Last week, President Obama nominated Ted Osius to be the United States Ambassador to Vietnam. Osius would be the first openly-gay US ambassador to serve in an Asian country. Osius becomes the sixth gay ambassador named by Obama, joining ambassadors from OSCE, Australia, Spain, Denmark, and the Dominican Republic. Osius had previously come to the public’s attention when Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called him “aggressively gay.”
However, the nominee that has received the most press this week is Michael Boggs who was nominated to serve on the federal bench in Georgia. Boggs has received a large amount of criticism for his conservative stance on race, women, and the LGBT community, causing many spectators to wonder why Obama would nominate such a conservative jurist.
