This time I was in the shower with Barack Obama.

"Speakin' of butts - had another sex dream last night. This time I was in the shower with Barack Obama. Oh-bama, he was 'ba-racking' my world."

---Grace, on "Will & Grace," 11/25/2004. 'Cause let's face it: whatever else is wrong, around these parts at least we're going to be represented in the U.S. Senate by a hot, hot man.

A year ago Barack Obama was running fourth in the Democratic Senate primary in some polls. I've been reading about the Obamas and thinking about how significant it is that they come across as normal people. In fact they are normal people. I read in the current Newsweek cover story about how even with the stresses following the election, they still had to deal with stuff like their kid getting sick. I looked them up on Switchboard.com, figuring he hasn't been famous long enough to have gotten himself removed from such things, and found that they live less than a block from the beautiful, spatious, sunny apartment where I spent the summer of 2003, just north of 55th Street on Everett Avenue. They live in a modestly upscale real estate development there - nice, but not the fanciest housing in Hyde Park by any stretch of the imagination. A couple of my professors, actually, live in the same development.

Michelle Obama works at the U of C Hospitals as Executive Director of the Office of Community Affairs, which must be a big fucking job, even a daunting or excruciating one, at that place.

The current issue of Newsweek mentions that he will be among the least wealthy Senators; hell, even with his new $1.9 million three-book deal, that still might be true. John Kerry, by contrast, is the Senate's #1 wealthiest member. Let's hope the passing of the torch does some good.

The magazine story also has a very strangely worded paragraph in which Obama manages - just barely - to say he won't "back off" on the abortion and gay issues:

Obama doesn't believe that John Kerry lost because of "moral values." It's much more complicated than that. But he knows that the cultural divide and issues like gay marriage and abortion played a role, and that Kerry actually lost among his fellow Roman Catholics. The task now, Obama says, is not to back off on any particular issue but to at least open these cultural subjects for discussion again—and for Democrats to "reclaim and reassert in very explicit language that our best ideas rise out of communal values."

I've written him a letter.

1473 W. Farragut Ave., Apt. G
Chicago, IL 60640

December 22, 2004



Senator-elect Barack Obama
c/o Obama for Illinois
310 South Michigan Avenue, Suite 1720
Chicago, IL 60604

Dear Mr. Obama,

I write as a former Illinois General Assembly constituent in Hyde Park, a soon-to-be Senate constituent, and a gay Illinoisian. You spoke at my graduate school orientation at the University of Chicago in the fall of 2002. Like millions of Americans, I have taken great solace in your victory at an otherwise very trying political moment.

I have one simple and humble request: please stop saying that you are opposed to same-sex marriage for religious reasons. As far as I can tell, you avoided this wording for most of the campaign, emphasizing strategic considerations instead. For this, you were my hero. I imagine that Alan Keyes’ efforts to paint you as a social radical led you to adopt the new line late in the campaign. Even if it’s true, you know as well as I do that your religious beliefs have no bearing on civil marriage, and that our nation’s diverse religious authorities are divided on the question.

Your gay constituents are counting on you. As the only African American in the Senate, your voice has a special significance, because the religious right today wants to exploit the resilience of Black families in the service of their cruel and divisive agenda. There is little evidence to support their belief that black Americans are more opposed to GLBT equality than whites are. In fact, in ten out of the eleven states where same-sex marriage was on the ballot this November, African Americans were less likely than whites to vote to amend their state constitutions.

Gay Americans are one of many groups of vulnerable Americans who face tremendous difficulties during President Bush’s second term. Please stand up for us.


Sincerely yours,



Timothy ***