Forced to address whether gay federal employees and spouses are eligible for, among other things, health insurance coverage, President Obama is now in the unenviable position of navigating a political and social minefield: Balancing his commitment to the LGBT community and progressive liberals with his willingness, and need, to appease the conservative Evangelical community.

As it stands now, health benefits are readily available to spouses of federal employees, though as an official for the Office of Personnel Management explains, “spouses,” as stipulated by the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, are persons “of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.”

In accordance with DOMA’s strict interpretation of spouses, gay federal employees are currently denied the opportunity to extend health care benefits to their partners – even if their states recognize them as legally married. This strict definition, they argue, denies gay men and women equal compensation.

The federally institutionalized ‘discriminatory practice’ of denying health coverage to the committed partners ostensibly violates Obama’s socially liberal sensibilities, but President Obama is first a politician looking to get reelected, and second an ally to the LGBT community. Obama understands when it’s politically advantageous to engage in ethnic-, religious-, social-, and regional-based politics, and, perhaps more importantly, when it’s not. The latter being anytime one is actually governing.

In an open letter to the gay community in February of last year, then-Senator Obama promised that he would “never compromise on my commitment to equal rights for all LGBT Americans,” adding that he was seeking the office of the presidency “to build an America that lives up to our founding promise of equality for all – a promise that extends to our gay brothers and sisters.”

In June of 2007, the Human Rights Campaign submitted their candidate questionnaire to Senators Obama and Hillary Clinton, in which they asked if the two candidates supported an extension of “federal rights, benefits, privileges and responsibility to same-sex couples,” so long as these partnerships met federal standards for commitment and mutuality of interests. Mr. Obama, like Senator Clinton, responded in the affirmative and without additional commentary.

Obama and gay rights groups have not always seen eye-to-eye, however. He previously earned the scorn of gay rights advocates in January with his selection of Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inaugural ceremony. Chastising Obama for his (negligible) olive branch to Evangelicals after a hyper-partisan campaign, HRC President Joe Solmonese characterized Warren’s pick as a “genuine blow to LGBT Americans.”

Can we expect the same anger from gay rights advocacy organizations when President Obama undoubtedly rolls over on them? That remains to be seen as many have earned a reputation as inefectual and too willing to compromise.

If Obama had the political capital his administration claims, social conservatives might have reason to fret (and LGBT Americans a reason to rejoice). They don’t, of course, but even if that were the case, Obama has proved himself to be nothing more than a craven political opportunist who has exhibited no misgivings in betraying his “principles” and “allies.”

An HRC spokesman did not return an immediate request for comment on this story.

Cross-posted at www.Redstate.com.