Ever since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the GLBT community has had little to celebrate at the federal level. But it’s a new morning in America!

With Obama at the helm, we will make progress at last.

Obama is our first Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 who has the power to help us. Yes, there was Bill Clinton. But Clinton did little for GLBT issues because he was elected with less than 50 percent of the vote, and the Democrats lost control of the House in 1994.

Let’s not underestimate the import of regaining the White House. The president appoints the heads of more than 500 administrative agencies, almost all of which touch upon our daily lives. We will finally have an Attorney General and a Department of Justice committed to civil rights instead of a right-wing agenda.

Democrats in the 100-seat Senate, now have at least 56 seats. Coupled with the handful of moderate (pro-gay) Republicans, this should mean there will be more than 60 votes in support of GLBT equality, especially on hate-crimes legislation.

As for the 435-member House, Democrats have captured 254 seats. We need 218 votes to pass bills out of the House. (Ironically, because of the horrible nature of the economy, the GLBT bills that we will push, should pass without the fanfare they would have received in the past.)

I’ll outline those bills in the next few columns.

In California, we now have a new openly gay legislator in Assemblymember-elect John Perez (Los Angeles), the first openly gay Latino legislator. He could prove to be the first gay Speaker of the Assembly. Assemblymember Marc Leno moves to the Senate, where he will join Christine Kehoe.

The governor and the Legislature have worked cooperatively to advance dozens of GLBT bills in the last five years.

Even with the passage of Proposition 8, the Legislature can advance relationship equality. It should do so by redefining “domestic partnership” as a “civil union.” The State recognizes the union through issuing a certificate from the Secretary of State. (I would like to see the Legislature go further, of course, and simply remove the State from the marriage business by allowing couples to get legal status via a civil union. Should they decide to obtain a traditional marriage through a religious ceremony, fine.)

At the very least, California should follow the lead of New York, where transgender persons may marry a person of the opposite sex even if the transgender person has not had sex-reassignment surgery.

Locally, one-quarter of the San Diego City Council now consists of gay men: Carl DeMaio and Todd Gloria.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the two will occupy council seats at the worst time in the history of San Diego budget problems.

We don’t how they are going to find the money to pay the defined pension benefits going to the councilmembers they are replacing.

The loss of Mike Aguirre as city attorney comes as a relief to lots of folks in this city, particularly those whose greed Mike exposed. Mike told us four years ago that the city was heading to financial disaster; the pension deficit is $1 billion and growing.

But thanks to Aguirre, the in-coming City Council will consist of a bunch of pitbulls watching the city treasury, or what’s left in it. Had it not been for Aguirre’s shining light on the corruption in city government, we wouldn’t have this crop of newcomers, lead by Carl DeMaio.

The reality, as our editorial last week pointed out, is that Mike has been the best city attorney the GLBT community could ever have wished for.

In the last year alone, it was Mike who brought the same-sex marriage litigation matter to the City Council, and it was Mike who defended the City against the politically motivated firefighters’ sexual harassment suit.

We’ll miss Mike.

But Jan Goldsmith is not a pawn of the radical right wing, unlike former city attorney, Casey Gwinn. Goldsmith was a Democrat in college. He worked for Senator Edmund Muskie, the favorite to win the Democratic nomination for president back then, and he later served as Secretary of State in the Carter Administration, epitomizing integrity and solidly committed to equality.