The Washington Times (via Chicago-Sun Times) published details on pool report Thursday in sponsorship for the president’s Obama for America campaign. According to the source, among the 40 people in attendance – all of which paid $38,500 per ticket – Laura Rickett, the openly-gay owner of the Chicago Cubs, introduced President Obama to the group. Rickett said the event was held to show LGBT support of the president and his reelection.
“I know the president stands with us,” she said, according to the source.
President Obama accepted the introduction, later explaining to the crowd, “The work that we’ve done with the LGBT community, I think, is just profoundly American.”
“[It’s not] what you look like, not by how you worship, not by where you come from, not by who you love,” he added.
The president also shared words on the fallen Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy. “What’s been striking over the course of these last three years is because we’ve rooted this work in this concept of fairness, and we haven’t gone out of our way to grab credit for it, we haven’t gone out of our way to call other folks names when they didn’t always agree with us on stuff, we just kept plodding along, because of that, in some ways, what’s been remarkable is how readily the public recognizes this is the right thing to do.”
The president said DADT was a “huge, ugly issue” and added, “Because we did it methodically … since it happened, nothing’s happened. There hasn’t been any notion of erosion in unit cohesion.”
President Obama said the Administration has “more work to do on [DADT]. There’s still areas where fairness is not the rule. We’re going to have to keep on pushing.” He did not address same-sex marriage.
Among the LGBT topics discussed, Mr. Obama addressed the country’s economical issues explaining, “There’s still a lot of folks hurting out there. The good news is that we’re moving in the right direction.”
Read the entire pool report at the Chicago Sun Times by David Boyer at the Washington Times.
