Dana Beyer
Executive Director, Gender Rights Maryland
Obama's Second Inaugural Address and My Personal Journey From the Stonewall to the National Mall
Posted: 01/24/2013 3:22 pm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/obama-second-inaugural-address-stonewall_b_2543197.html (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/obama-second-inaugural-address-stonewall_b_2543197.html)
The president, 150 years after Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and 50 years after Dr. King's grand moment on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, named a Methodist church in upstate New York, a bridge in Alabama and a bar in Greenwich Village as way stations along America's road toward fully upholding the ideal that all are created equal. Not only did he highlight the unalterable link between the LGBT civil rights movement and both the women's and African-American civil rights movements, which has the potential to revise the way black and white Americans engage with the LGBT rights movement, but he alliteratively identified our quest for equal rights as gay and trans Americans as part of the fundamental quest for freedom that is America. I can't imagine any rhetorical device more powerful than that.
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It has been noted that the president did not use the word "transgender." I noticed that, too, but I paid it little mind. I know that not only has the president done a remarkable amount of good for trans people (in some cases more sweepingly than for cis gay people), we were also there at Stonewall. We have had disputes over who cast the first stone at the bar, but what is not in dispute is that trans women and gender-transgressive drag queens played an integral part, perhaps even a leading role, in the uprising. So when the president links Stonewall with Selma (which also happens to be my mother's name) and Seneca Falls, I feel that he's speaking to me as well as all my gay friends and allies.