By Lydia Fiser
By Lydia Fiser
Erin Cass is a political science student at UF and a member of the Queer Activist Coalition. During Obama’s campaign, Cass supported his positions on legislation that would bring full equality to all LGBTQ citizens and other minorities in the U.S.
Obama promised things on the campaign trail important to Cass, such as expanding the Employment Nondiscrimination Act to include sexuality, passing legislation that would deem crimes motivated by gender or sexual orientation hate crimes, banning racial profiling by federal law enforcement, bringing full equality for gay couples in family and adoption law, and repealing “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” and the Defense of Marriage Act.
In his first year, Obama succeeded in passing the Matthew Shepard Act, which manifested the campaign promise to expand the definition of hate crimes to those committed because of gender or sexual orientation.
But Cass feels Obama has failed on almost every other campaign promise for which she voted for him.
“So many of [these issues] are unconstitutional, and being a constitutional lawyer, I had really high expectations for Obama because that’s his job to know when something is unconstitutional,” Cass said. “He obviously doesn’t or just doesn’t care to do anything about it.”
Cass believes that Obama made too many promises on the campaign trail that he knew all along he couldn’t deliver.
“You can’t just get into office and change all these things,” she said. “But at the same time, gay people are sick of waiting.”
Despite her dissatisfaction, if she had to do it over again, Cass would still vote for Obama.
“Unfortunately, because of the way the system works…if you vote for someone who’s not Obama or McCain, the main party candidates, then I just feel like it’s almost a vote wasted,” she said.
The Matthew Shepard act is unconstitutional because it gives certain groups of people special protection under the law. Regardless of what one was thinking while committing a violent crime, it doesn’t change that fact that it was a still violent crime. Whatever happened to equal protection under the law? I am a full supporter of gay rights, but the judicial segregation of people based on ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation or religious beliefs is just as wrong as social segregation of all groups mentioned.