The Highest Ranking White House Official for Marriage Equality

Has the highest ranking White House official yet come out and signaled her personal support for the issue of marriage equality? Yes! Sort of. Well, that is, if the White House is OK with releasing the video tape of Obama's Director of Domestic Policy, Melody Barnes, speaking at a forum at Boston College where she let it be known that personally, she's OK with gays and lesbians marrying.

It's great news that someone so high up in the White House -- someone who literally has the President's ear almost daily -- supports same-sex marriage. The sad news? That instead of celebrating this as the rather monumental thing it should be, LGBT activists are left wondering why earlier this week the White House was trying to deny that Barnes supported gay marriage, and why it took nearly a week for video of the event to emerge.

Could it be that the Obama administration is nervous about a senior advisor saying that she supports same-sex marriage? Huh, now there's a question for Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

Here's what Barnes said this past week, after being asked a question by Boston College law student Paul Sousa about her personal opinion on same-sex marriage.

"I come to my experience based on what I’ve learned, based on the relationships that I’ve had with friends and their relationships that I respect, the children that they are raising, and that is something that I support. But at the same time, when I walk into the White House, though I work to put all arguments in front of the president, as you say, I also work for the president," Barnes said.

There are six key words up there that are a little buried amidst an artful answer. "That is something that I support." Sure, Barnes couches that with a nod to the her responsibilities to the President -- meaning that she's not an employee of the federal government that gets to work for her own views, but rather the priorities and positions laid forth by the Obama administration. And Obama, as we all know, isn't down with gay marriage (at least this decade).

Many activists are now wondering why earlier this week, an anonymous White House official disputed that Barnes believed in marriage equality, telling Sam Stein at Huff Post that Barnes was not discussing "her personal views on marriage equality or other issues." Well, that might be about the biggest whopper to come out of the White House war room this week.

And then that prompted a question by AMERICAblog and others about why, if the event with Melody Barnes was this past Monday, wasn't there a video tape released of the event. John Aravosis at AB said, "It's been 4 days. Why has the video of the event not been released publicly? You'd think it was a scandal, or something, that a White House official might have been support (sic) of the g-a-y-s."

This would be the part where you cue that Law & Order "ca-chunk" sound, to heighten the drama.

Theoretically, this should all die down later today once the video tape is released (Boston College is supposed to release it around 1:00pm, after a period where the White House said they needed to vet it, a standard procedure for talks from White House officials). Is this another example of the rocky road relationship that Obama has with the LGBT population?

Probably. Today should be a day where LGBT activists and straight allies are saying, "Damn! We have an ally pretty high up in the White House who supports our marriage rights!"

But instead, we're left saying, "Is the White House afraid of supporting us?"

That's an Obama administration FAIL this week. Barnes handled herself eloquently in her comments. It's just a shame that the White House didn't know what to do with them.

(Photo courtesy of healthreform.gov)