Obama, Clinton go after gays on big night

From Politico:

Obama's rally in Beaumont today was the highest-energy of this Texas swing, with a crowd that was about three-quarters black cheering at almost every turn.

An interesting moment came when he was asked a question about LGBT rights and delivered an answer that seemed to suit the questioner, listing the various attributes — race, gender, etc. — that shouldn't trigger discrimination, to successive cheers. When he came to saying that gays and lesbians deserve equality, though, the crowd fell silent.

So he took a different tack:

"Now I’m a Christian, and I praise Jesus every Sunday," he said, to a sudden wave of noisy applause and cheers.

"I hear people saying things that I don’t think are very Christian with respect to people who are gay and lesbian," he said, and the crowd seemed to come along with him this time.

From the Advocate:

But just as quickly as Obama has been striking, Clinton has been swinging back. No sooner had his campaign secured four full-page ads in four separate gay weeklies in Dallas, Houston, Columbus, and Cleveland, than she had conducted a conference call with reporters from three of the same weeklies. The Clinton camp also announced the formation of a 38-member LGBT steering committee in Ohio last week.

And in Houston – which has the 10th largest gay population in the nation – after the city's nonpartisan GLBT caucus endorsed Obama last week, Clinton spent 20 minutes of her Friday evening answering questions from the Houston Stonewall Democrats, who endorsed her on Saturday.

“It’s an exciting time down here in Texas, the most exciting in my lifetime,” said 45-year-old Teresa Herrin, president of Houston’s Stonewall chapter, her voice cracking from the strain of too much politicking. Herrin said they extended an offer to both candidates to speak with their five-member executive board but that the Obama campaign finally declined the offer at 10:00 a.m. Saturday morning.