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John Berry, the White House director of the Office of Personnel Management and the highest ranking gay official in the Obama administration, told The Advocate's Kerry Eleveld in an exclusive interview that the Obama administration hopes to "secure secure passage of Hate Crimes this coming week."
The exchange took place at Washington D.C.'s Capital Pride Festival Sunday where Berry, who gave an impassioned speech at the Justice Department last week on the importance that the federal government do more to ensure civil rights for LGBT Americans, told Eleveld he'd "been authorized [by the administration] today to say everything that I'm going to be saying."
Berry outlined a four-point list of LGBT rights that the Obama administration hopes to achieve, but stressed that the general timetable for these goals is "under the administration's watch."
Among the administrations goals are hate crimes, ENDA, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", and DOMA, in that order. Berry went on to say that the gay community should not "waste energy and angst" attacking the president over last week's DOJ-DOMA flap, and instead should be working on getting the necessary votes to overturn DOMA in the House and Senate. Yet proceeded to make a curious comment telling Eleveld "We don't have the votes to do Hate Crimes right now, we don't have the votes to do ENDA, how are we going [to get "don't ask, don't tell]?"
While reiterating the Obama administration's support for GLBT equality, Berry, remaining vague on the specific timeline, said: "Now, I'm not going to pledge -- and nor is the president -- that this is going to be done by some certain date. The pledge and the promise is that, this will be done before the sun sets on this administration - our goal is to have this entire agenda accomplished and enacted into law so that it is secure."
Despite being asked repeatedly, Berry refused to say whether these agenda items were scheduled for Obama's first or second term and only stated : "We hope we get eight years, but if we're limited to four, we're still going to try to pursue this agenda."
Read the full Berry/Eleveld Q&A here:
Advocate.com
