emerging, and it appears to be built on his “Big Lie,” the false and debunked conspiracy theory that there was and is tremendous election fraud.

READ MORE: ‘Repercussions’: Democrats and Republicans Stand Against ‘Pro-Putin’ House GOP Faction

Politico reports the Trump campaign plans to dispatch “more than 100,000 attorneys and volunteers across battleground states to monitor — and potentially challenge — vote counting in November.”

The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee are calling their plan “the most extensive and monumental election integrity program in the nation’s history.” The RNC is chaired by Trump’s hand-picked elections specialist who worked on the Bush 2000 election Florida recount team, and co-chaired by Trump’s daughter-in-law.

Despite Trump’s claims of a stolen election in 2020, his own Attorney General, Bill Barr, his own FBI Director, Chris Wray, his own Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Chris Krebs, all concluded there was no widespread election fraud and none that would have changed any election results. An independent federal agency, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, came to the same conclusion, all as The Brennan Center for Justice reported more than a month after the 2020 election.

Politico warns, “should Trump once again attempt to overturn the election, he will already have in place tens of thousands of workers who could help with that effort.”

“Having the right people to count the ballots is just as important as turning out voters on Election Day,” Trump said in a statement.

The Trump campaign “plans to deploy lawyers to monitor voter machine testing, early voting, election day voting, mail ballot processing and post-election canvassing, auditing and recounts. The campaign also plans to station lawyers at mail-in voting processing centers and set up a hotline that poll watchers and voters can use to report problems,” Politico adds. “The RNC also stated that attorneys will be stationed at ‘every single target processing center where mail ballots are tabulated.'”

READ MORE: ‘Big Journalism Fail’: Mainstream Media Blasted Over Coverage of Historic Trump Trial

The announcement of that massive operation comes on the heels of a convention this week hosted by the far-right Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association that “drew a parade of felons, disgraced politicians, election deniers, conspiracy theorists and, in the end, a few sheriffs,” NBC News reports. Also among attendees were “MAGA celebrities.”

“The group sees sheriffs as the highest authority in the U.S., more powerful than the federal government, and it wants these county officers to form posses to patrol polling places, seize voting machines and investigate the Democrats and foreign nations behind what they claim is a criminal effort to rig the vote by flooding the country with immigrants who vote illegally.”

David Gilbert at Wired reported: “Far-Right Sheriffs Want a Citizen Army to Stop ‘Illegal Immigrant’ Voters.”

Their plan perfectly dovetails with Donald Trump’s campaign push.

Gilbert writes, “election deniers and conspiracists have coalesced around a narrative they plan to push ahead of November: Blame the immigrants.”

Richard Mack, founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association told Wired that immigrants “have already disrupted the election because they are getting registered to vote.”

“That is election fraud,” Mack added, “these people are not qualified to vote. They are going to vote for whoever got them here and gave them a bunch of free stuff to get here, and of course that’s the Democrat Party, who are complicit in all of this.”

There are no reports of undocumented immigrants registering to vote in any substantial number. NBC News last week reported, “noncitizen voting” is “already illegal and very rare.”

READ MORE: ‘They Want Russia to Win So Badly’: GOP Congressman Blasts Far-Right House Republicans

Those claims, however, echo some made by the Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson one week ago in his joint press conference with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

“We only want U.S. citizens to vote in U.S. elections,” Johnson said, standing next to Trump, “but there are some Democrats who don’t want to do that. We believe that one of their designs, one of the reasons for this open border, which everybody asked all around the country, why would they do this? Why would they allow all this chaos? Why the violence? Because they want to turn these people into voters.”

“Right now the administration is encouraging illegals to go to their local welfare office to sign up for benefits,” Johnson, one of the top election deniers in the country, claimed as he explained his conspiracy theory. He did not state how the Biden Administration is communicating with undocumented immigrants, nor did he offer proof of these communications. He also did not state that the vast majority of undocumented immigrants are ineligible for any government welfare program.

 

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‘Repercussions’: Democrats and Republicans Stand Against ‘Pro-Putin’ House GOP Faction

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April 18, 2024

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Some House Democrats and House Republicans are coming together toward a common opponent: far-right “pro-Putin” hardliners in the House Republican conference, who appear to be led by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).

Congresswoman Greene has been threatening to oust the Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. Last month she filed a “motion to vacate the chair.” If she chooses to call it up she could force a vote on the House floor to try to remove Speaker Johnson.

House Democrats say they are willing to vote against ousting Johnson, as long as the Speaker puts on the floor desperately needed and long-awaited legislation to fund aid to Ukraine and Israel. Johnson has refused to put the Ukraine aid bill on the floor for months, but after Iran attacked Israel Johnson switched gears. Almost all Democrats and a seemingly large number of Republicans want to pass the Ukraine and Israel aid packages.

RELATED: Marjorie Taylor Greene, ‘Putin’s Envoy’? Democrat’s Bills Mock Republican’s Actions

Forgoing the possibility of installing Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker, which is conceivable given Johnson’s now one-vote majority, Democrats say if Johnson does the right thing, they will throw him their support.

“I think he’ll be in good shape,” to get Democrats to support him, if he puts the Ukraine aid bill on the floor, U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) told CNN Thursday. “I would say that there’s a lot of support for the underlying bills. I think those are vital.”

“If these bills were delivered favorably, and the aid was favorably voted upon, and Marjorie Taylor Greene went up there with a motion to remove him, for instance, I think there’s gonna be a lot of Democrats that move to kill that motion,” Congressman Krishnamoorthi said. “They don’t want to see him getting punished for doing the right thing.”

“I think it is a very bad policy of the House to allow one individual such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is an arsonist to this House of Representatives,” U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) told CBS News’ Scott MacFarlane, when asked about intervening to save Johnson. He added he doesn’t want her “to have so much influence.”

U.S. Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, one of several Republicans who won their New York districts in 2022, districts that were previously held by Democrats, opposes Greene’s motion to vacate – although he praised the Georgia GOP congresswoman.

CNN’s Manu Raju reports Republicans “say it’s time to marginalize hardliners blocking [their] agenda.”

D’Esposito, speaking to Raju, called for “repercussions for those who completely alienate the will of the conference. The people gave us the majority because they wanted Republicans to govern.”

U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler, like D’Esposito is another New York Republican who won a previously Democratic seat in 2022. Lawler spoke out against the co-sponsor of Greene’s motion to vacate, U.S. Rep. Tim Massie (R-KY), along with two other House Republicans who are working to block the Ukraine aid bill via their powerful seats on the Rules Committee.

U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), a former Navy pilot, blasted Congresswoman Greene.

RELATED: ‘They Want Russia to Win So Badly’: GOP Congressman Blasts Far-Right House Republicans

“Time is of the essence” for Ukraine, Rep. Sherrill told CNN Wednesday night. “The least we can do is support our Democratic allies, especially given what we know Putin to do. To watch a report and to think there are people like Marjorie Taylor Greene on the right that are pro-Putin? That are pro-Russia? It is really shocking.”

U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), as NCRM reported Thursday, had denounced Greene.

“I guess their reasoning is they want Russia to win so badly that they want to oust the Speaker over it,” he said, referring to the Ukraine aid bill Greene and her cohorts want to tank. “I mean that’s a strange position to take.”

The far-right hardliners are also causing chaos in the House.

“Things just got very heated on the House floor,” NBC News’ Julie Tsirkin reported earlier Thursday. “Group of hardliners were trying to pressure Johnson to only put Israel aid on the floor and hold Ukraine aid until the Senate passed HR2.”

HR2 is the House Republicans’ extremist anti-immigrant legislation that has n o chance of passage in the Senate nor would it be signed into law by President Biden.

“Johnson said he couldn’t do it, and [U.S. Rep. Derrick] Van Orden,” a far-right Republican from Wisconsin “called him ‘tubby’ and vowed to bring on the MTV [Motion to Vacate.]”

“No one in the group (Gaetz, Boebert, Burchett, Higgins, Donalds et al.) were threatening Johnson with an MTV,” Tsirkin added. “Van Orden seemed to escalate things dramatically…”

Despite Greene’s pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine positions, her falsehoods about “Ukrainian Nazis,” and Russians not slaughtering Ukrainian clergy, reporters continue to “swarm”:

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Afraid and Intimidated’: Trump Trial Juror Targeted by Fox News Dismissed

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