LGBTQ Policy - Obama Presidency Oral History

Ultimately, and despite these debates, priorities were pursued simultaneously, and often intersected with each other, as activists pressured the White House to act faster and more boldly. In Congress, the first item the administration pursued was hate crimes legislation. This legislative process culminated in Obama’s signing of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in late-October 2009. The act expanded existing federal hate crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability, and gave new powers to federal law enforcement authorities to investigate possible hate crimes. In project interviews, official narrators, alongside outside advocates including the relatives of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr., reflect on the long struggle that produced the bill. 

After Shepard-Byrd, activists increased pressure on the administration to end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, including by staging civil disobedience actions at the White House and interrupting Democratic Party events. While some activists urged Obama to unilaterally repeal the policy by executive action, the administration insisted that legislative repeal would offer a more durable settlement, and give the military space to smoothly implement the change. The project archive provides a panoramic view of the repeal process, providing details about the administration’s engagement with grassroots activists and advocacy organizations, the Pentagon’s review of servicemembers’ attitudes toward the policy and the possibility of its repeal, notable court challenges to the policy’s constitutionality, and the passage of repeal legislation in the lame duck session of the 111th Congress. 

Activists and advocates had long sought protection from employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, and versions of an Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that extended such protections had been introduced in Congress repeatedly since the 1970s. Lawmakers introduced transgender-inclusive versions of ENDA in the House and Senate during the Obama years, and though the Senate passed the bill with limited Republican support in November 2013, the Republican-controlled House refused to bring the bill to a vote. Unable to pass legislation in Congress, the White House sought to deploy the executive and administrative powers of the presidency to prevent discrimination and expand LGBTQ rights. These actions included an executive order protecting federal contractors from employment discrimination, an agency rule prohibiting discrimination against LGBT people in HUD-program housing, and a presidential memorandum ensuring that hospitals could not deny patient visitation rights on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. 

Perhaps the most high-profile LGBTQ policy issue of the Obama years was the struggle over same-sex marriage. Though Obama had publicly supported marriage equality in the 1990s, by the time he entered national politics his official position was that marriage was a union between a man and a woman. On the 2008 campaign, however, he had called for the full repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which denied federal recognition of state-granted same-sex marriages. DOMA’s constitutionality was regularly challenged, and, after becoming president, Obama needed to decide whether his administration would defend the law in court. Despite Obama’s personal opposition, but consistent with the Department of Justice practice of defending all federal laws, in 2009 the administration issued a brief defending DOMA. But in 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Obama had decided the law was unconstitutional, and instructed DOJ to stop defending it. In line with this evolution, in May 2012 Vice President Biden announced his support for marriage equality, and Obama followed with his own announcement six days later. 

Finally, in June 2015, the legal fight over marriage equality culminated in a landmark Supreme Court ruling that guaranteed same-sex couples’ right to marry. Across the project archive, narrators reflect on these legal and political processes, and share memories of the celebrations that followed the court’s decision.

The Obama Presidency Oral History project’s coverage of LGBTQ Policy overlaps and intersects with a number of other topic areas in the project archive, including the Supreme Court, Public Health, Human Rights, Veterans, and the People’s House. Among other issues, discussion of the administration’s policy on HIV/AIDS, use of the White House to celebrate and enhance the visibility of all Americans, and promotion of LGBTQ rights abroad can be found on these pages.