Obama's, McCain's Gay Friends Speak Out

A gay mentor to a younger Barack Obama and a gay friend of John McCain have both spoken about their relationships to the two presidential candidates; more telling, however, is that fact that Obama has spoken openly about the gay university professor who encouraged him as a minority student, while McCain's campaign, and the Republican National Convention, skirted mention of McCain's gay friend, Jim Kolbe, although Kolbe praised McCain to a gathering of Log Cabin Republicans.

A Sept. 10 article in the Washington Blade detailed how Obama, during his student days in Los Angeles at Occidental College, found openly gay professor Lawrence Goldyn to be a positive figure.

Goldyn was, at the time, a professor of political science, the Blade reported, and Obama's fledgling interest in politics may have been stoked by the supportive atmosphere in which Larence met with minority students at the college to discuss social and political topics.

The Blade quoted Goldyn as saying of Obama, "He was one of those unusual, straight young men who was secure enough in his sexuality that he was not fearful of being associated with me, whether that involved taking a class or just talking socially."

Obama had mentioned Goldyn in an interview with the Advocate last spring, saying that Goldyn was "a wonderful guy" and a "strong influence" in the candidate's views on GLBT Americans.

Said Obama in that interview, "He was the first openly gay professor that I had ever come into contact with, or openly gay person of authority that I had come in contact with."

Added Obama, "He wasn't proselytizing all the time, but just his comfort in his own skin and the friendship we developed helped to educate me on a number of these issues."

Goldyn, in turn, consented to speak with the Blade about Obama, although the two had not spoken since Obama's Occidental days, the article said.

Goldyn recollected that he had met the Democratic candidate as a young student in 1979 or 1980, when Obama signed up for one of Goldyn's courses.

Said Goldyn of Obama, "He was remarkable in that he was not intimidated by a publicly gay figure and, in fact, was interested in learning from me, whether formally or informally.

"That required an extraordinary kind of confidence in an 18 or 19 year old--the kind that comes from somewhere deep inside, that was still finding its way into his adult personality."

Added Goldyn, "He demonstrated a kind of social courage, which has served him well and helped get him where he is today."

Goldyn stood out at Occidental for being openly gay, and he served as a positive role model, the Blade reported; Goldyn not only took the trouble to mentor gay students, but also attracted heterosexual minority students with his extracurricular discussions, the article said.

Obama was one of the latter, though younger than most of the straight minority students who found their way to Goldyn.

Said the former professor, "I am sure he felt like a fish out of water, and he had every reason to feel insecure about himself in a place like [Occidental]," which Goldyn described as an "elite" school.

Obama went on to graduate from Columbia, before entering Harvard's law school; Goldyn went on to become a medical doctor specializing in HIV, the article said.

Goldyn's career change was the result of the school--described as "conservative" in the article--not choosing to offer him tenure.

Commenting about Obama's stance against marriage equality, Goldyn defended that position, saying, "It's very hard to put a whole coalition together, and you have to figure out a way to negotiate and navigate where he is clearly supportive of gay rights, but he cannot come out up front and say that he's in favor of marriage, because the country, I don't think, may be ready for that in an election.

"And I don't have a problem with that."

John McCain's support for his gay friend and colleague Jim Kolbe was the subject of a column by John Nichols, which appeared both in The Nation and The Capitol Times, running in both publications on Sept. 10.

Nichols wrote that when Jim Kolbe, a former Congressman for McCain's home state of Ariz., described for a meeting of Log Cabin Republicans how, when he came out as gay to McCain, his friend the senator was supportive.

Kolbe told the Log Cabin Republicans that he decided to talk with McCain before a magazine, which was about to out him, had the chance to break the news first.

Said Kolbe, "I drew [McCain] aside after leaving a breakfast.

"I said that some personal information was about to come out that I need you to know about.

"He put up his hands and said, 'Jim, it doesn't make any difference'--obviously, he already knew."

Kolbe went on, "He said, 'You're a great legislator today and you will be tomorrow.

"'You're a friend today, and you will be tomorrow.'

"That really touched me and gave me encouragement to talk to other members of Congress."

But even as the contingent of Log Cabin Republicans, who had come to the Republican National Convention, heard Kolbe's story, McCain, whose campaign touts the Republican candidate as a "maverick," was not standing up against what Nichols called "the most homophobic [platform] in the party's history," which includes statements on "the incompatibility of homosexuality with military service" and seeks "a constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage as a union of a man and a woman, so that judges cannot make other arrangements equivalent to it," among other anti-gay text, or omissions in its text, such as refusing to uphold the civil liberties and human dignity of GLBT Americans.

Wrote Nichols, "The great tragedy of John McCain's current candidacy is that everyone who knows the man--as I have for the better part of two decades--knows that, while he is not in the camp of the haters who have come to dominate his party, the senator lacks the courage to challenge them."

Nichols also wrote that "McCain is so scared of offending the Republican Party's muscular social-conservative base that, in order to appease them, he has agreed to run on a hate-mongering platform," adding that, "the convention that nominated the senator from Arizona refused to highlight the maverick stances that have always been the most attractive pieces of the puzzle that is John McCain."

Nichols also doubted in print that McCain "would behave any more honorably on the campaign trail or in the White House" when it comes to the welfare and the civil equity of gays and lesbians.