Poet Richard Blanco: Civil rights for ‘gay America’
Inaugural poet Richard Blanco praised President Barack Obama on Tuesday for mentioning gay rights in his inaugural address.
“I thought it was great the way that he couched gay America in terms of a civil rights sort of issue as well,” Blanco, who is openly gay, said on CNN’s “Starting Point.”Continue Reading
“I’ve often wondered — it seems to me sometimes that it’s the only thing in America still that, you know, I see the sort of slight slurs on TV or commercials, and I’m thinking: ‘If somebody were to say this about a Mexican-American or a Latino-American in general or an African-American, you could never get away with that.’ And I think the idea it’s sort of this — it is in many ways a civil rights issue. I thought that was couched nicely to pair all those things together and so eloquently as he did.”
Blanco also credited Obama for referencing the Stonewall riots in his inaugural.
In his speech, Obama became the first president to say the word “gay” in an inaugural address and also linked the battle for gay rights to the civil rights movement and the fight for women’s suffrage. “We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths — that all of us are created equal — is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall,” Obama said.