We're just days away from the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, and organizers promise that this year will be bigger than ever.
The White House Easter Egg Roll has been a tradition since 1878, and last year 22,000 tickets were distributed. Instead of handing out tickets on the Ellipse the weekend before the event like in the past, those interested in attending could go online to secure a ticket, so that "more children and families from across the United States have the opportunity to experience the event."
Families from 45 different states are expected to attend the event, but not all of them have been distributed in a democratic fashion. Special blocks of tickets have been allocated to military families, administration families, DC public school children, and families of gay and lesbian parents.
Special tickets for select groups aren't anything new. Last year President Bush invited families of those working with USA Freedom Corps. But the special invitation to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) families makes a unique political statement.
LGBT families have often been active participants in the White House Easter Egg Roll, though this is their first special invitation to be there. In 2006 the Family Pride Coalition arranged for over a hundred LGBT families to bring their children to the White House Easter Egg Roll. According to their website, that participation in 2006 "generated more positive media coverage of LGBT families than any event in history."
If this is the case, and these families have been participating alongside any other family in the country, is a special allottment of tickets really necessary? It would be different if there were some force preventing them from attending the event and receiving tickets alongside everybody else, but that's not exactly the situation.
Furthermore, the White House has pledged to make the process of securing tickets more equitable, so how does singling out this s pecific group, or any group for that matter, accomplish that goal?
In the grand scheme of things, the number of tickets needed for the hundred families to attend doesn't make a huge dent in the thousands that were available. It also doesn't compare to the 2,000 alloted to DC public schools. But symbolically, it speaks volumes.
Within the past few weeks, gay marriage activists have scored huge political victories with the legalization of gay marriage in Iowa and Vermont. Just yesterday D.C. vowed to recognize gay marriages performed in other states, so it's possible that legalization of gay marriage in the nation's capital isn't too far behind.
While you can't necessarily equate the invitation of LGBT families to the Easter Egg Role to the administration's endorsement of gay marriage, which President Obama has said he does not support, is there greater significance to this invitation?
While it's possible that this invitation is nothing more than symbolic gesture on behalf of the administration to the LGBT community, it's also possible that this invitation could foreshadow additional legislative changes, such as repealing the Defense of Marriage Act.
At this point, only time will tell whether the invitation is just an invitation, or whether it will lead to something more.