LOCAL S.C. win fuels Biden’s political comeback in his report, there is still plenty of room for LGBTQ voters to have an even bigger impact. “Hopefully her historic candidacy will get the attention and credibility it deserves,” longtime out Latina politico Ari Guttierez tells the Los Angeles Blade after she and her 9-year old daughter Emma Arámbula met Warren in the heart of East Los Angeles. And what role will former Mayor Pete Buttigieg play after Biden wistfully compared him to his own late son Bo Biden, the former Attorney General for Delaware. “We sent a message,” Buttigieg, 38, said, “to every kid out there wondering if whatever marks them out as different means they are somehow destined to be less than, to see that someone who once felt that exact same way can become a leading American presidential candidate with his husband at his side.” Chad Griffin, former president of the Human Rights Campaign, cast his ballot for Biden, a man he has long known. “America needs a leader in the White House who can help us navigate the tremendous challenges we’re facing on all front – someone who has a tested record of success, and an enlightened vision for the future to guide this nation back onto the path of progress,” Griffin said in a statement posted to Twitter. “I’m proud to endorse him and will fight like hell to get him elected.” It was Griffin who enlightened Biden about marriage equality. Anti-gay marriage Prop 8 was on everyone’s mind as President Barack Obama faced reelection in 2012. Obama campaign advisors David Axelrod and David Plouffe reached out to gay GOP strategist Ken Mehlman, former chair of the Republican National Committee who engineered President George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004, for advice since Mehlman was part a Griffincreated federal challenge to Prop 8. But while almost everyone was on board with Obama coming out in favor of marriage equality before the election, including
Vice President JOE BIDEN with JOHNNY and JOSIE WARD-LOMBARDO at a party at the home of their parents, SONNY WARd and MICHAEL LOMBARDO, in 2012. (Photo courtesy Michael Lombardo)
Michelle Obama, nothing happened. As Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigative reporter Jo Becker put it in her monumental book on Prop 8, “Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality,” Griffin felt bans like Prop 8 “sent a signal that there was something inherently wrong with gay men and lesbians” and permitted state sanctioned bullying and anti-LGBTQ laws. He’d asked Obama if there was anything he could do to help him “evolve” more quickly – especially since the pro-Prop 8 side wanted to use Obama’s opposition to their advantage. But the president put him off. Then, on April 19, 2012, Griffin attended a gay Democratic fundraiser he’d helped put together at Obama’s request at the home of Michael Lombardo, an HBO executive, and his husband, Sonny Ward, an architect. He wanted to ask Biden, the guest of honor, directly about marriage equality but he knew the answer. “But as he watched the hosts’ two children, ages 5 and 7, press flowers and
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a note into Biden’s hand, he changed his mind,” Becker writes. “They were in the home of two married men and their family. The Obama campaign wanted the support of the gay people in this room. The vice president should have to answer to them. When it was Griffin’s turn to speak, he said: ‘When you came in tonight, you met Michael and Sonny and their two beautiful kids. And I wonder if you can just sort of talk in a frank, honest way about your own personal views as it relates to equality, but specifically as it relates to marriage equality.’” Biden was clearly uncomfortable – he had sided with Obama in the issue. But then he totally surprised everyone. “’I look at those two beautiful kids,’ Biden began,” Becker reports. “‘I wish everybody could see this. All you got to do is look in the eyes of those kids. And no one can wonder, no one can wonder whether or not they are cared for and nurtured and loved and reinforced. And folks, what’s happening is, everybody is beginning to see it.
‘Things are changing so rapidly, it’s going to become a political liability in the near term for an individual to say, ‘I oppose gay marriage.’ Mark my words.’” Apparently, a dam had broken because Biden didn’t stop, asking aloud, what’s the problem? “’And my job — our job — is to keep this momentum rolling to the inevitable,’” Biden said, stunning everyone in the room. And he did keep the momentum going, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and answering the question directly and authentically. “I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties,” Biden said, noting that Obama, not Biden, sets policy. But the cosmos had changed and the Obama camp wasn’t happy. “He probably got out a little bit over his skis, but out of generosity of spirit,” Obama said, as if it was another Biden-ism. But shortly thereafter, Obama formally, if stiffly, came out in favor of marriage equality. And in his Inaugural Address on Jan. 21, 2013, Becker reports, “Obama drew a straight line from the civil rights fights based on race and gender to the current struggle for marriage equality. ‘Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law,’ the president said, ‘for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.’” “Joe Biden is a man of uncommon decency and integrity and heart,” Michael Lombardo tells the Los Angeles Blade. And perhaps, if Biden becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, he will use that decency as a tool in the 2020 election fight against profoundly indecent Donald Trump, with an assist from Wakanda coalition builder, Symone D. Sanders.