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Carney won’t say if Obama will push for gay inclusion in immigration bill

Proposal is ‘compromise,’ urges observers to allow process to play out

Published

13 years ago

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Jay Carney, White House, gay news, Washington Blade
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney won't say if Obama will push to include gay couples in immigration reform (Blade file photo by Michael Key)

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney declined to say if Obama will push to include gay couples in immigration reform. (Blade file photo by Michael Key)

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney refused to say on Wednesday whether President Obama would push to include a provision for bi-national gay couples as part of comprehensive immigration reform.

In response to a question from National Public Radio’s Ari Shapiro, Carney emphasized the immigration bill produced by a group of U.S. senators known as the “Gang of Eight” is a compromise and the result of bipartisan agreement.

“As the president said, this bill is clearly a compromise, and no one will get everything they want from it, including the president,” Carney said. “That’s the nature of compromise, but the bill is largely consistent with the principles he has laid out repeatedly.”

Still, Carney said the legislative process is ongoing and that “we will see” what changes are made to the legislation before it reaches the president’s desk.

“Have you ever seen a bill of this size go from inception to a president’s desk unaltered?” Carney said. “So, we’ll see where this goes. So, I don’t want to characterize any provision within it. I want to broadly make the point that the president made yesterday that it is consistent with his principles and that this is significant and important progress and the members of the ‘Gang of Eight’ should be commended for the progress they’ve made.”

The 844-page comprehensive measure lacks a provision along the lines of the Uniting American Families Act that would enable gay Americans to sponsor their same-sex partners for residency in the United States.

The president has included language for bi-national same-sex couples as part of his plan for the comprehensive immigration bill. Carney’s remarks are consistent with what Obama has said previously: that he doesn’t want to be “heavy handed” in telling Congress what should be included in the legislation.

LGBT advocates, who expressed disappointment that a provision for bi-national gay couples wasn’t included in the base bill, are pushing for an amendment in the Senate Judiciary Committee to include UAFA as part of the final legislation.

The exchange between Shapiro and Carney follows:

Ari Shapiro: I want to ask about the immigration bill. President Obama spoke positively about the compromise offered yesterday, which does not include citizenship for same-sex couples of different nationalities. Is that something the president will push for in a final bill, or is just the cost of compromise?

Jay Carney: The president did, as you know, meet with Sens. Schumer and McCain, who briefed him on the bipartisan immigration reform bill that they have drafted and has now been submitted. As the president said, this bill is clearly a compromise, and no one will get everything they want from it, including the president. That’s the nature of compromise, but the bill is largely consistent with the principles he has laid out repeatedly. It would strengthen security at our borders and hold employers more accountable, and it would provide a pathway to earned citizenship for the 11 million individuals who are already in this country illegally, and that is significant progress, as the president noted in his statement. This process will continue, we will work with lawmakers of both parties as the bill is considered, but it very important to note that this is a bipartisan bill that represents compromise and reflects and is consistent with the principles the president has long supported.”

Shapiro: Does that mean he’s willing to let that provision go?

Carney: I’m not going to negotiate out the process that will take some time in the Senate as this moves bill forward, or assess individual items within it. It certainly the case, as the president said in his statement, that not everything in the bill reflects how he would write it, but it broadly is consistent with his principles. And we will see — have you ever seen a bill of this size go from inception to a president’s desk unaltered? So, we’ll see where this goes. So, I don’t want to characterize any provision within it. I want to broadly make the point that the president made yesterday that it is consistent with his principles and that this is significant and important progress and the members of the “Gang of Eight” should be commended for the progress they’ve made. But we’re not there yet, and this is a big piece of business that requires broad bipartisan support. And much work remains to be done.

 

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Congress

HRC president campaigns for Chris Pappas in NH

Gay congressman running to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen

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1 day ago

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August 31, 2026

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Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson, left, campaigns with U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) in Manchester, N.H., on Aug. 30, 2026. (Photo courtesy of the Human Rights Campaign)

Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson on Sunday campaigned for U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) in New Hampshire.

Robinson traveled to Manchester, the state’s largest city, nine days before the Sept. 8 primary that will determine who will vie for retiring U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.)’s seat.

Former U.S. Sen. John E. Sununu, who represented New Hampshire in the U.S. Senate from 2003-2009, will face off against former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, who represented Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate from 2010-2013, in the Republican primary.

Karishma Manzur is among the Democrats challenging Pappas.

A poll the University of New Hampshire Survey Center released on Aug. 26 shows Sununu is ahead of Brown. The same survey shows Pappas ahead of Manzur and his other Democratic challengers.

The UNH Survey Center poll shows Sununu ahead of Pappas by a 45-43 percent margin if they were to face off in the general election. The margin of error is +/-2.1 percent.

Pappas would become the first openly gay man elected to the U.S. Senate if he were to win in November.

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Congress

Chris Van Hollen says the Democratic Party needs change. Is he the one to lead it?

Senator is backing anti-establishment Democrats across the country

Published

6 days ago

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August 26, 2026

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By LEE O. SANDERLIN | The Democratic Party is having something of an identity crisis — losing to President Donald Trump twice in three elections will do that.

Should the party embrace anti-establishment figures who espouse progressive policy ideas like Medicare for all and rhetoric about unrigging the economy for the 1 percent? Or should Democrats try to appeal to moderates who want to return to semi-normalcy in a time of political upheaval?

Although he’s been in Congress since 2002, with key leadership roles throughout his tenure, Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, 67, counts himself firmly in the anti-establishment camp.

The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.

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Politics

Log Cabin Republicans remove transgender rights from mission

Decision made after ‘significant discussion’ with members, board

Published

2 weeks ago

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August 21, 2026

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From left, former U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell and then-Log Cabin Republicans President Charles Moran attend the Log Cabin Republicans Big Tent Event at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Log Cabin Republicans, an organization that formerly represented LGBTQ conservatives, has removed advocating for transgender and queer rights from its “renewed” national advocacy focus.

In an opinion piece written by Log Cabin Republicans President Ross Hemminger for the conservative media outlet Town Hall, he announced that trans rights would no longer be part of what the organization advocates for through conservative leadership and candidates.

In his piece, Hemminger wrote that after “significant discussion” with members and Log Cabin Republicans’ board of directors, the organization’s leadership voted to “refine Log Cabin Republicans’ national advocacy focus to concentrate specifically on issues of sexual orientation and conservative values,” a focus that does not include trans people.

“We have fought for the right to legally marry who we love, serve our country and our communities openly and proudly, and to enjoy the same inalienable rights afforded to all law-abiding Americans — and we succeeded,” Hemminger wrote. “However, the new era of gender identity politics is not the movement we supported and fought for. Gay men and women are losing public support across the country, and support for gay marriage and other once-widely accepted rights is eroding. Why? Because many voters today weren’t alive or cognizant of the politics of gay marriage winding its way through the courts and gaining ground in public opinion. Their view of the gay community is based on today’s radical transgender activists with their unnecessary and discomfiting focus on America’s youth.”

Hemminger then went on to argue that trans advocacy has shifted to focusing primarily on minors — a characterization that does not reflect the breadth of issues trans advocates address.

“They push schools to teach radical gender ideology; they want biological men in women’s sports regardless of the consequences; perhaps most offensively, they support gender reassignment treatments for minors, often without the knowledge or consent of the parents, knowing full well these treatments are mostly irreversible,” he wrote.

Hemminger and many right-wing political leaders have continued to assert this false reality as fact.

A Harvard-affiliated study found approximately 2.1 gender-affirming surgeries occur per 100,000 trans and gender-diverse minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria, underscoring how uncommon these procedures are among minors. In addition to the option of surgery for those who think it’s right for them, there is an array of other medically sound options to treat gender dysphoria, which according to KFF, an independent source for health policy research and polling, includes “medical, surgical, mental health, and non-medical services for transgender and nonbinary people.”

Additionally trans advocacy is not as narrow as Hemminger makes it seem in his opinion piece.

There are a slew of issues the trans community faces — and fights for — on a daily basis that have nothing to do with healthcare. Those include obtaining government documents that accurately reflect one’s gender identity, multiple elements of family law that include the right to marry and adopt children as straight couples can, protections from violence, hate crime protections, the right to serve in the military, access to bathrooms corresponding with their gender, and the right to education.

Despite the overwhelming number of issues trans people — regardless of political affiliation — have to struggle with as a result of systemic gaps in protections that are supposed to be afforded to everyone under the law, they remain vulnerable to unequal treatment.

Despite this shift, Log Cabin Republicans has committed to standing with the Republican Party rather than LGBTQ people as a whole. The organization was initially founded as a loosely connected network of local California social clubs made up of LGBTQ conservatives in the late 1970s before eventually emerging as a national political organization in the early 1990s under its founding executive director, Rich Tafel.

As the organization continued to gain momentum, it endorsed a handful of Republicans who voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, the 2022 law that federally recognized marriage equality for same-sex couples.

The Washington Blade reached out to Log Cabin Republicans for comment but did not hear back by the time of publication.

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