Obama Salutes Gay Movement - Skips National Day of Prayer

From Focus on the Family:


Gay-Activist Movement to be Honored at White House

by Steve Jordahl, CitizenLink senior staff writer

Event comes just months after the Obama administration failed to acknowledge the National Day of Prayer with East Room celebration.


The Obama administration, which refused to send a representative to a Capitol Hill commemoration of the National Day of Prayer, is hosting a White House celebration of what most gay activists regard as the birth of their movement.

President Barack Obama has invited key leaders in the gay community to the East Room on Monday to commemorate the Stonewall Riots of June 28, 1969, during which hundreds of homosexuals threw bottles and garbage at police and set a gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, on fire.

Tim Goeglein, Focus on the Family's vice president of external relations and a former special assistant to President George W. Bush, said the White House event is a boon to the gay lobby, which has been becoming impatient with Obama.

"The president of the United State has the largest bully pulpit in the country and clearly gets to pick and choose among the issues that he would want to highlight," Goeglein said. "There's an enormous amount of pressure (to advocate for pro-gay policies). The president has partially extended health benefits to homosexual partners. The president is of course now doing a commemoration, a very important commemoration.

"But I think the larger goals are the ones that he's already committed to doing — overturning the DOMA , which is the protection of marriage in the states, and lifting the ban on 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' " which prohibits "out" homosexuals from serving in the armed forces.

What's interesting about the Stonewall event, Goeglein added, is that it comes just months after the White House did not commemorate the National Day of Prayer.

"It's disappointing," he explained, "that after several years of celebrating the National Day of Prayer in the East Room at the White House, the day unfortunately in this instance does not get equal billing.

"It's a mistake not to be able to commemorate the National Day of Prayer at the highest possible levels, and we're very hopeful that this will be rectified next year."