By Gary Barlow

Staff writer

Sen. Barack Obama gave an interview with a national gay magazine last week, seeking to mollify criticism of his refusal to talk with local GLBT community newspapers around the country.

“The gay press may feel like I’m not giving them enough. Basically all press feels that way at all times,” Obama told The Advocate in an interview at his Chicago office.

But Obama still refused to meet with local GLBT newspapers, both here and elsewhere, provoking more criticism from the publisher of one of America’s most respected GLBT community papers.

“In each state he (Obama) has traveled to, his staff has held out the possibility of an interview to local gay press, simply to pull the rug after that state’s primary,” Philadelphia Gay News publisher Mark Segal wrote in an op-ed column in the April 11 edition of PGN.

Segal said Obama’s interview with The Advocate was not sufficient.

“Only the local gay press will ask detailed questions,’ Segal wrote. “That is why most communities look to their local community newspapers for detail, not just fundraising talk and stump speeches.”

Sen. Hillary Clinton, Obama’s opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination, has given several interviews to local GLBT newspapers, including PGN, during the campaign. Obama last talked to local GLBT newspapers in 2004, when he was in a competitive Illinois Democratic primary race for the U.S. Senate seat he now holds. During that campaign, Obama met with the Chicago Free Press editorial staff for an endorsement interview and also answered questions posed by another GLBT publication in Chicago. (CFP ultimately endorsed one of Obama’s opponents in that race, Gery Chico, largely because of Chico’s full support for gay and lesbian marriage equality. Then, as now, Obama supported civil unions but not marriage equality.)

In his interview with The Advocate, Obama said he would push for repeal of the military’s ban on openly gay personnel but would not make opposition to the ban a ‘litmus test’ for his nominees to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“I reasonably can see ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ eliminated,” Obama said.

He also said he would push for passage of the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act to outlaw employment discrimination based on sexual orientation, but added that he thinks including transgenders in the bill “is a heavy lift.”

“I think that’s going to be tough, and I’ve said this before,” Obama said. “We’ve got some Democrats who are willing to vote for a non-inclusive bill, and we just may not be able to generate the votes. I don’t know. And obviously my goal would be to get the strongest possible bill—that’s what I’ll be working for.”

Clinton has pledged full support for a trans-inclusive ENDA. Last year more than 300 GLBT groups across the country, including Equality Illinois and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, opposed House Democratic leaders’ move to pass a version of ENDA that did not include gender identity protections.

The flap over Obama’s relations with the GLBT press was overshadowed late last week after comments Obama made at a recent private fundraiser in San Francisco became public. Obama generalized that small-town voters in Pennsylvania and the Midwest, because they are “bitter” over economic problems, “cling to” religion and anti-immigration and pro-gun rights political stances.

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them,” Obama said. “And they fell through the Clinton Administration and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Those remarks prompted a barrage of criticism.

“I think I have a good understanding of the thoughts and feelings and motivations and beliefs of those who live in small communities, whether it be in Pennsylvania or in my state in Iowa or for that matter across the United States,” said former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, who supports Clinton. “After reading and reviewing Sen. Obama’s comments, I have found them to be condescending and disappointing. …I am deeply concerned about these comments because I think it’s difficult for a Democratic candidate to be successful in a general election if he misreads and misunderstands people who live in small communities, to the extent as reflected in his comments.”

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain also criticized Obama’s remarks, and political experts said the comments would haunt Obama in a general election campaign.

“The damage here is that what he said accurately reflects the current Democratic Party. It’s more affluent. It’s more liberal. That’s the way it’s moving. He was saying it to San Francisco Democrats, rich San Francisco Democrats, and it reflects the kind of Democrat that loses at the presidential level,” Republican political strategist Mary Matalin said on NBC’s “Meet The Press” April 13.

Obama and his supporters said his comments weren’t meant as a slight to any voters.

“What he was saying is that there are those who use guns and religion, use faith and guns, as a divisive issue,” said former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, an Obama supporter. “And when you’re angry, when you feel disenfranchised, you’re more susceptible to those kinds of divisive politics.”

Obama defended his sentiments but said his words were “ill chosen.”

“I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois, who are bitter,” Obama said. “So I said, well, you know, when you’re bitter you turn to what you can count on. Some people, you know, they vote about guns or they take comfort in their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country or they get frustrated about, you know, how things are changing.”