LGBT Lobby: Thanks Be to HUD

November 24th, 2011 8:27 AM

Every week, it seems the Obama administration is granting another favor to the "LGBT" community, but the D.C. gay magazine Metro Weekly is especially thankful this November for obscure HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan for becoming the Cabinet's most pronounced gay-marriage advocate.

Chris Geidner reported "U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan became the first sitting cabinet secretary to announce support for marriage equality, saying on Nov. 15 that he 'absolutely'' supports marriage equality in an exclusive interview with Metro Weekly."

He was on a roll after honoring the T in LGBT:

Following his keynote speech at the eighth annual National Center for Transgender Equality Awards Ceremony, Donovan made his marriage comments at the Mayflower Hotel at the end of an interview focused on the agency's advancements towards ending anti-LGBT discrimination in housing.

Asked about this summer's passage of marriage equality in New York, Donovan says, ''I was enormously proud to be a New Yorker on the day that it passed. I actually worked for Andrew Cuomo when he was Housing Secretary. I worked for Mike Bloomberg who has been a constant supporter of the law – what is now law.''

He talked about how the law's passage had affected those around him, saying, ''So many friends that I know were able to achieve a dream the day that law passed. And so many neighbors.

''It made me proud to be a New Yorker – not enough to get me to move back. We've got more work to do in the Obama administration in a second term.''

Asked if that included marriage equality, Donovan confirmed it did, saying, ''Like marriage equality.''

Geidner and the gay community still have hope for Hillary Clinton:

Although Donovan is the first cabinet secretary to announce his position in support of marriage equality, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called the New York vote ''historic'' at an LGBT pride month reception co-hosted by the State Department and Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies (GLIFAA) on June 27.

Saying the vote ''gives such visibility and credibility to everything that so many of you have done over so many years,'' Clinton later noted how senators in New York spoke about family members impacted by restrictions on same-sex marriage and said, ''[F]rom their own personal connections and relationships, they began to make the larger connection with somebody else's niece or nephew or grandchild and what that family must feel like.''

Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and daughter, Chelsea, are marriage equality supporters.