Obama campaign seeks gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender support

http://miamiherald.typepad.com/gaysouthflorida/2008/06/obama-campaign.html

An e-mail solicitation I came across on Thursday:

BarackObama.com

As many of you know, I was an advisor to Senator Edwards until he dropped out of the race. Shortly after that time, I endorsed Barack Obama for President and I, along with my LGBT colleagues from the Edwards Campaign, was welcomed by the Obama Campaign with open arms.

There is so much at stake for our community and all Americans in this election. One thing is clear -- we cannot win unless we are unified.

I am writing to personally invite you to join the Obama Campaign and to participate in an important LGBT community conference call tomorrow.

I have signed up on the Obama campaign website (not required but I wanted to), and I have signed up to participate in the conference call.

I will try to relate what I hear in a post, though I suspect that the campaign will post the text of the conference call as well.

I pray that the change that he talks about comes to pass for us and for our country and our world.

-Sandy

I also signed up to participate. With any luck, I'll get to say something to the campaign about gender identity and expression being included in all anti-discrimination legislation.

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Well, I just got off the phone. Speaking as an Obama supporter, it was a disappointment. 3/4 of the call seemed to be a promo for HRC, complete with guest appearances by Elizabeth Birch and Joe Solomese.  The remaining 1/4 was an appeal to win over Clinton supporters.

Nobody got to ask anything, so I've emailed my comments.

Zythyra

I called into the conference call about ten minutes early.  Approximately five minutes past the hour, the conference all started.

It was not attended by Barack but his deputy campaign director and others.

They did not take questions, though they said that there would be another conference call later and they would solicit questions and it would be attended by Mr. Obama.

The did say that they would be putting together the nationwide campaign structure together very soon and were looking for volunteers to help with the campaign on every level.  They also said that anyone who wanted to help would not be turned away.

The conference call seemed to be pleading to the LGBT community who had been Clinton supporters to put their support into the Obama campaign.

There were other speakers who talked about the commitment that the Obama campaign and the Obama's personally support the community.  There were a couple of references to the republican candidate and indicated that the opponent was not fully supportive of our people and community.  In many ways I did find the call to be encouraging and uplifting.  However one of the speakers was Joe Salmonese from HRC praising both Clinton and Obama for their unflagging support of the gay and lesbian community.

Mr Solmonese never referred to Bisexuals or Transgendered by name and only said LGBT when referring to the whole community.  I was not impressed, nor surprised.

I am hoping that there will be a blanket solicitation of questions for Mr. Obama to answer for the next call.  If so I will post the address and hopefully not only myself but others from this group can send questions regarding the bisexual and transgendered community as well as the gays and lesbians.

-Sandy