Tags : david huebner, new zealand, openly gay ambassador, samoa
White House Appoints Openly Gay Attorney As Ambassador
The White House has chosen David Huebner, an openly gay lawyer, to be its ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa. The move comes the same week as LGBT groups gather in D.C. for a National Equality March, and three days before President Barack Obama keynotes the annual dinner of the nation’s largest gay rights group.
Huebner specializes in international arbitration and mediation for Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton and was formerly chairman of the California Law Revision Commission. A Princeton University and Yale Law School graduate, he previously taught international business and intellectual property at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law and is licensed as a solicitor in England and Wales.
Obama has appointed a number of openly gay officials to his administration, including White House Office of Public Engagement Deputy Director Brian Bond and Export-Import Bank chairman Fred Hochberg, but his announcement of Huebner’s nomination comes the same week as the LGBT community gears up for two key events.
Gay advocates and their supporters are gearing up for a National Equality March in the nation’s capital on Sunday to “to demand action from the federal government to protect [their] rights in all fifty states.”
On Saturday, the Human Rights Campaign, the biggest LGBT organization nationwide, holds its annual dinner in Washington. The President will deliver the keynote addres of the night, which will include the first Edward M. Kennedy National Leadership Award.
The HRC has praised Huebner’s appointment and said the Obama administration “continues show their dedication to diversity and making decisions not based on someone’s sexual orientation, but based on their qualifications.”
But during the summer, the group and other LGBT advocates had accused Obama of failing to act on campaign pledges, such as repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law passed in 1996 that bans gay marriages, and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the government’s ban against homosexuals serving freely in the military.
The criticisms were prompted by a brief submitted by the administration in response to a lawsuit from by a gay couple, Arthur Smelt and Christopher Hammer, who married in California and are challenging the constitutionality of DOMA.
At the height of the uproar, Obama had signed a memorandum granting job benefits to same-sex couples of federal employees, and then hosted a White House reception for LGBT leaders, marking the 40th anniversary of 1969 riots that began in the Stonewall Inn, considered the birth of the modern gay movement.
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