THE FIRST GAY PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

Toni Morrison famously coined Bill Clinton "America's First Black President." I'll do her one further. If Bill Clinton gets to be the first black President, then Barack Obama gets to be the first gay President.

Why? Because if Barack Obama follows through with even half of the promises he made to the LGBT community during his campaign, he'll have done more to advance gay rights in this country than any President before him – combined.

Already we're seeing evidence of this. President-Elect Obama has appointed at least seven openly gay or lesbian officials to his transition team, including labor attorney Elaine Kaplan, former Romanian Ambassador Michael Guest, and former San Francisco Supervisor Roberta Achtenberg. Most of his cabinet appointments, including Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and Eric Holder as Attorney General, have favorable records on many gay rights issues. There's even a Web site run by the Gay and Lesbian Leadership Institute, http://www.glli.org/presidential, to help qualified LGBT persons apply for government positions under an Obama administration.

But beyond hiring key staff, the Obama team has put forward a number of LGBT rights goals for the next four years that could bring unprecedented victories to the gay rights movement throughout the country.

And the first goal, according to Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), will likely be the passage of the decade-old Matthew Shepard Act. Named after the gay 19-year-old University of Wyoming student who was murdered ten years ago because of his sexual orientation, this Act – which cleared both the Senate and the U.S. House in 2007, but faced a veto from President Bush – will expand federal jurisdiction to include violent hate crimes committed because of sexual orientation and gender identity. (*Note: You can vote for this idea over at change.org's "Ideas for Change in America" page. These ideas will be submitted to President-Elect Obama on his Inauguration Day.)

The Obama administration also hopes to push the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) through Congress. This bill, which would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation in the workplace. The bill passed the U.S. house in November 2007 by wide margins but failed to gain traction in the Senate or with the Bush White House.

Obama also campaigned on a pledge to repeal the U.S. military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. In recent days, President-Elect Obama has scaled back his plans to repeal this policy, but advisors are hoping that by 2010, President Obama will have built consensus among his Joint Chiefs of Staff to repeal the harmful ban.

These three issues have been at the forefront of gay rights for years, though there's always been at least one obstacle preventing them from passing. With a President Obama in the Oval Office, those obstacles are now largely removed.

True, an Obama administration might not do much in the way of marriage equality. But there's a silver lining in that fact that is likely to emerge. While Obama himself has stated that he believes marriage is between one man and one woman, he is also adamantly opposed to a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Without the threat of the federal government clamping down on marriage, one could argue that more states will see the flexibility to recognize same-sex marriage rights.

Already, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) has indicated that they intend to push for gay marriage rights in four New England states – Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont. There are also efforts underway to advocate changing New Jersey's civil union laws into marriage laws, while New York's Governor and State Assembly favor legalizing gay marriage. There's even the possibility that Iowa, where the State Supreme Court will hear arguments in December 2008 on the state's prohibition against same-sex marriage, may head down the road of marriage equality.

All of that is to say that within President Obama's first-term, there's likely to be at least one, and possibly up to seven or eight states, that recognize full marriage rights for gays and lesbians. That alone could have profound implications for gay rights nationwide, and could spell the beginning of the end for the federal government's Defense of Marriage Act.

The bottom line? If Obama can accomplish hate crimes legislation, anti-employment discrimination legislation, and a repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," while standing out of the way of states that recognize marriage equality, he will deserve the title "America's First Gay President."