The liberal callers lined up to applaud President Obama's gay-marriage proclamation on Thursday's Talk of The Nation show, but one of them really stood out.
A gay man from San Francisco claimed "we are a race of people, not a type of person," and that is all Obama has to say to shut down any objections or debate: "this whole conversation ends."
NEAL CONAN, host: Let's see if we go next to - this is Tim. Tim with us from San Francisco.
TIM: Hey, thanks for taking my call. There is a part of the gay-lesbian-transgender conversation that is happening in San Francisco that's not happening on the radio with NPR or any other station. And there are many gays and lesbians and transgenders who believe that we are a race of people. And the way that we are a race of people, is we're distinctly different than any other race in the idea that we do not sexually identify as heterosexual. Now, if you take that idea of 10 percent of the population of the world, we equal 300 million people. That's the population of the United States.
And with that amount of people, we are a race of people, not a type of person. And I don't believe Barack Obama has gone far enough. All he has to do is say that the LBGT people are a race, and this whole conversation ends. We no longer have a difference between us and them. We are a race of people, and it needs to be addressed and it needs to be talked about.
CONAN: Tim, thanks very much for the call.
Forget for a minute that calling the LGBT folks a "race" isn't at all racial. The old "ten percent" claim isn't even made by gay advocates any more. One recent estimate was 3.5 percent.
