HomoQuotable - Steve Hildebrand

"I would encourage gays and straights alike to put pressure on President Obama, on his administration, to call for action -- immediate action on the laundry list of items that the gay community deserves for true equality in this country.

"What I don't like is the suggestion by a lot of people that this guy has lied to us and that he isn't fulfilling his campaign promises, when he's only been in office for five months. He can't change the world overnight and -- I'm doing my best to say this without providing excuses -- but this is a president who was handed a larger number of really big issues to deal with at the beginning of his presidency than any other president in history.

'He's got to get an economy moving, he's got to get the troops out of Iraq, there's a lot of big, big problems. At the same time, he is working within his administration to try and get in a position to get some meaningful things done to help the gay community achieve equality. That does not preclude any suggestion that we should not keep up the pressure. He has told me, and he has told ... staff in the White House that pressure's a good thing, so people should continue to put pressure on him." - Barack Obama's former deputy campaign director Steve Hildebrand, telling reporter Rex Wockner that he has faith in the president on LGBT issues. Hildebrand has had one-on-one conversations with the president and reports that Obama was "not happy at all" with the language used in the infamous DOJ-DOMA brief.

Read Rex Wockner's excellent interview with Hildebrand in full.

[Photo credit: Rex Wockner]