Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician and attorney who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Barack Obama was the first African-American president of the United States. He previously served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004.
Culture War, Redux
For a few years, the battles over L.G.B.T. rights seemed to be fading from the American political scene. The Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2015, and most Americans supported the decision.
During the past few national campaigns, most Republican politicians — including Donald Trump, who called himself a friend of the gay community — largely ignored L.G.B.T.
issues. One of Trump’s Supreme Court appointees, Neil Gorsuch, even wrote the opinion in a 2020 case that protected gay and transgender workers from job discrimination.
But the brief political truce on L.G.B.T. rights appears to be over. In more than a dozen states, Republicans have recently passed laws restricting those rights.
