White House Twitter session: no news

There was no breaking news on Thursday morning’s “White House Chat” with the LGBT community, but the questions posed were probably a good barometer of what many in the community believe President Obama should be doing in 2012.

The White House’s openly gay Associate Director of Public Engagement Gautam Raghavan and Senior Policy Advisor Miriam Vogel hosted the one-hour online event on Twitter. They responded to seven questions from people and groups—out of about a dozen questions submitted.

The LGBT activist protest organization GetEQUAL asked, “What steps will [the president] take to ensure LGBT Americans are fully equal under the law? And please don’t pivot to [Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell].”

Vogel and Raghavan responded that “POTUS is for DOMA repeal, inclusive ENDA and his administration has taken many steps to protect LGBT Americans.”

GetEQUAL pushed back, tweeting “That’s great—what is he planning to get done in 2012? Being ‘for’ those things doesn’t actually make us more equal.”

Vogel and Raghavan did not respond, a luxury of White House access through Twitter.

Nor did they respond to political blogger Joe Sudbay’s question, “When can we expect the President to finally evolve on marriage equality?” He noted that it has been 15 months since the president first indicated that he thinks his personal discomfort with the idea of same-sex marriage is “evolving.” Obama made that initial statement in a group interview with Sudbay and other political bloggers.

Immigration Equality asked about immigration reform to allow the partners of gay citizens to achieve legal residency the same as the spouses of straight citizens. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force asked about the administration’s willingness to support non-discrimination policies for federal contractors.

The full LGBT session can be viewed at whitehouse.gov or storify.com/whitehouse.

5 Responses to White House Twitter session: no news

  1. Bruce says:

    Can you provide a more complete URL for the LGBT session because I couldn’t find it at the links provided: whitehouse.gov or storify.com/whitehouse?

  2. David says:

    How odd… At the storify.com link, the transcript appears to omit any question by the Task Force (as described above) and any answer to it from the WH people. Were these edited out?!

  3. Lisa Keen says:

    The storify.com link shows what appeared in the Twitter @WHLive. All questions, including those from the Task Force, were posed at #WHChat. But only the questions to which White House officials responded appear in @WHLive.

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