Photo: Courtesy, Louise Gubb/The Carter Center
Will happen in the ‘near future’
By JEREMY JONES
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter says America has made great strides and is ready for a gay president. The former president and 2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner’s comments came last week during an interview with the website bigthink.com.
“Well, I think the entire population of America has come tremendous strides forward in dealing with the issue of gays,” said Carter. “Because step-bystep we have realized that this issue of homosexuality has the same adverse and progressive elements as when we dealt with the race issue 50 years ago or 40 years
ago. So I would say that the country is getting acclimated to a president who might be female, who might obviously, now be black and who might be as well, a gay person.”
While the country may be ready, according to Carter, it will most likely not happen in 2012 but in the very “near future.”
Wayne Besen, founder and executive director of the organization Truth Wins Out (TWO), says that while he agrees that America could be ready for a gay president, it’s not something we are likely to see anytime soon, and that a gay vice president may be first on the agenda.
“I am 40 and I think there will be a gay or lesbian president in my lifetime. America will be ready for a gay vice president in about 10 to15 years and a gay president in about 20 years,” said Besen. “This is how long it will take for LGBT people to no longer be seen controversial and for it to finally be a non-issue for most Americans. The individual who breaks through will have to be very much like Obama – a charismatic individual who presents him or herself as a change agent.”
Carter’s comments on a gay presidency came just before Congress repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the law that bans gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military. The U.S. House of Representatives voted 250-175 on Dec. 15 in favor of repealing the law, while the Senate followed suit three days later by voting 65-33 to repeal the ban. President Obama signed the bill into law this week. Carter said that America’s commitment to human rights makes it necessary for Congress and the military to rethink the policy on DADT.
The former president is no stranger to making comments that cause a stir or even controversy. In 2006 he came under from America’s Jewish community for comments he made while promoting his book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” in which he said that the United States’ Mideast policy was being influenced too much by the lobbying of American Jewish groups. And in June of this year he was back in the hot seat for calling Israel’s two-year blockade of Gaza an “atrocity” and that people there were treated as if they were animals. He has since apologized for the comments.