Kirkus Review
A committed gay rights journalist thoroughly tracks the president's hard-won "evolution" in embracing the national LBGT agenda. Daily Kos columnist Eleveld, who covered President Barack Obama for four years at the Advocate, pursues the reluctant endorsement of the then-senator by the gay community in 2008they were disappointed by Obama's definition of marriage as a sacred union between a man and a womanthrough the triumphant June 2015 decision by the Supreme Court to allow the right of same-sex couples to marry in all 50 states. Obama inherited President Bill Clinton's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in the military, although it had proven disastrously controversial. The passage of Proposition 8 in California in November 2008 prohibiting same-sex marriage seemed to underscore for Obama and the entire Democratic leadership that LGBT equality was too hot an issue to take on electorally. Eleveld shows how Obama danced around the issue for years: first in choosing and then replacing the champion of Proposition 8 to give the invocation at his inauguration, then in a tortured repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, first enacted in 1996 and finally gutted in 2013. Eleveld's chronological story involves the relentless push by activists demanding that the president do the right thingi.e., to secure full legal rights for gay spouses and to advance LGBT legislation. The successes of AIDS activists in the 1980s served as inspiration for the new direct-action groups, namely ACT UP and GetEQUAL, while momentum was building from the successful film Milk, as well as a well-publicized National Equality March on Washington in October 2009. Capitol Hill hearings with the Pentagon on DADT underscored the policy's inefficacy, forcing a vote in Congress for repeal in 2010, a huge victory for the gay rights community after "seventeen years of sustained activism." Throughout the book, the author explores the president's principles versus political expediency. An accomplished chronicle of the setbacks and successes by a journalist in the trenches. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
ON THE NIGHT of June 26, after the Supreme Court declared a national right to same-sex marriage, the White House lit up with the gay-pride colors of the rainbow. It was an act of celebration and of ownership by Barack Obama - a man who, just before he became president six years earlier, defined marriage as "the union between a man and a woman." Back then Obama added: "It's also a sacred union. Ya' know, God's in the mix." On the eve of the 2008 election, Obama's statement featured in a robocall to California voters, paid for by supporters of a state ballot initiative to ban same-sex marriage. Obama won California by 24 points that year. Marriage equality lost by 4 points. In "Don't Tell Me to Wait," Kerry Eleveld is unsparing in blaming the president. "He had used bigotry as a steppingstone to the presidency and, in so doing, had carelessly harmed L.G.B.T. Americans across the nation," she writes. But in this smart, sharply observed book, Eleveld concludes that "on L.G.B.T. equality, he eventually did right." The adverb matters because by the time "eventually" rolled round, doing right "got easier and easier." Eleveld was in an excellent position to track the president's movement: She was the White House correspondent, during his first term, for The Advocate, a magazine on L.G.B.T. issues. And she writes astutely of Washington, "Everybody is a true believer retrospectively, once something has passed." In her telling, Obama became a true believer in response to two kinds of L.G.B.T. activism. His first two years in office represented a chance to repeal the military policy of "don't ask, don't tell." In pursuit of that goal, leaders of the group Human Rights Campaign, which Eleveld calls "as mainstream as gays could get," held gala fund-raisers for the president, met with top officials at the White House and urged their community to be patient. Rabble-rousers, by contrast, ripped into the president for taking too long - they blogged furiously, heckled him at events, chained themselves to the White House fence. Eleveld gives the inside-the-Beltway "donor class" its due, but her heart is with the rebels. Who can blame her? They make better copy. Eleveld enjoyably reports on Obama's plaintive call from the stage - "I don't know why you're hollering" - when protesters interrupted him at a ticketed gathering in early 2010. Eleveld argues that Obama moved more slowly than he could have because he and his advisers overestimated political resistance. As the polls shifted toward rising support for L.G.B.T. causes, the public became "a resource in waiting for gay rights activists." Like them, Eleveld is impatient with the amount of time she thinks it took the president to catch on. Nor does she give him a break for having other priorities. In this book, the arguments for accepting delay were just wrong. Eleveld is surely right that when Obama embraced same-sex marriage in May 2012, he was following, not leading. She is less convincing, though, when she argues that pragmatism "is a losing proposition in any civil rights struggle." Maybe by situating himself "smack dab in the middle of the electorate," Obama calmed fears. It's true, as Eleveld says, that he needed the activists to push, as a matter of politics. And they wrote a script for social change other movements are already studying. At the same time, the passage of time allowed marriage equality to prove itself in a growing number of states, before the Supreme Court (as Obama's Justice Department urged) stepped in to wrap up the deal. And perhaps the passage of time helps account for the relatively peaceful reception of marriage equality even in states where it still lacks majority support. The president doesn't win a gay-rights bravery award. But the country evolved along with him. EMILY BAZELON, a staff writer at The Times Magazine, is the author of "Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy."
Library Journal Review
This is the story of how President Obama changed his mind. When he was running for president, he clearly was uncomfortable with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) issues, especially those surrounding marriage. It couldn't have been predicted he would not only repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" but also, more or less, gut the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) by instructing the U.S. Justice Department to not defend it against legal challenge. Arguably, Obama's support for gay marriage got him reelected. Eleveld, an experienced reporter who was the first White House correspondent for The Advocate, has interviewed Obama three times and is now a columnist for the Daily Kos. She tells the story compellingly, with lots of insider details, and the drama political junkies love. She also conveys the urgency many felt about these topics. VERDICT This title is for general readers interested in current affairs, the Obama presidency, and LGBT issues, who will gain new perspectives from Eleveld's diligence.-David -Azzolina, Univ. of Pennsylvania Libs., Philadelphia © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.