by Karen Ocamb

To many — Republicans and Democrats alike — the legacy of the Bush administration is a shredded U.S. Constitution, a severe financial recession and the artistic masterpiece of hope and “moral authority” known as the American Dream melting in the heat of unchecked U.S. aggression and political ruthlessness. New President Barack Obama is left holding the frame to that picture — a frame fashioned by the Founding Fathers — with an international community of well-wishers awaiting his leadership.

Let’s put this picture into perspective. The national debt is more than $10.6 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the federal deficit for 2009 will total $1.2 trillion—not counting the deficit expected from the enactment of Obama’s economic stimulus package. The CBO also expects federal revenues to decline by $166 billion, with the deep recession ending in the second half of the year as new work projects stem the high rate of unemployment. (California faces a $40 billion budget deficit.)

The world is hoping that Obama will pull off some sort of miracle, something like what the brilliant pilot of that US Airways plane pulled off, crash-landing in New York’s freezing Hudson River Jan. 15, but saving all 150 people on board.

LGBT people have been praying, too—not just for the new President to yank America out of dire straits but for Obama to build bridges to LGBT equality. Few are holding their breath, however, having trusted Democratic President Bill Clinton’s “vision” of LGBT inclusion, only to wind up with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the Defense of Marriage Act. Republican President George W. Bush promised to be a “uniter, not a divider” and then in 2004 proposed a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, as his political guru Karl Rove crafted anti-gay state initiatives to bring evangelical voters to the polls.

That the LGBT community has a right to eye Obama with suspicion was reinforced with his selection of pro-Prop. 8 evangelical pastor Rick Warren to deliver the Inauguration invocation and with the revelation of documents showing Obama once supported full marriage equality.

The Chicago LGBT newspaper the Windy City Times uncovered documents from 1996 when Obama was running for the Illinois state Senate. In one, he says, “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.” In the second, he writes by hand that he would support a resolution that states: “RESOLVED, the state should not interfere with same-gender couples who choose to marry and share fully and equally in the rights, responsibilities and commitment of civil marriage.”

But in 2004, when he was running for the U.S. Senate, he changed his position. “In a January 2004 interview I conducted with Obama at the Windy City Times’ office, Obama clearly stated that lack of support for full marriage equality was a matter of strategy rather than principle,” Times’ publisher and Executive Editor Tracy Baim said in her recent cover story. This year, Obama said he believes marriage is between a man and a woman, and while he supports civil unions, marriage is different “because God is in the mix.”

“Obama’s changed position on marriage seems to have been motivated primarily by a practical position that he believes you fight for what you can achieve. That is a strategy that can be easily justified,” Baim told IN Los Angeles magazine. “However, where I believe he has changed even further is to backtrack even on the concept of gay marriage, meaning that now he believes that marriage is more of a religious word that should not be applied to same-gender couples. So his diversion from 1996 has taken two tracks, one strategic, one religious, and it is the latter that has caused some concern … Obama has fallen back on this as a states issue, which is also difficult to rationalize, given the myriad ways the federal government is entwined in marriage. He has for sure devolved on this topic, not evolved, but I do not believe that means he doesn’t understand or support the basic concept of equal rights for gay couples.”

Meanwhile, scores of amicus briefs were filed in the case before the California Supreme Court asking that the court invalidate Prop. 8. One of the briefs was authored by renowned gay constitutional scholar Tobias Barrington Wolff, professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

“This lawsuit is about the rights of all minority communities in California,” Wolff told IN. “If a ballot initiative and simple majority vote could be used to take away the rights of one unpopular group, then the rights of any group could be subjected to a popular vote.  That is why some of the nation's leading civil rights organizations have joined together to support the challenge to Proposition 8.”

Anti-Prop. 8 activism continues, too, with many activists finding creative ways to keep the community engaged. On Jan. 10, for instance, the new group Equal Roots held a demonstration in West Hollywood during which the roughly 750 participants were treated to a campy rendition of Prop. 8: The Musical, featuring openly gay actor Wilson Cruz as Jesus.