National
Behind the scenes of the Obama campaign
LGBT staffers take key roles in 2012 effort
President Obama (Blade file photo by Michael Key)
[Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series.]
Gay and lesbian staffers have taken key roles ranging from public outreach to battleground state strategy in the campaign already underway to re-elect President Obama to the White House in 2012.
The Washington Blade interviewed four gay and lesbian staffers working to re-elect Obama from the campaign headquarters in Chicago. This article is the second in a two-part series and features interviews with two of the campaign workers: Jamie Citron, LGBT vote director for Project Vote, and Karine Jean-Pierre, deputy battleground states director.
As LGBT vote director for Project Vote, Citron, who’s 28 and gay, is focused on monitoring the news developments and needs of the LGBT community. Established in August, Project Vote is the Obama campaign’s initiative aimed at encouraging participation among Democratic base constituencies, including LGBT Americans.
“Usually when I first make it into the office, it’s trying to catch up on the community,” Citron said. “It’s seeing what the conversations are, what the buzz was overnight on the listservs. It’s about reading the blogs and reading the LGBT press and seeing what the top lines of the stories are today.”
Other daily duties for Citron are meeting with the rest of the Project Vote team to discuss the best ways for taking the Obama campaign’s messages to the Democratic Party’s constituencies — as well as integrating the concerns of those constituencies into the campaign.
“Most important to me in my mind, each of us kind of figures out how we can work together across constituencies and make sure that we are engaging people as whole people instead of just focusing on one block at a time,” Citron said.
Citron’s role with the Obama campaign is similar to his previous role at the Democratic National Committee, where he served as director of the LGBT leadership council. Citron, who was also involved in the 2008 campaign, said he transferred back to the campaign to take a more direct role in the “engine working the campaign” to re-elect Obama.
A Chicago native, Citron said he also wanted to return to the Windy City to be closer to his boyfriend of three years, Tyler, who’s 30 and a lawyer living in the area. The two met in 2007 at an Obama fundraiser. Citron asked that Tyler’s last name be withheld.
The scope of Jean-Pierre’s role is somewhat larger as she develops campaign strategy for the battleground states in 2012. A key task: providing resources to states and figuring out the best way for them to get the word out for the campaign.
“To me, getting the president re-elected right now is the most important thing that I can be doing with my life,” Jean-Pierre said.
Jean-Pierre’s role is similar to her duties in 2008 as the Obama campaign’s southern political director. Upon Obama’s election, Jean-Pierre, a lesbian, became White House liaison to the Labor Department and later became regional director in the White House Office of Political Affairs.
For Jean-Pierre, the decision to work as part of the 2012 campaign as opposed to staying at the White House was an easy one.
Under the Obama administration, the LGBT community has seen significant achievements, including passage an expanded federal hate crimes law and repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” In February, Obama declared that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional — after initially defending the anti-gay law in court — and has been filing legal briefs against the statute.
Still, Obama has yet to fulfill all promises to the LGBT community on which he campaigned in 2008. One notable outstanding goal is passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Obama’s lack of support of same-sex marriage continues to disappoint LGBT advocates.
But those working on the Obama campaign maintain has been a friend to the community and will continue to be an LGBT advocate during a second term in office.
As a recent example of support, Citron cited the news of the Obama administration reasserting that DOMA is unconstitutional in a legal brief against the anti-gay statute in the case of Windsor v. United States as well as an announcement that the Department of Homeland Security will work to take foreign nationals in same-sex relationships out of the deportation pipeline.
“I think the conversation between the LGBT community and the president certainly has been robust over the three years, and I think a lot of good things have come out about it,” Citron said. “Is the conversation finished? No. But I think it’s important that we acknowledge all that has come out from that and all that continues to come out.”
Campaign workers may also have their work cut out for them in convincing the general public to send the president back to the White House. According to recent polls, Obama’s approval ratings are at an all-time low. A Gallup poll published over the weekend found the president’s approval rating stands at just 42 percent.
Citron maintained LGBT people should be part of the effort to re-elect Obama.
“I think that the LGBT community could agree with me when I say I know that a second Obama term means more forward progress, whereas with a Republican entering the White House in 2012, not only does that signal the end to that progress, but it signals the start of a backwards march,” Citron said. “I think that’s something we should all be concerned about.”
National
Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information
Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources
Nine private medical and public health advocacy organizations, including two from D.C., filed a lawsuit on May 20 in federal court in Seattle challenging what it calls the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s illegal deletion of dozens or more of its webpages containing health related information, including HIV information.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, names as defendants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS itself, and several agencies operating under HHS and its directors, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration.
“This action challenges the widespread deletion of public health resources from federal agencies,” the lawsuit states. “Dozens (if not more) of taxpayer-funded webpages, databases, and other crucial resources have vanished since January 20, 2025, leaving doctors, nurses, researchers, and the public scrambling for information,” it says.
“These actions have undermined the longstanding, congressionally mandated regime; irreparably harmed Plaintiffs and others who rely on these federal resources; and put the nation’s public health infrastructure in unnecessary jeopardy,” the lawsuit continues.
It adds, “The removal of public health resources was apparently prompted by two recent executive orders – one focused on ‘gender ideology’ and the other targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) programs. Defendants implemented these executive orders in a haphazard manner that resulted in the deletion (inadvertent or otherwise) of health-related websites and databases, including information related to pregnancy risks, public health datasets, information about opioid-use disorder, and many other valuable resources.”
The lawsuit does not mention that it was President Donald Trump who issued the two executive orders in question.
A White House spokesperson couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit.
While not mentioning Trump by name, the lawsuit names as defendants in addition to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., Matthew Buzzelli, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health; Martin Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; Thomas Engels, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration; and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.
The 44-page lawsuit complaint includes an addendum with a chart showing the titles or descriptions of 49 “affected resource” website pages that it says were deleted because of the executive orders. The chart shows that just four of the sites were restored after initially being deleted.
Of the 49 sites, 15 addressed LGBTQ-related health issues and six others addressed HIV issues, according to the chart.
“The unannounced and unprecedented deletion of these federal webpages and datasets came as a shock to the medical and scientific communities, which had come to rely on them to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, assist physicians and other clinicians in daily care, and inform the public about a wide range of healthcare issues,” the lawsuit states.
“Health professionals, nonprofit organizations, and state and local authorities used the websites and datasets daily in care for their patients, to provide resources to their communities, and promote public health,” it says.
Jose Zuniga, president and CEO of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC), one of the organizations that signed on as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement that the deleted information from the HHS websites “includes essential information about LGBTQ+ health, gender and reproductive rights, clinical trial data, Mpox and other vaccine guidance and HIV prevention resources.”
Zuniga added, “IAPAC champions evidence-based, data-informed HIV responses and we reject ideologically driven efforts that undermine public health and erase marginalized communities.”
Lisa Amore, a spokesperson for Whitman-Walker Health, D.C.’s largest LGBTQ supportive health services provider, also expressed concern about the potential impact of the HHS website deletions.
“As the region’s leader in HIV care and prevention, Whitman-Walker Health relies on scientific data to help us drive our resources and measure our successes,” Amore said in response to a request for comment from the Washington Blade.
“The District of Columbia has made great strides in the fight against HIV,” Amore said. “But the removal of public facing information from the HHS website makes our collective work much harder and will set HIV care and prevention backward,” she said.
The lawsuit calls on the court to issue a declaratory judgement that the “deletion of public health webpages and resources is unlawful and invalid” and to issue a preliminary or permanent injunction ordering government officials named as defendants in the lawsuit “to restore the public health webpages and resources that have been deleted and to maintain their web domains in accordance with their statutory duties.”
It also calls on the court to require defendant government officials to “file a status report with the Court within twenty-four hours of entry of a preliminary injunction, and at regular intervals, thereafter, confirming compliance with these orders.”
The health organizations that joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs include the Washington State Medical Association, Washington State Nurses Association, Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Academy Health, Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Fast-Track Cities Institute, International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, National LGBT Cancer Network, and Vermont Medical Society.
The Fast-Track Cities Institute and International Association of Providers of AIDS Care are based in D.C.
U.S. Federal Courts
Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has struck down guidelines by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission designed to protect against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
The EEOC in April 2024 updated its guidelines to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which determined that discrimination against transgender people constituted sex-based discrimination as proscribed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
To ensure compliance with the law, the agency recommended that employers honor their employees’ preferred pronouns while granting them access to bathrooms and allowing them to wear dress code-compliant clothing that aligns with their gender identities.
While the the guidelines are not legally binding, Kacsmaryk ruled that their issuance created “mandatory standards” exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority that were “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”
“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the opinion.
The case, which was brought by the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, presents the greatest setback for LGBTQ inclusive workplace protections since President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order on the first day of his second term directing U.S. federal agencies to recognize only two genders as determined by birth sex.
Last month, top Democrats from both chambers of Congress reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive protections against discrimination into federal law, covering employment as well as areas like housing and jury service.
The White House
Trump travels to Middle East countries with death penalty for homosexuality
President traveled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates
Homosexuality remains punishable by death in two of the three Middle East countries that President Donald Trump visited last week.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among the handful of countries in which anyone found guilty of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual relations could face the death penalty.
Trump was in Saudi Arabia from May 13-14. He traveled to Qatar on May 14.
“The law prohibited consensual same-sex sexual conduct between men but did not explicitly prohibit same-sex sexual relations between women,” notes the State Department’s 2023 human rights report, referring specifically to Qatar’s criminalization law. “The law was not systematically enforced. A man convicted of having consensual same-sex sexual relations could receive a sentence of seven years in prison. Under sharia, homosexuality was punishable by death; there were no reports of executions for this reason.”
Trump on May 15 arrived in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
The State Department’s 2023 human rights report notes the “penalty for individuals who engaged in ‘consensual sodomy with a man'” in the country “was a minimum prison sentence of six months if the individual’s partner or guardian filed a complaint.”
“There were no known reports of arrests or prosecutions for consensual same-sex sexual conduct. LGBTQI+ identity, real or perceived, could be deemed an act against ‘decency or public morality,’ but there were no reports during the year of persons prosecuted under these provisions,” reads the report.
The report notes Emirati law also criminalizes “men who dressed as women or entered a place designated for women while ‘disguised’ as a woman.” Anyone found guilty could face up to a year in prison and a fine of up to 10,000 dirhams ($2,722.60.)
Trump returned to the U.S. on May 16.
The White House notes Trump during the trip secured more than $2 trillion “in investment agreements with Middle Eastern nations ($200 billion with the United Arab Emirates, $600 billion with Saudi Arabia, and $1.2 trillion with Qatar) for a more safe and prosperous future.”
Former President Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2022.
Saudi Arabia is scheduled to host the 2034 World Cup. The 2022 World Cup took place in Qatar.
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