When my sisters and I were little, my dad sometimes worked three jobs at once. He was off about one Saturday a month, and instead of spending that day napping or at his beloved racetrack, he’d come home late Friday night and load up our Buick station wagon with fishing gear, a huge cooler full of my mom’s picnic food, and a valise packed with swimsuits, shorts, and extra shoes. Around one or two in the morning he’d carry us, sleeping and still in our pajamas, to the car for a two-hour-long drive to the lake, where we’d fish, swim, and run wild all day.

Our favorite place to fish was back in this little finger of water that was only about a hundred feet across. We’d drop our cane pole lines in not far from the bank and wait for some action. One time, a bunch of people came and unloaded their stuff directly across the water from us. They had these fancy rods and reels and cast their lines all the way over to our side, where their bobbers mingled with ours.

I remember asking my dad why they did that, since they could just as easily have fished close to their own bank with less trouble.

He said, “Because there are some simple-minded sons-of-bitches in this world.”

I swear, I was only five, but I understood him completely. And I knew that he knew that I understood. Know what I mean?

That day came echoing back to me on two distinct occasions this week. The first was when I was trying to come up with something interesting to say with regard to my coming out story. I was having a hard time, because mine seems so anticlimactic compared with other stories I’ve been reading. Basically, I fell in love with a woman and realized I am lesbian. Easy. I was in the Air Force, but surrounded by a very supportive squadron of friends who made sure I never had a moment of trouble for being gay. The most difficult part was when I told my mom over the phone all the way from South Carolina. She and my dad were in Kentucky, and when I spilled my news, things got quiet on the other end. I asked my mom what they were thinking and she just said, “Your daddy’s crying.” It wasn’t until later that he told me he was crying over the fact that being gay put me in danger from the “simple-minded sons-of-bitches in this world.”

President Obama’s so-called Big Gay Rights Speech was the second time I had to kind of smile at my dad’s famous words, words he and I joked about many times over the years. I have no doubt Obama’s intentions are better than those of the previous administration. I have no doubt Obama doesn’t want to lose my vote. I have no doubt Obama thinks he’s being pragmatic. I have no doubt Obama was real proud of the part in his speech where he said, “while some may wish to define you solely by your sexual orientation or gender identity alone, you know and I know that none of us wants to be defined by just one part of what makes us whole.” I also have no doubt that if my dad were still here he’d like Obama a lot, but would truly have to shake his head and tell the man that there may be some “simple-minded sons-of-bitches in this world” but his daughter sure isn’t one of them. In other words, Mr. President, we are no longer dazzled by your ability to cast a beautiful line. You need to land some actual fish.