Barack Obama refused to appoint even one openly lesbian, gay, bi, or trans person to his cabinet. But, homophobes are perfectly OK to this administration. Having Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State is bad enough. But, now President Obama has appointed rabid heterosexist Judd Gregg as Commerce Secretary. From Pink News 2/6/09:

Senator Gregg has a poor voting record on gay rights.

He opposed expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation and prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation and voted in favour of a ban on same-sex marriage.

"Once again our efforts for equality are being set aside for political gain," said David Mixner, a prominent gay rights activist, public affairs adviser and fundraiser.

"Just look at Senator Gregg's record and you will see that over the last three sessions of Congress he has been with us only 28% of the time.

"In the 108th Congress (2003 to 2005), his voting record was only 13%! It is one of the lower rankings in Congress.

"That is totally unacceptable. Surely the rights and freedoms of an entire group of people under attack around the country should be enough to disqualify someone from a key position in the Obama Cabinet.

It should be noted that these are Human Rights Campaign ratings, and the HRC is notorious for warping their ratings to make politicians look more favorable towards our issues than they actually are. (It makes the HRC look like it is accomplishing far more than they actually are.) The real record of Senator Gregg is even worse than the ratings would indicate.

The Obama administration just keeps getting worse on lgbt issues. I'm so glad I voted for Cynthia McKinney in the general election. I just wish I voted for Kucinich rather than Obama in the Democratic primary.

You can read Mixner's blog posting on the subject too.