Weird White House Web Edits Infuriate LGBT Blogosphere

The blogosphere buzzed all day Thursday with indignation at the possibility that the Obama administration -- haunted by its heretofore silence on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues -- deleted many of the LGBT support goals previously found on WhiteHouse.gov's "Civil Rights" Web page.


(Click the image to view the side-by-side comparison)

Although the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force quickly discovered and disclosed that the edits were part of an intentional yet benign project to "turn [Whitehouse.gov] into a more governance-focused site to reflect progress, as opposed to a campaign and transition site," LGBT bloggers for most of the day remained unconvinced. Foremost among their criticisms were two stark omissions from the revised "Civil Rights" page: Obama's previously published promises to defend LGBT adoption rights and repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Yet, by Thursday night, the administration had again edited WhiteHouse.gov. Strangely enough, the re-re-revised "Civil Rights" text item once more featured calls to protect LGBT parents and military members, albeit in more condensed language. The administration has since made no additional changes.

From this tap dance, however, it seems safe to draw two conclusions about Obama and the Web. First, and most obviously, the Task Force was correct; the White House edited a number of pages in the past 24 hours, perhaps in a harmless attempt to reduce Obama's verbiage or synthesize his circular arguments. Although many of the re-writes do still fail to reflect the administration's stated intent of transforming Whitehouse.gov from a campaign site into an executive branch information hub, it is now clear that the administration's edits were not literal attempts to re-write its own prerogatives.

In a more meta-media sense, furthermore, the changes clearly underscore the limits of an "Internet presidency." There is a physical difference between revising a Web page and redacting a printed document, but the two types of editing are nominally the same; they are both premeditated attempts to redraft one's goals, intentions, expectations or promises. Unfortunately, Obama understands the Internet's power of revision all too well. Throughout the campaign, the former candidate fielded considerable criticism for periodic changes to his election Web site, many of which directly concerned his policy platform. (So too, of course, did his opponent frequently fix up his own Web site, but that in no way validates Obama's behavior).

Maybe, in 2008, voters did not notice, as deception to a presidential campaign is like impulse to the blogosphere – expected, excusable, enjoyable even. But for a chief executive known by many as a technophile, ill-explained edits are slightly less acceptable, doubly peculiar and rarely innocent – at least, in the eyes of concerned voters, who identify personally with those issues on the other side of his virtual pen.