National

LGBT voters approve of Obama’s performance: poll

But numbers slip on president’s handling of gay issues

Published

16 years ago

July 22, 2010

President Obama received high marks in an unscientific straw poll of LGBT voters the Blade conducted during Capital Pride. (Photo by Pete Souza, courtesy of White House)

Nearly 77 percent of LGBT participants in an unscientific straw poll the Washington Blade conducted during last month’s Capital Pride street festival said they approve of the job President Barack Obama is doing as president.

The president’s 76.9 percent approval rating among the LGBT respondents — most of whom said they live in D.C., Maryland or Virginia — far exceeds the 46 percent approval rating he received from American voters nationwide who participated in a Gallup Poll in June.

Just over 17 percent of the 519 LGBT people who responded to the Blade straw poll said they disapprove of the president’s job performance, and about 6 percent said they had no opinion.

In a separate question on the Blade straw poll, about 51 percent of LGBT respondents said they approve of the job Obama is doing in “addressing LGBT-related issues.” On the matter, about 36 percent said they disapprove and about 13 percent said they had no opinion.

A third question asking respondents to grade Obama “on his handling of LGBT issues” showed a range of opinions. About 8 percent of the straw poll’s LGBT respondents gave Obama an “A” grade, whereas 37.7 percent gave him a “B,” 37.5 percent gave him a “C,” about 13 percent gave him a “D,” and about 2 percent gave him an “F.” The remaining respondents had no opinion.

The Blade straw poll follows a year in which the president has faced sharp criticism from some LGBT activists who say he hasn’t been forceful enough in pushing for LGBT-related bills in Congress, including legislation to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

At the time of his election in November 2008, most LGBT activists agreed that Obama was about to become the nation’s most LGBT-supportive president. As a candidate, Obama said he supported civil unions rather than same-sex marriage, but expressed strong support on virtually all other LGBT issues.

Among other things, he called for repealing “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and the Defense of Marriage Act, a measure passed by Congress in 1996 that federally defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The act bars married same-sex couples joined in states that allow same-sex marriage from receiving any of the federal rights or benefits of marriage that wedded opposite-sex couples receive.

The president has continued to speak in favor of repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and DOMA, has appointed a record number of high-level openly LGBT officials throughout the federal government, and has hosted LGBT events at the White House.

His LGBT supporters say the criticism is unfair. They note that the Obama administration has taken extensive action on the LGBT front and should not be held responsible for inaction by Congress, which has stalled in the approval of most LGBT-related bills.

That the Blade straw poll shows the president with an overall 76.9 percent approval rating among LGBT respondents suggests large numbers of LGBT people continue to have confidence in Obama while having concerns about his handling of at least some LGBT-related issues.

“I think the overall view is that we still like him,” said Peter Rosenstein, a gay Democratic activist.

“But I think it shows there’s a feeling it would be very nice if he spoke out on our issues in the same forceful way he did about health care to the Congress,” Rosenstein said. “There’s a frustration that he is not speaking out forcefully enough on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and on [the Employment Non-Discrimination Act] and our community wants to see more action.”

Andrew Tobias, who’s gay and serves as treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, said he understands the frustration of some of the Blade poll respondents who are disappointed that more LGBT-related advances have not materialized.

“But we also need to recognize that in less than two years, with so much else on his plate, Obama’s made a terrific start, and a night-and-day difference over where we were or where we would have been with [Republican presidential candidate John] McCain.”

Tobias said the Blade poll results show an overwhelming majority gave the president a favorable rating and a passing grade.

“If you had asked people to rate the Republicans, virtually 100 percent would have flunked them outright,” he said.

But Clarke Cooper, executive director of the gay partisan group Log Cabin Republicans, said the Blade poll indicates that LGBT voters are questioning the president’s actions on LGBT issues, especially the administration’s decision to oppose in court a Log Cabin lawsuit seeking to overturn the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ law.

“It is presumptuous of President Obama and the DNC to assume LGBT voters will march in blind lock-step support of the president,” Cooper said.

Organizers of the Capital Pride festival, the D.C. area’s annual LGBT Pride event, estimated about 200,000 people turned out for the event, which was held June 13 along Pennsylvania Avenue near the U.S. Capitol.

The Blade staff invited festival attendees to participate in the straw poll as they walked past the Blade’s booth. Participation included filling out a one-page, confidential questionnaire and placing the completed questionnaire in a closed ballot box.

Of the 559 respondents, about 59 percent identified as gay, about 26 percent as lesbian, about 5 percent as bisexual, about 1 percent as transgender, and about 3 percent as queer. The remaining 6 percent identified as straight.

The Blade isolated the respondents identifying as straight from its calculation of the results so that a more accurate presentation of the straw poll’s LGBT sample could be obtained.

A separate calculation of the poll’s 36 straight respondents, showed that about 72 percent approved of the job the president is doing, while about 22 percent disapproved and about 5 percent had no opinion. On the question of how the president was doing on LGBT-related issues, about 34 percent of the straight respondents expressed approval, while some 25 percent expressed disapproval and 40 percent had no opinion.

Among all straw poll respondents, about 82 percent identified themselves as white, about 10 percent as black, 5 percent as Latino, about 3 percent as Asian/Pacific Islander, and another 3 percent as other.

Similar to nationwide public opinion polls such as the Gallup Poll, black respondents to the Blade poll gave a higher approval rating to the president than white respondents.

On the Blade poll’s question on whether respondents approve or disapprove of how Obama is doing as president, nearly 91 percent of the black LGBT respondents said they approve compared to less than 2 percent who said they disapprove. The remaining 7 percent of black LGBT respondents had no opinion.

On the same question, more than 77 percent of white LGBT respondents said they approve of the job the president is doing compared to about 18 percent who said they disapproved, while about 4 percent had no opinion.

The difference between black and white respondents narrowed on the question of how the president is doing on LGBT-related issues. About 60 percent of black respondents said they approved of the president’s handling of LGBT issues, while about 19 percent said they disapproved and some 21 percent had no opinion on the question.

Among white respondents, nearly 50 percent said they approved of President Obama’s handling of LGBT-related issues and about 35 percent said they disapproved, while about 15 percent said they had no opinion.

Gallup Poll results from a June survey shows 46 percent of American voters approve of Obama’s job performance. A Rasmussen Poll also conducted in July shows that just 27 percent of the respondents “strongly approve” of the overall job the president is doing compared to 43 percent who “strongly disapprove.”

High unemployment rates and the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster were among the issues that the Gallup and Rasmussen polls indicated were factors in respondents saying they disapprove of the job the president is doing.

Dan Pinello, who’s gay and a political science professor at the City University of New York, said the overall support the Blade straw poll found for Obama’s job performance is consistent with national exit polls of LGBT voters conducted by the news media for presidential elections.

He noted that the exit polls have consistently shown that LGBT voters support the Democratic presidential candidate at about 75 percent.

Pinello said he was unsurprised over the Blade poll finding that the Obama approval rating drops to about 50 percent on the question of how the president is handling LGBT-related issues. He noted that since the sample consists of self-identified LGBT people at a Pride event in Washington, the respondents most likely are “skewed” toward more politically aware people.

“But in the minds of many in our community, Barack Obama has not lived up to his campaign promises,” Pinello said. “Plus, Barack Obama has had an ambitious political agenda, much of which he’s accomplished. He got the health reform bill through Congress. He got the stimulus package passed. He got financial reform passed. Lots of major, consequential, historic legislation has passed in the last year and a half. And I think a lot of gay people, especially in the nation’s capital who are very attuned to these issues, are looking at that and saying, ‘Why not us?’”

National

DOJ seeks to dismiss some claims in gay FBI employee’s bias lawsuit

David Maltinsky was fired after displaying Pride flag at desk

Published

2 hours ago

July 20, 2026

Lou Chibbaro Jr.

A gay FBI trainee was fired after displaying a Pride flag at his desk. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Attorneys for gay former FBI employee David Maltinsky, who was fired from his job as a non-agent employee at the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office in October 2025 after more than 16 years of service for displaying an LGBTQ Pride flag at his workstation, filed court papers on July 15 opposing a motion by government attorneys to dismiss some but not all of the provisions in his unlawful discrimination lawsuit seeking to overturn the firing.

Maltinsky’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in D.C. on Nov. 19, 2025, states that FBI Director Kash Patel acted illegally by violating Maltinsky’s First Amendment constitutional rights and the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 by ordering his firing on grounds that he “exercised poor judgement with an inappropriate display of political signage” by displaying the Pride flag.

The firing came at a time when Maltinsky successfully completed 16 weeks of the FBI’s 19-week training program at the FBI training academy in Quantico, Va. to become an FBI Special Agent, according to the lawsuit.

In addition to Patel, who took office as FBI director in February 2025 under the Trump administration, the lawsuit names as defendants the FBI itself, Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, and the U.S. Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI.

“Defendants discriminated against Maltinsky for engaging in protected speech, for his sexual orientation, and for opposing discrimination – a clear and brazen violation of federal law and the Constitution,” the lawsuit states in an amended complaint filed May 5, 2026.

The Department of Justice, which is representing the FBI in its response to the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to a request from the Washington Blade for comment on the lawsuit and why it is seeking dismissal of some but not all of the lawsuit’s multiple allegations, including its claim that the firing violated Maltinsky’s First Amendment rights.

In its “Partial” motion filed on June 15, 2026, to dismiss some provisions in the lawsuit, the Justice Department through Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate and Associate Branch Director Christopher Hall, stated that the lawsuit fails to provide sufficient evidence that Maltinsky was fired because he is gay.

“The Amended Complaint contains no factual allegations that Director Patel or any other decisionmaker expressed hostility toward gay employees, relied on Plaintiff’s sexual orientation in making employment decisions, even knew Plaintiff’s sexual orientation or otherwise indicated that Plaintiff’s status as a gay man played any role in the challenged actions,” the motion states.

Based on that, among other things, the motion says the lawsuit’s claim that the firing violated the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 should be dismissed. A 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruled that the 1964 law bans employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity along with its other categories including race, religion, and gender.

In its arguments that the decision to fire Maltinsky was illegal, unconstitutional, and unjust, the lawsuit’s amended complaint points out that FBI officials at the Los Angeles Field Office where Maltinsky worked presented the Pride flag to him and gave him full permission to display it at his workstation.

“The FBI encouraged and honored Maltinsky’s work by awarding him the 2020 Director’s Award For Excellence-Outstanding Service in Diversity and Inclusion,” the lawsuit says. “In 2022, the Attorney General for the Department of Justice awarded Maltinsky the Attorney General’s Award for Equal Employment Opportunity, DOJ’s highest award for performance in support of the Equal Employment Program,” it says.

“In special recognition of Maltinsky’s efforts to improve the FBI, in June 2021 LAFO [Los Angeles Field Office] leadership entrusted to Maltinsky two Pride flags that had been flown from the flagpole located in front of the LAFO,” the lawsuit complaint continues. “Maltinsky displayed one of those flags at his workstation.”

Although the lawsuit doesn’t say so directly, all of that happened during the administration of President Joe Biden and previous FBI Director Christopher Wray, who held the director’s position from August 2017 to January 2025, when Donald Trump took office as president.

Nathaniel Zelinsky, one of the attorneys representing Maltinsky regarding the lawsuit, told the Blade that because the Justice Department did not contest the lawsuit’s First Amendment provisions, the case will move forward to the discovery stage, in which he and fellow attorneys can seek and obtain government documents, and most likely go to trial. He said that regardless of whether the judge approves the dismissal of the lawsuit provisions the government has asked for, the other provisions and the case as a whole will continue.

“And those First Amendment claims are extremely serious,” he said. “The government, by its admission, fired David Maltinsky because they did not like the speech he displayed when he put up the Pride flag that was gifted to him by the FBI,” Zelinsky said. “The federal government cannot discriminate against its workers based on their speech.”

North Carolina

Authorities investigate officer-involved shooting outside Asheville gay bar

Incident took place near Shakey’s on Wednesday

Published

3 days ago

July 17, 2026

Emma LaPointe

(Photo by chalabala/Bigstock)

An officer-involved shooting outside of a gay dive bar, Shakey’s, in downtown Asheville, N.C., left one man dead Wednesday.

The bar released a statement the following morning regarding the incident, stating that bar staff had asked a patron to leave earlier in the night citing concerning behavior. The bar said that later the man was spotted with a gun in the parking lot.

The bar proceeded to call 911, locked the doors to the establishment, and followed dispatcher instructions on how to keep patrons of the bar safe while officers arrived. These protocols included getting patrons away from the windows and staying low to the ground.

According to Shakey’s, shots were fired outside of the business. When the Asheville Police Department officers arrived, they fired back. The individual died from their injuries, according to the police.

“Because of everyone’s quick actions, cooperation, and concern for one another, every customer and every employee inside Shakey’s made it home safely. We are incredibly thankful,” Shakey’s said on their Instagram page. They thanked Asheville police, emergency dispatchers, EMS, and all first responders who were on scene.

On Thursday, a spokesperson for the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, Chad Flowers, stated that the suspect involved in the shooting was Arturo Castillo Palomar.

The Washington Blade reached out to the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation for a comment regarding the possibility of the event being considered a hate crime. They said the issue is currently under investigation and that the findings would be turned over to the district attorney for review.

Pentagon

Hegseth announces testosterone initiative as trans troop ban continues

SPARTA Pride criticized Pentagon policy

Published

4 days ago

July 16, 2026

Joe Reberkenny

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

The U.S. military will begin testing and treating service members with hormone therapy despite banning similar medical care for transgender service members.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that troops ages 30 and older will be subject to annual testosterone screenings, while younger service members will have the option to voluntarily opt in. Some troops may then be recommended for hormone therapy, he explained in a video posted to social media.

“Under the supervision of our world-class medical professionals, warfighters age 30 and older are going to be tested annually as part of their periodic health assessment,” Hegseth said in a video posted to X, captioned “The High-T Department of War.”

This push to test testosterone levels, as the hormone is commonly referred to as “T,” runs counter to current medical guidelines. Physicians are generally advised to discuss testosterone therapy only with men who have symptoms consistent with low testosterone and documented low hormone levels on two separate blood tests.

Testosterone is a vital sex hormone that all humans naturally produce. It helps regulate muscle mass, bone density, and sex drive. In men, it is primarily produced in the testicles, while in women it is produced in the ovaries and adrenal glands.

Natural testosterone levels in men decline with age and have long been associated with issues such as erectile dysfunction, low libido, mood changes, and weight gain. However, experts continue to debate whether these conditions should routinely be treated with testosterone therapy.

Hegseth’s announcement aligns with other actions taken by the Trump-Vance administration — including efforts by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — to make testosterone therapy more accessible for men, particularly those assigned male at birth.

Last month, the Food and Drug Administration proposed easing prescribing restrictions on testosterone gels, pills, patches, and injections following a December advisory panel that recommended reducing regulatory hurdles to expand access to testosterone therapy.

Currently, FDA labeling specifies that these medications are approved only for men with hypogonadism, a medical condition that causes abnormally low testosterone levels.

The announcement came as a shock to many LGBTQ advocates because Hegseth and the Defense Department have cited the use of hormone therapy by trans service members as justification for their dismissal under President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order, “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness.“

The Pentagon continues to pursue implementation of the trans military ban as litigation proceeds. As a result, many trans service members have had their gender-affirming medical care halted, even as similar hormone therapy is now being expanded for cisgender service members. Under the executive order, the military currently disqualifies individuals diagnosed with gender dysphoria and has begun formal administrative separation proceedings for trans personnel.

SPARTA Pride, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization made up of trans service members, veterans, and their allies, issued a statement to the Washington Blade following Hegseth’s announcement.

“If hormone therapy helps warfighters perform at their best, then it cannot simultaneously be used as evidence that transgender service members are unfit to serve,” said Kara Corcoran, executive director of SPARTA Pride. “The same class of evidence-based medical treatment cannot be characterized as readiness-enhancing for one group and readiness-destroying for another.”

The legal fight over trans military service remains ongoing.

On June 1, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that trans service members already serving in the military could continue to do so, while allowing the armed services to continue refusing to enlist new trans recruits.

The Blade reached out to the Pentagon to ask why cisgender service members could receive hormone therapy while trans service members could not, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.