From the Archives: Gay groups comment on Obama's 2014 State of the Union address

Gay groups comment on Obama's 2014 State of the Union address
January 29, 2014 11:22 PM MST



Two gay conservative organizations, Log Cabin Republicans and GOProud, issued statements this week in response to President Barack Obama's 2014 State of the Union message.

Log Cabin

The older group, Log Cabin Republicans, released a statement from its executive director, Gregory Angelo, soon after Obama concluded his address to Congress on January 28.

“For a moment,” Angelo said, “I thought the news accidentally re-ran last year’s State of the Union, because all I really saw was more of the same.”

Obama's “only new ideas,” he continued, “involved using ‘a pen and a phone’ to push a liberal agenda for which hard-working Americans have no appetite.”

Angelo criticized “the absence of any mention of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act for LGBT workers” as well as Obama's “threat to exercise unilateral Executive actions with the explosive potential to ignite class warfare, while at the same time remaining silent on signing a common-sense Executive Order barring federal workplace discrimination.”

He called that last item “an empty promise to LGBT Americans that stands unfulfilled after six years. That’s one re-run we’re tired of seeing.”

GOProud
The next day, GOProud – which calls itself “a national organization of gay and straight Americans seeking to promote freedom by supporting free markets, limited government and respect for individual rights” – issued its own statement in reaction to the President's remarks.

GOProud caustically said that Obama's speech was made up of “the same baseless platitude- and hope-laden rhetoric that we’ve seen in every one of his flowery speeches. Fortunately, the American people don’t buy it anymore. The only thing new in the President’s address was the announcement that his vague agenda will now be guaranteed by threat of executive order.”

On specific issues, the statement (unattributed to any individual) continued by noting that “the President talked a good game about the need for quality education, but failed to mention anything about school choice. He talked about the minimum wage but did little more than toss out an arbitrary number to pacify his ultra-left wing groupies.”

The President, GOProud said, “spoke eloquently about the benefits of ending wars in the Middle East, yet spent a good portion of his time convincing Americans that they should instead be at war with each other. It’s always the us-versus-them mentality with Democrats, as they can’t seem to get Americans to believe in their message without convincing them to hate someone.”

Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) began in California in 1977 and has grown into a national organization with some three dozen local and state chapters. GOProud was started by former LCR members in 2009.

Publisher's note: This article is part of a series to mark June as Gay Pride Month. It was originally published on Examiner.com on January 29, 2014. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.