I asked two of my fellow newly-elected gay Hillary delegates last weekend whether they thought the LGBT community seemed more unified behind Clinton or Obama.  They weren't sure. While they were (obviously) strongly pro-Hillary, they lamented about how many of their friends and coworkers were Obamaniacs. I tended to think that Hillary might have an edge with queers, or maybe just lesbians, because nearly all of my lesbian friends strongly support her over Obama.

Obama has said some good things about LGBT issues, but part of me is distrustful. It didn't help that he had an ex-gay minster, Donnie McKlurkin, travel and campaign with him in South Carolina last fall. Sure, he disavowed Donnie's comments against gays, but how many times are we going to accept Obama's habit of befriending and soliciting the help of people who say bigoted things, and then disavowing their words without actually disassociating himself with such people? When does Obama finally begin to be that agent of change and unity he so passionately believes himself to be?

I'm not the only distrustful gay. This Politico.com story—Gay Press Frustrated by Obama Approach—dissects Obama's unwillingness to meet directly with publishers and editorial boards of gay presses across the country. According to the article, he has done some gay interviews, such as with the Advocate,  but has preferred not to meet directly with gay publishers and editorial boards because:

"Obama is talking to mainstream audiences about issues of importance to our community,” said Eric Stern, a leader of Obama’s National LGBT Leadership Council. “While Hillary is attractive, she is making her appeal almost exclusively to gay audiences. That is not a postmodern approach.”

That makes absolutely no sense to me. That is offensive to me. I like the Philadelphia Gay New's tactic:

Mark Segal didn't’t want to wait. After weeks of requests to interview Barack Obama, the publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News concluded the senator’s aides may never make him available.

So even as the Obama campaign held out the possibility of an interview before the April 22 Pennsylvania primary, Segal published a half-blank front page to represent what he described in an editorial as Obama’s “disrespect of the LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender] local media.”

Meanwhile, as documented in the Politico.com piece, Clinton has actively met with them in several cities.  And just yesterday, her campaign announced the formation of a 71-member LGBT Pennsylvania steering committee.

And you wouldn't know it if you didn't see Hillary's appearance on Ellen this past Monday (since most of the media coverage focused on her call for more breast cancer funding and her Kennedy-esque call to action to cure breast cancer within ten years), but Hillary spent a considerable part of the interview discussing queer rights. She gave a very personal account of how her parents came around on their views of gay people and gay rights, and how that has shaped her views on the importance of LGBT equality. It's a great exchange; watch it here.

While neither Hillary or Barack go as far as I would like on gay rights (neither supports gay marriage; only Kucinich and Gravel did), I definitely am feeling more of the gay love—and believing it—from Hillary. As my gay boy delegate friends reminded me on Saturday, Hillary's the only one who has marched in a gay pride parade. Here's a great one from NYC's 37th annual pride parade in 2006: