What should I say?

How about that civil rights and equality for all people are important. If she really cares about you as a person and is truly supportive of gays, she wouldn't flippantly say that your civil rights are unimportant.

 

Well the President has brought a lot of the troops back. We've made a lot more progress in that regard than we would if we had a Republican in the Oval Office. And I don't understand her argument that he spends too much time on gay rights. He's made one speech saying the he supports marriage equality, and he really only did that because a lot of people were bugging him about it after Vice President Biden said he supports marriage equality on Meet the Press. I don't even think he's passed any bills lately about gay people, though I could be wrong.

 

In my opinion, rights are always important. Without rights, the rest is meaningless. If people don't want to focus on gay rights anymore, they should just give us equal rights and get it over with. Equality is going to happen eventually, so they should just save everyone a bunch of time and effort and bring on the equality. Once that is done and over with, then they can focus on the "more important" subjects.

 

There is nothing wrong with being offended by what she said; you're gay. This is your life. Obviously, it is an important issue to you - the most important - because it has a direct impact on your life. You might feel differently if you were in Afghanistan, didn't want to be there, but were required to be there to fight as you signed up for the military. Obviously, decisions made about Afghanistan have a direct impact upon your life in that case, and thus have more importance.

Your friend is likely looking at things through the perspective of life and death. In her mind, she's wondering what is more important than that.

It doesn't mean it shouldn't offend you. It's not wrong to feel. A good response to that is, "I'm rather confident the President is capable of doing more than one thing at a time. His work on gay rights is important to me. It impacts my life in a direct way, it shapes the entire future of the country and will determine the quality of my life - whether it will be good or bad. For me, there is no other issue more important, because it is my life."

If she has a problem with that response, then you can ask her how would she feel if the government was actively discriminating against her. How would she feel if every time she walked down the street holding her boyfriends hand, she was worried that she'd be attacked, and possibly killed. After all, it isn't just about rights, it's about changing perceptions.

 

This summed it up pretty well.

Obama has done a lot for gay rights, but it's minimal compared to what else he's focused on and had to focus on. You ought to ask her the specifics about the war and what the implications of leaving Afghanistan means for the US and the world. Does she remember why we're there? What the current status is? Just because Osama Bin Laden is dead doesn't mean the war is over. The situation is a lot more complicated than "we go and everything is peaceful now la la la laaaaa"

Where was she when the Iraq War ended? And Obama announced the time table for troops to start leaving Afghanistan in 2014? I'm sorry, but complaining about the troop levels and war is usually by people who hardly understand the situation at all.

Does she seriously think that Obama is over here worrying about gay rights while there's a war going on and just... forgetting? No president is just going to forget about the war the nation is in. It's usually one of the top priorities.

It just seems like this woman is complaining about something she doesn't know much about and is backing it up with facts she knows less about - and she offended you. You have every right to be offended by it. Don't go up and hit her or anything, but don't just sit there and take it from her. If you can, let her know that it's offensive and that that is obviously not the case.