RAIN DANCE

Obama Banks $1.4 Million For Campaign War Chest At LGBT Fundraiser

Its looking gleefully like the GOP presidential nominees will wind up killing each other by inches, but President Obama isn’t taking any chances now that his campaign is heating up in earnest. Last night he paid a call on the Washington, DC, home of Karen Dixon and Nan Schaffer  for a $35,8000-a-head LGBT fundraiser that earned a cool $1,432,000 for the Obama Victory Fund.

Before a relatively intimate group of 40, Laura Ricketts—the openly lesbian owner of the Chicago Cubs (and a serious Obama fundraiser)—introduced the President, saying the gathering was held, “to show the president that the LGBT community stands strongly behind his reelection. I know the president stands with us.”

After addressing the economic crisis on everybody’s mind, Obama discussed his support for the community and how it is in line with the values our nation was founded on: “You should be judged on the merits. That’s at the heart of the American dream [and] that’s how you should be judged—not by what you look like, not by how you worship, not by where you come from, not by who you love. The work that we’ve done with the LGBT community, I think, is just profoundly American.”

He later mentioned the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and how, though Republicans predicted dire consequences for the Armed Forces, the results have been spectacularly unspectacular.

“Because we did [the repeal] methodically, since it happened, nothing’s happened. There hasn’t been any notion of erosion in unit cohesion.”

Discussing a visit to a Marine base in Hawaii, the president said several servicemembers thanked him for ending DADT.  “I didn’t even know whether or not they were gay or lesbian. I didn’t ask. that wasn’t the point.”

Photos: Steve Jurvetson, Olga Lednichenko

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