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Obama Becomes First U.S President To Grace The Cover Of ‘Out’ Magazine – Termed ‘Ally Of The Year’ For LGBT Community

By Alap Naik Desai
Published on: 22:00 PST, Nov 10, 2015

Obama has become the first U.S. president to be featured on the cover of OUT Magazine. His opinions and stance on issues faced by the LGBT community were the reasons; he graced the cover of OUT magazine’s OUT100 issue as “Ally of the Year.”

Barack Obama has become the first sitting U.S. president to appear on the cover of OUT Magazine, a publication that focuses primarily on the issues of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. The magazine’s editor has named Obama as “Ally of the Year” for his efforts in securing marriage equality in the United States of America.

In an interview with the magazine, Obama revealed how much the community has influenced him. He revealed how the attitude towards the community in general has changed significantly, to a point that it simply doesn’t matter anymore whether your classmate, friend, colleague, or acquaintance prefers same-sex relations. Obama also spoke on how his administration has undergone subtle yet significant revisions as well as achieved a lot on LGBT rights and equality for the otherwise marginalized group. The President added that, watching his daughters Sasha and Malia, he feels quite content about the rapidly changing attitudes towards homosexuality across generations.

“To Malia and Sasha and their friends, discrimination in any form against anyone doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t dawn on them, that friends who are gay or friends’ parents who are same-sex couple should be treated any differently. That’s powerful.”

Obama mentioned there had been a remarkable “attitude shift — in hearts and minds — across America” even before the Supreme Court decision that the right to marry should be granted to same-sex couples, reported CNN.

OUT‘s story on the President reads:

“This is the first time a sitting president has been photographed for the cover of an LGBT title, a historic moment in itself, and a statement on how much his administration has done to advance a singularly volatile issue that tarnished the reputations of both President Clinton and President Bush. It might have tarnished this president, too, but for his late-hour conversion in 2012, which set the stage for the extraordinary succession of events that led to this year’s Supreme Court ruling, on June 26, making it unconstitutional to deny same-sex couples the right to wed.”

Quite a few events have led to the historic decision. As the President chose to put it, “decades of our brothers and sisters fighting for recognition and equality.” Specially noting Obama’s contribution in getting the LGBT community the basic right of matrimony, the article continued, “But once his administration decided to join that fight, it created what people like to call a “transformative” moment. It helped tip the balance, and it put our elected leader on the right side of justice,” reported DNA India.

Interestingly, the president has seesawed on the same-sex marriage. He claimed he supported same-sex marriage way back in 1998 when he was a state Senate candidate. But during his 2008 campaign, Obama categorically mentioned he did not support same-sex marriage. He maintained his stance till 2012, but slowly backtracked and eventually completely reversed his opinion, as evident from his interview on ABC in 2012, when he openly came out in support of same-sex marriages saying,

“I had hesitated on gay marriage, in part, because I thought civil unions would be sufficient. I was sensitive to the fact that — for a lot of people — that the word marriage is something that provokes very powerful traditions and religious beliefs.”

OUT magazine describes itself as “the world’s leading gay fashion and lifestyle brand,” and chose to feature the nation’s 44th President as Ally of the Year because it wanted to acknowledge how much his administration has done for the community, reported Bloomberg.

[Photo by Nicholas Kamm / Getty Images]

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