The Obama transition team has indicated that it will recommend revoking hundreds of executive orders that the Bush administration championed, such as those affecting prohibitions on stem-cell research.

A number of these orders greatly affect GLBT issues.

Those restricting HIV education, for example, will have enormous impact if revoked.

As we all know, despite soaring HIV-conversion rates, the Bush administration limited HIV education to abstinence-until-marriage campaigns. Of course, gay and bisexual men don’t respond to abstinence-until-marriage messages, since we’re neither heterosexual nor able to marry. Such programs haven’t even worked in the heterosexual population, where teens may be having fewer abortions but are having more babies.

President Obama gets this. And he knows HIV-conversion rates are most acute in the black community. So he should revoke the unrealistic abstinence directive and start HIV-education programs that target high-risk groups in effective ways.

President Obama also needs to dispense with the Bush administration’s “faith-based” initiatives. For one thing, “faith-based” groups receiving federal funds are exempt from anti-gay employment practices. Also, while everyone agrees faith-based groups should receive support to feed the homeless; unfortunately, some use federal grant money to fund their own agendas. These include ballot initiatives such as Proposition 8 and the futile notion of “reparative therapy,” which promotes changing sexual orientation through counseling despite the consistent scientific evidence that it’s genetic.

Finally, Obama should revisit “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT), former President Clinton’s compromise legislation to pave the way to repealing anti-gay bias in the military. Many of us are grateful that DADT has spared gay and lesbian youth the turmoil that our veterans have endured during the last eight years. Nevertheless, DADT is rooted in anti-gay bias, and we cannot tolerate the message it perpetuates: that it’s OK to treat gays and lesbians differently.

President Obama can certainly issue an order prohibiting any action taken against GLBT military personnel, unless taking such action in an individual case is “immediately necessary for achieving compelling military objectives.”