I know how I'd feel if David Duke were invited to speak at Barack Obama's inauguration. I know how I'd feel if Hal Turner were invited to speak. I'd wonder why someone who was an avowed racist and anti-Semite were given the honor of speaking at such a historic event, and I'd wonder if it were a way of saying "I'm president now and there's not a damn thing you can do about this and I don't give a shit what you think."
Symbols matter. Symbols send a message. Whether you intend them to or not, they matter. And the symbolism of having Rick Warren do the invocation at Barack Obama's inaugural is a slap in the face to the entire GLBT community that supported his election.
We are now in the middle of the annual conservative hysteria over the nonexistent "War on Christmas." Christianity is still the majority religion in this country. There is no persecution of Christians and there is no infringement on the right of Christians to practice their religion, except to the extent that some of us do not want to be proseletyzed and we don't want their attempts at conversion. Other than the right to exercise the part of their faith that calls for conversion of the heathen, by force if necessary, and making it an official religious tradition in this country, Christians can do pretty much whatever they want.
Conservative Christians have elevated feeling persecuted to an art form in this country. Their leaders rake in the cash and build megachurches and become TV stars and write bestsellers. But they are the ones who are besieged. When was the last time a Christian in this country was beaten to a pulp and tied to a fence to die in this country just because he was Christian? When was the last time someone told a Christian that his very being was an affront to all that is decent and holy? When was the last time that a Christian wasn't allowed to marry whom s/he chooses?
I am all for conservative Christians to be able to practice their faith in their homes and in their churches. But the history of conservative Christianity and its refusal to just let others alone outweighs any kind of "outreach" that we may want to do to find common ground.
I'm sure that someone at Camp Obama thought that Rick Warren would be a swell choice to show that Barack Obama is going to be the "President for all Americans." I guess they forgot about the segment of the population that Rick Warren equates with pedophiles and polygamists and those who practice bestiality. Or perhaps they thought "Fuck 'em....where are they going to go, anyway? The Republicans?"
During the primaries, I chose to support another candidate over Barack Obama for just this reason -- because I was concerned about Obama's tendency to be overly conciliatory to the other side of the aisle, often to the extent of capitulating completely in the name of "bipartisanship." We've seen quite enough of this from the Democrats, especially since 2006. When it became clear that Obama would be the nominee, he said all the right things. But at the first moment at which a new president makes a statement, the Obama team has chosen to present as its public spiritual face a face that represents bigotry and fear and loathing. Hate with a smile is still hate.
You don't want same-sex marriage? Don't marry someone of the same sex. I'm sick of hearing the arguments in favor of defining marriage as being between one man and one woman, particularly since those arguments often come from people who have been divorced multiple times and will fuck anything that moves. I'm sick of the arguments about procreation. Mr. Brilliant and I got married knowing full well that we would do whatever we had to in order to NOT have children. I'm sick of hearing about 5000 years of tradition. In those 5000 years, women were often treated as chattel and as property, and were unable to escape an abusive situation for much of that time. In those 5000 years women were pimped out to wealthy men by their fathers for their own aggrandizement. The history of heterosexual marriage is hardly one to hold up as some kind of paragon of purity.
I understand why the consultants at Camp Obama felt that this would be a way of reaching out to those who didn't vote for their guy -- a brief moment in time to say "We hear you" before working to enact policies that they might otherwise oppose. There's only one problem. It won't work. And what I don't understand is how you get from reaching out to a hatemonger like Rick Warren, who thinks gays are like child molesters and people like me are holding an express bus ticket to hell and that women cease to be human once they become vessels for embryos, constitutes "inclusiveness." I don't understand why "inclusiveness" means you get to throw one group who has actually supported you under the bus, embracing those who want to exclude that group from one of the fundamental institutions of American life, in the name of "changing the discourse."
Here's what Camp Obama doesn't understand: You cannot reach out to these people. You cannot do business with these people. The primary characteristic of one-true-wayism is that it's their way or the highway, or more accurately, their way or hellfire eternal. The people who believe that Jews and secular liberals and gays are conducting an armed war on their right to put cheap plastic inflatable nativity scenes on their lawns are not going to embrace Barack Hussein Obama just because he lets one of their own speak for a moment at his inauguration. I don't remember where I read it, but I read a blog comment last night in which the commenter said his grandmother told him, "When the mouth and the feet are both moving, watch the feet."
It does not exactly give one hope for the rest of the dance when the guy who brought the GLBT community to the dance dumps them the minute he walks in the door in favor of the smiling shiksa who's always spurned him. Because right now the feet are there on the dance floor, doing the electric slide with Rick Warren.
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