"Michelle Obama hires gay marriage advocate in communications post."

[Clio the Leo]

Michelle Obama hires gay marriage advocate in communications post

Michelle Obama has picked Kristina Schake to be the new communications director in the first lady’s office, filling a post that’s been empty since Camille Johnston left it and the East Wing in August. Schake will come to Washington from Los Angeles, where she was an adviser to California first lady Maria Shriver and a founder of communications and marketing firm Griffin Schake.

Among the many causes she’s worked on, one stands out. Schake has been an outspoken advocate on behalf of the equality of gays and lesbians as a self-described member of the women’s movement. Schake was a founding board member of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, the nonprofit that is “the sole sponsor of the federal court challenge of California’s Proposition 8, known as Perry v. Schwarzenegger,” according to the group. “AFER is leading the fight for marriage equality and equality under the law for every American,” the group says, and to do so “has assembled a legal team led by Theodore Olson and David Boies to demonstrate that Proposition 8 violates the U.S. Constitution by denying millions of people equal protection under the law.”

Proposition 8 is a 2008 statewide ballot initiative in California that won voter sanction and made same-sex marriage illegal. It was ruled unconstitutional in August 2010 by a district court judge; the case now heads to appeals court, with the next hearing scheduled for Dec. 6.

Schake has written passionately about the cause of equal rights for gay people in the Huffington Post. “Gay individuals who are asking to marry are also sisters and brothers, daughters and sons, loving parents and loved children; would you tell them, then, that they are not as good, not as deserving, not as worthy of equality? If it was your friend, loved one, or child, could you like him or her in the eye and say ‘this right isn’t for you?’” she wrote.

“We have to stop thinking about gay and lesbian individuals as a group of ‘others’ and start seeing them as they are – people just like us, living the same sorts of lives as we are, with the same hopes and dreams for themselves,” she wrote. “If the struggles of the women’s movement have taught us anything, it’s that there’s no limit on what an individual can do when given a real chance. But until we give them those chances, tell them they’re deserving, allow them to be equal, we’ll never know just how much we’re missing.”

http://www.whorunsgov.com/politerati/revolving-door/michelle-obama-hires-gay-marriage-advocate-in-communications-post/

[Smashcut]

1. So, we can expect Michelle to come out in favor of marriage equality, ya?

[mtnester]

2. Guarantee I will see this on a list of "things the President has done for the gays"

even though it only matters for this ONE person.

Or maybe it will fall under "see, he has hired more gays than any other before him"

Although I am glad for Kristina, I am still sad for all my GLBT friends who STILL do not have all the rights that I do.

[_ed_]

3. That's strange

considering that President Obama (and I assume his wife) both hold bigoted viewpoints concerning marriage equality. I hope Kristina Schake can combat her bigoted employers.