The title threw me and I thought this was gonna be a post about hot Levi, Bristol's baby daddy, get all hot and bothered in some oil rig some other hot guys and I was gonna have to clear my calendar for the rest of the afternoon. Thanks a lot for the preemptive boner Hamilton. (Wait are sure those sort of pics dont exist?)
Listen up people, cause I'm not going to tell you again (well, maybe I will). The contributions gays have made to greater society are enormous. ENORMOUS!!! Not to be catty, but the whole muti-zillion dollar $$$ fashion and retail sectors of this great nation (and globe, for that matter) are driven by the designs of mostly gay men. I said MOSTLY, not exclusively!!! The look of our world has certainly been enhanced by the level of creativity amongst "the gays". Undeniably. The great writer "Fran Liebowitz" once said, "If you take away the contributions of gays to our society, all you would have left is The Price is Right"!! Love Bob Barker and all, but... At any rate, look around. Gays take pride in their appearance, live by the motto of "be fabulous", throw great parties, keep disco alive, keep Broadway alive, apply the makeup to almost every Sports Illustrated model in that swimsuit issue that all the boys masturbate to, on and on. That's just the "frilly" stuff (poor choice of words?) Anyway, now on to the serious. Gays pay taxes, approach everything they do fully embracing a quest for perfection, have fought for their rights over the years in an organized, non violent crusade, are Americans most of all, and deserve to feel the "Liberty and Justice for all" so prominently mentioned in the Pledge of Allegiance. Personally, I think it is time for an even stronger push towards equality. When speaking of "prop 8" and gay "marriage", I don't want to play semantics. If "marriage" is considered to be the union of a man and a woman, so be it. I, personally am not "married" to that word. A same-sex pledge of love can be "called" anything as far as I am concerned. It's the rights and benefits that I am after. Once again society is missing a tremendous opportunity. With so many abandoned children the world over (some heterosexuals do use their sacred ability to produce another human being very casually) homosexual couples are the perfect vehicle to a stable life for these "extra" children. And contrary to what some heterosexuals believe, all homosexual men do not hate women. After all, we all had Mothers. It's time to look now at the world and how we live in it, and recognize the rights of homosexuals to live their lives without judgement and denial of basic human rights. Judgement is not a virtue. Imagine a world where blacks still had to ride at the back of the bus. Same thing here. I will save the abortion discussion, as well as the legalizing of marijuana for another day. You're welcome.
I won't go as far as ars rhetorica, I just think it's goddamn hilarious to watch goddamn Pareene get bent out of shape about goddamn Obama less than 2 months after the election and before he's even inaugurated. I mean, goddamn. Didn't see this coming when declaring the Clinton legacy dead, eh?
But seriously, Obama is a politician. He has ALWAYS been a politician, but Obamamaniacs shut their eyes to it and the Republitards didn't want a narrative that made Obama look less left-wing or more savvy and politically able, so they also shut their eyes to it.
Welcome to political awareness, young Obama supporters. Enjoy the goddamn view from up here on top of the high horse, it's quite goddamn nice.
@BaldwinPeriphetes: I am one of those Obama people and allow me to correct a mispercepton: I was well-aware that he is a politician. The rest of the Obama supporters were also well aware that he is a politician.
This "Hey look - he's a politician!" stuff is the lamest criticism I've evern heard. He ran for president - of course he's a politician! He never claimed otherwise.
He also never claimed that he'd follow a purely left-wing doctrine. He said he'd reach out to Republicans and try to work with them. I understand why diehard liberals don't like that — but it shouldn't come as any surprise, nor should it be considered "hypocrisy" or "treason" or anything else of that ilk.
(I do think he made a mistake with this Warren thing though — although the seriousness of that mistake is being blown our of proportion.)
The problem with this proposition is exactly what Pareene pointed out-- that the selection of Warren, which you admit was a mistake, comes along with a host of other mistakes (see also: DoT pork secretary and Rubinite economic team). As Hydroceph points out, Obama promised CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN. Some of us never bought the schtick, but that does not mean we can't, or indeed shouldn't, hold his feet to the fire when he plays the same Washington game with the same Washington players. What is so perplexing is that despite mounting evidence (and he's not even president yet!) Obama's die-hard fans really believe that this game is going to yield a different result.
@arsrhetorica: I don't agree there's been a "host of other mistakes." I don't think the cabinet choices you cite are mistakes. He didn't pick a purely liberal cabinet, and this makes liberals unhappy. That doesn't mean that these choices were "mistakes."
Yes the people he picked have past political experience. It's pretty impossible to pick qualified people for these positions who don't. But I never heard Obama promise he'd pick totally neophytes who'd never worked in D.C. before - people keep suggesting that he did, but as far as I can tell, that expectation doesn't match anything Obama actually promised.
When Obama promised "change," he was mainly talking about an end to partisan bickering and demonizing of the opposition, and getting to work pulling people together to SOLVE PROBLEMS. And as far as I can tell, that's still exactly what he plans to do.
That's the "different result" I'm expecting. Not "Ralph Nader's Dream Cabinet."
And when he becomes president FOUR WEEKS FROM NOW and gets a chance to actually start doing the job, why don't you take a seat and watch him do it for a while? (And take a minute to actually listen to what he's saying while you're at it?)
Jesus, Pareene. The guy isn't even president yet and you're tearing him apart with more gusto than you ever spent attacking those assholes Bush and Cheney.
I understand why gay-rights advocates are upset with the Warren pick - it was a mistake on Obama's part. But a little proportion people, please? In the end, it is just a guy giving a ritual prayer, not an appointee to a position of power. I wouldn't be surprised if Obama himself wasn't even aware of the choice, given how trivial and insignificant such ritual inauguration niceties normally seem. Nobody has ever paid any attention to the guy giving the invocation before now -- before it suddenly turned into this huge fucking deal due to a mistake Obama (or more likely, one of his staff) made with this choice.
So now a mistake has been made and Obama will be roasted alive every day till the end of time for it. And if we keep up these relentless, hostile, blistering attacks going against Obama for four more years, we can welcome the Republicans back to the White House in 2012. And the political left will have destroyed itself yet again.
@Housebroken(mostly): In other words, don't just a president-elect, who was, as arsrhetorica pointed out,a master of symbolism, on a symbolic gesture? At best, it's tone-deaf. At worst, it shows that he's a hypocrite. Gasp! I dared use the h-word against Saint Barack! When you tar and feather me, please use eiderdown, as it's softer.
But as far as a gamble goes? Those are my rights he's gambling with, and maybe yours, too, but it's pretty damned cynical from someone who ran as the prophet of hope.
As a former Hillary '08 supporter-- you know, the politician that we all knew was a politician and didn't pretend to be The Above That Sort of Thing Hope And Change Bunny Who Loved Everyone And Would Really Push The Boat Out As A TRUE PROGRESSIVE-- I feel entitled to ask first if you were an Obama supporter.
If so,
I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO.
I'm going to stew in this delicious Manhattan and watch your dreams die.
Change you can believe in = Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme.
Rev. Jeremiah Wright's recent high-profile appearances are going to create a host of problems for Sen. Obama's presidential campaign. But rather than get into the specific reasons why I think this recent development will probably doom Obama's electoral chances...
@arsrhetorica: Since this is a ridiculously crass thing to write, let me be bitchy with you. Clinton pretended to be more than a politician, too. She just wasn't very good at it.
True... But at the time I wrote that, my goal was to get a Democratic president, preferably Clinton, elected and it was justifiable to think that Obama was a risk not worth taking. I was wrong and I am glad Obama, rather than McCain, won in the end. Still, that doesn't dilute my ability to enjoy watching the Obamatons lose their rag as it turns out he's not Truth and Light after all. He's a politician and while he may eschew PAC money, he sure doesn't have a problem putting bigots on stage...
@arsrhetorica: wtf are u talking about? i don't understand the "i told you so." Hils does not support same sex marriage. whether or not she would have chosen Warren is left to conjecture, but the advancement for gay rights under hils would have happened just as incrementally.
@La Cieca: Probably best to deal with the fact that Obama is undermining people he claims to support and hold him to account instead of treating Democratic party dissent as some sort of disloyalty. That's the Republicans' method of operation.
@arsrhetorica: Dissent from the left is one thing. Hostile attacks from the left are another.
Dissent is healthy. Hostile attacks are destructive.
Please read the following paraphraph and see which of those two descriptions is the better fit (bearing in mind that it'll be a month before Obama's presidency even starts):
If "no red or blue America" post-partisanship means the explicit endorsement of a bigot pastor, a useless pork-happy Republican heading the DoT as we embark on the biggest infrastructure program of a generation, and an economic team full of the guys who found common ground with the Reaganites back in the day only to then scorch and salt that common ground, the ground we were all trying to grow money in, then we'll take the divisive and damaging politics of bitter partisanship, Mr. President-elect!
@raysanni: the point is that Clinton never promised to be the second coming of anything, except possibly her husband and not really even that. Hers was a balancing act--the Clinton years were good ones, but her husband had some quirks. Obama certainly rode that "Change" pony for all it was worth, and as it turns out, it wasn't worth that much.
Of course Barney Frank isn't happy with Obama's choice. What I am wondering, is who was he attempting to appeal to? The Christian right will never be on board. But I hope that is not the intended target. Why would he choose Rick Warren? Is he (Obama) actually more anti-gay than was originally thought?
@Rupert Pupkin: It seems to me that the strategy here could be to recognize that the Christian right is not necessarily monolithic and that there is common ground and room for persuasion and compromise. True, the message coming from the Christian right has always been that there can be no compromise, but now they are no longer speaking from a secure position of superiority. What that means, I think, is that some of the more social-activist Christians could be amenable to making common cause with the Obama left.
I realize some of this thinking may be a little wishy-washing sounding for those whose motto of the day is "Now we have the power; let us crush our enemies mercilessly."
@Rupert Pupkin: If it doesn't work, we've just been thrown under the bus at the moment of "liberal" ascendancy. If it doesn't work, that liberal ascendancy has been sold out, too.
It's funny how the people who are calling the loudest for healing are the ones who lost. Bush came to DC to end the partisanship (HAHAHAHA!!!), but had no problems ruling from the far right. Mush centrism and bipartisanship for its own sake isn't going to work.
I think that Warren was a horrible, insulting choice, but not because I think Warren will get more powerful as a result of it. Isn't his book, like, the second-best selling book about Christianity of all time? After the Bible? And wasn't he able to convince both presidential candidates to come to him for a Q&A forum? It sounds to me like he already is the most powerful religious figure in America.
@eatsshootsleaves: but the problem with that calculation is that the rabid evangelicals hate Warren as much as the gays etc do. Warren really is about blanding down the evangelical message to the point where the rest of the US is willing to swallow it, but Warren himself has said there is no theological issue on which he differs from Dobson, head of Focus on the Family and the current grand high wingnut of the evangelical movement. As i've said before, he's a wolf in cheap clothing.
@Hydroceph: but the problem with that calculation is that the rabid evangelicals hate Warren as much as the gays etc do.
And rabid evangelicals that hate Warren are probably a smaller percentage of the population than even gay people. My family is full of rabid Christians. They ALL have read his stupid fucking book. You are absolutely kidding yourself if you think that most people in the country see anything wrong with Rick Warren giving the invocation.
Yeah! Now that we won it is not necessary to listen to or take seriously anyone who disagrees with us! Fuck changing minds, let's force shit down their throats! All at once! Because we have a mandate and stupid people like Rick Warren and his followers will never vote again, now that they've been spanked so badly.
How dare [the congressional committee that oversees] Obama['s inauguration] throw a totally meaningless and purely symbolic bone to one of them? I've been practicing my bismillah and I've almost got it down perfectly! Fuck! Can we impeach this clown already or what?
@flossy: You are missing the point, I think. I'm glad I voted for Obama. It seems, for the most part, he's doing a good job on his transition. I'm sure he will do many wonderful things that I will be happy about, and I even have hopes that he could be a truly great, transformative president.
But he could have easily picked a religious figure that wouldn't have offended Evangelicals but also hadn't actively campaigned for Prop 8 (and yes, it was HIS choice, ultimately). I don't think, even, that people would have minded so much if Warren simply opposed gay marriage. Most religious figures do. But Warren's comments and actions were beyond the pale.
Criticizing Obama is not calling his future presidency a failure. It's an attempt to make it better. An attitude like this makes it far easier for Obama to get away with things that will make our country worse.
@eatsshootsleaves: I'm criticizing the hysterical morons who think that this is Obama doing some sort of about-face on the issue of gay marriage (which he never even claimed to support) and stabbing all his lefty true-believers in the back.
And I'm criticizing all the people who willfully ignore Obama's stated desire to emphasize the ties that bind us rather than the issues that divide us, and see his election as just a shift in the balance of power in our stupid culture war and an opportunity to stick it to those no-good Christians.
And I'm criticizing the "tolerant" liberals who refuse to even admit that Rick Warren has done a lot--and through his public platform, done all the more by proxy--to help ease poverty, fight AIDS, etc. I am the farthest thing possible from an Evangelical Christian but even I can admit that Rick Warren stands for more than simply "Gays are bad." Are these sort of black/white, good/evil distinctions okay only when we employ them? Remember how we all hate single-issues values voters when they only care about outlawing abortion and gay marriage? Why should we tolerate that kind myopia and tunnel vision from "our" side?
My point is: Obama is "their" President too. Rick Warren is a complex figure whom we may not entirely agree with but is beloved by many of "them." The inaugural valediction means absolutely fucking squat. So let them have their fat priest up there for three minutes, in the spirit of kumbayah, because why the fuck not? This is not policy, this not a political appointment, it's one fucking prayer. And it will bring comfort to many who are disinclined to trust our new President.
@eatsshootsleaves: The tone of Pareene's post is definitely not criticism of Obama's presidency in "an attempt to make it better." The tone was more like "Obama is an asshole." That's the vibe I got from it anyway.
@flossy: This is the best defense of picking Rick Warren that can be made, and I think it's a pretty good one. And I am fairly certain that this was Obama's intent in picking him. But Rick Warren is not just a religious figure; he is a political one. And because of this, he IS divisive -- as you can see.
Here is one of the best, least hysterical arguments against Warren that I've read. It states my position in this far better than I'm able to:
A brief point to make is that it's very easy for a person who isn't part of the minority group that's being symbolically dissed to dismiss someone else's concerns as merely symbolic and not that big a deal.
Okay, right, symbology is important. Which is why it is not a terrible idea to give a symbolic inch to Christians who fear we have elected a Muslim terrorist in light of the fact that we will have to go a mile, policy-wise, to the left in order to fix our economic disaster and produce a conclusion to at least one of our current wars. And I say this as a known gay who would like to get married one day.
In fact, symbology-wise, I think reaching out to very influential and relatively moderate (simply supporting Prop 8 does not a rabid fundie make, that's par for the Christian course) religious leaders is actually a good move in the long run. These are the people we need to win over if gay marriage is ever to be instituted as more than a hotly-contested government mandate. For sure, there will never be a total consensus supporting gay marriage. But someone like Rick Warren, if approached in a humble and reasonable way, could go a long way towards mitigating the symbolic stigma around gay marriage if he wanted to (far more than any court case or ballot measure could). At the very least, his followers will be faced with a choice on January 20: Do we reject our pastor because he associates with scary Obama? Or do we consider the idea that Obama is not so scary, if big ol' Rick is blessing his freakin' Presidency?
@MisterHippity: You know, you're right. My point is more that this is something for which Obama deserves criticism. And while flossy hates the "hysterical morons" who think that Obama is stabbing them in the back, I am also getting very tired of automatically reducing any criticism of Obama to "let's impeach him, he's a failure."
I'll give you both this: it's amazing how this issue has gotten so many people back in primary mode. And by "so many people," I mean "rabid Hillary Clinton supporters."
@eatsshootsleaves: I have been called a lot of things, but "Hillary Clinton supporter" is beyond the pale!
If you can believe it, I supported Obama over Clinton and McCain even though I knew he didn't believe in gay marriage, seeing how he said as much over and over again. Anyone who projected their own agenda onto Obama and is now horrified that he's living up to the promises he made rather than the promises they imagined is hysterical, and a moron.
@flossy: I hate to have to respond to you like this, in such a wishy-washy manner, but you make a convincing and reasonable point. Maybe the best way to see this move is in retrospect -- after Obama has enacted his extensive gay rights agenda, or after he really has stabbed us in the back.
@flossy: I wasn't calling YOU a Hillary Clinton supporter! Ha. That was a passive-aggressive dig at certain commenters on Gawker who seem a little too eager to criticize Obama for this while casually mentioning that they supported noted gay rights icon Hillary Clinton.
@flossy: It wasn't the Congressional committee, it was Obama's transition team that made the decision to include Warren and honor him with such a symbolic role.
Putting scare quotes around every other word in a sentence doesn't make Pareene right, and it doesn't even make him sound right. It just makes him sound all pissy and impotent. Does Pareene's writing have to be all frothing at the mouth all the time? Is this in his contract or something?
It's amazing how quickly and easily a majority can find rationalizations for hating those on the losing side. Hate does indeed breed hate, particularly among the self-righteous.
I just keep telling myself that Barry is trying to lull red-staters into complacency with him so that 2010&12 elections go smoothly, then he'll totally be marching in Pride Parades, cuz it'll be too late for anyone to give a shit.
@Colander: i understand, and i'm of the opinion that incremental advancements are the only way the changes will stick.
homosexuality is not protected under the civil rights act of 1964 and are not identified as a discrete minority needing special protection. it sucks, but until these things are changed, any progress made by the courts in certain states can be put to a vote and undone. which would hurt way more than rick warren being at the invocation.
it sucks that civil rights have to be eased into rather than demanded (as they should be) but that's the shitty america we live in.
ugh, thank you. i've grown insanely weary of morons blathering on about how we should just be "happy" obama won and stop "harping" on negatives and "reach across the aisle" which is like why don't you reach into your skull and throw your brain on the floor because you are not using it and maybe someone else might have use for it. seriously, "hate breeds hate, being accepting" is a bullshit sentiment when being accepting of morons like this just legitimizes their awful positions.
05/27/09
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12/22/08
But seriously, Obama is a politician. He has ALWAYS been a politician, but Obamamaniacs shut their eyes to it and the Republitards didn't want a narrative that made Obama look less left-wing or more savvy and politically able, so they also shut their eyes to it.
Welcome to political awareness, young Obama supporters. Enjoy the goddamn view from up here on top of the high horse, it's quite goddamn nice.
12/22/08
This "Hey look - he's a politician!" stuff is the lamest criticism I've evern heard. He ran for president - of course he's a politician! He never claimed otherwise.
He also never claimed that he'd follow a purely left-wing doctrine. He said he'd reach out to Republicans and try to work with them. I understand why diehard liberals don't like that — but it shouldn't come as any surprise, nor should it be considered "hypocrisy" or "treason" or anything else of that ilk.
(I do think he made a mistake with this Warren thing though — although the seriousness of that mistake is being blown our of proportion.)
12/22/08
The problem with this proposition is exactly what Pareene pointed out-- that the selection of Warren, which you admit was a mistake, comes along with a host of other mistakes (see also: DoT pork secretary and Rubinite economic team). As Hydroceph points out, Obama promised CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN. Some of us never bought the schtick, but that does not mean we can't, or indeed shouldn't, hold his feet to the fire when he plays the same Washington game with the same Washington players. What is so perplexing is that despite mounting evidence (and he's not even president yet!) Obama's die-hard fans really believe that this game is going to yield a different result.
12/23/08
Yes the people he picked have past political experience. It's pretty impossible to pick qualified people for these positions who don't. But I never heard Obama promise he'd pick totally neophytes who'd never worked in D.C. before - people keep suggesting that he did, but as far as I can tell, that expectation doesn't match anything Obama actually promised.
When Obama promised "change," he was mainly talking about an end to partisan bickering and demonizing of the opposition, and getting to work pulling people together to SOLVE PROBLEMS. And as far as I can tell, that's still exactly what he plans to do.
That's the "different result" I'm expecting. Not "Ralph Nader's Dream Cabinet."
And when he becomes president FOUR WEEKS FROM NOW and gets a chance to actually start doing the job, why don't you take a seat and watch him do it for a while? (And take a minute to actually listen to what he's saying while you're at it?)
12/22/08
I understand why gay-rights advocates are upset with the Warren pick - it was a mistake on Obama's part. But a little proportion people, please? In the end, it is just a guy giving a ritual prayer, not an appointee to a position of power. I wouldn't be surprised if Obama himself wasn't even aware of the choice, given how trivial and insignificant such ritual inauguration niceties normally seem. Nobody has ever paid any attention to the guy giving the invocation before now -- before it suddenly turned into this huge fucking deal due to a mistake Obama (or more likely, one of his staff) made with this choice.
So now a mistake has been made and Obama will be roasted alive every day till the end of time for it. And if we keep up these relentless, hostile, blistering attacks going against Obama for four more years, we can welcome the Republicans back to the White House in 2012. And the political left will have destroyed itself yet again.
12/22/08
I can understand why certain gay rights advocates (particularly those with big gay constituencies) are doing a little public posturing on a non-issue.
Further, I would not say "mistake" until we see how this plays out; until then, could we say "gamble?"
12/22/08
12/22/08
But as far as a gamble goes? Those are my rights he's gambling with, and maybe yours, too, but it's pretty damned cynical from someone who ran as the prophet of hope.
12/22/08
Are you sure you don't have anything to add?
12/22/08
If so,
I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO.
I'm going to stew in this delicious Manhattan and watch your dreams die.
Change you can believe in = Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme.
12/22/08
Rev. Jeremiah Wright's recent high-profile appearances are going to create a host of problems for Sen. Obama's presidential campaign. But rather than get into the specific reasons why I think this recent development will probably doom Obama's electoral chances...
12/22/08
12/22/08
True... But at the time I wrote that, my goal was to get a Democratic president, preferably Clinton, elected and it was justifiable to think that Obama was a risk not worth taking. I was wrong and I am glad Obama, rather than McCain, won in the end. Still, that doesn't dilute my ability to enjoy watching the Obamatons lose their rag as it turns out he's not Truth and Light after all. He's a politician and while he may eschew PAC money, he sure doesn't have a problem putting bigots on stage...
12/22/08
12/22/08
12/22/08
12/22/08
12/22/08
Dissent is healthy. Hostile attacks are destructive.
Please read the following paraphraph and see which of those two descriptions is the better fit (bearing in mind that it'll be a month before Obama's presidency even starts):
If "no red or blue America" post-partisanship means the explicit endorsement of a bigot pastor, a useless pork-happy Republican heading the DoT as we embark on the biggest infrastructure program of a generation, and an economic team full of the guys who found common ground with the Reaganites back in the day only to then scorch and salt that common ground, the ground we were all trying to grow money in, then we'll take the divisive and damaging politics of bitter partisanship, Mr. President-elect!
12/22/08
12/22/08
-Obama is endorsing a bigot pastor by putting him onstage at his inauguration.
-A useless pork-happy republican is going to head the DoT. (Will he believe in public transport-- buses and subways and trams? Probably... not.)
-The economic team is full of the guys who were in part responsible for the current mess.
And while we can hope that it turns out that the policies Obama puts forward are more enlightened, Obama had it right when he said:
"You can't keep playing the game with the same set of players and expect a different result."
I'll take the divisive and damaging politics of bitter partisanship, please.
12/22/08
12/22/08
12/22/08
The Christian right will never be on board. But I hope that is not the intended target. Why would he choose Rick Warren? Is he (Obama) actually more anti-gay than was originally thought?
12/22/08
I realize some of this thinking may be a little wishy-washing sounding for those whose motto of the day is "Now we have the power; let us crush our enemies mercilessly."
12/22/08
12/22/08
12/22/08
12/22/08
It's funny how the people who are calling the loudest for healing are the ones who lost. Bush came to DC to end the partisanship (HAHAHAHA!!!), but had no problems ruling from the far right. Mush centrism and bipartisanship for its own sake isn't going to work.
12/22/08
12/22/08
12/22/08
And rabid evangelicals that hate Warren are probably a smaller percentage of the population than even gay people. My family is full of rabid Christians. They ALL have read his stupid fucking book. You are absolutely kidding yourself if you think that most people in the country see anything wrong with Rick Warren giving the invocation.
12/22/08
How dare [the congressional committee that oversees] Obama['s inauguration] throw a totally meaningless and purely symbolic bone to one of them? I've been practicing my bismillah and I've almost got it down perfectly! Fuck! Can we impeach this clown already or what?
12/22/08
But he could have easily picked a religious figure that wouldn't have offended Evangelicals but also hadn't actively campaigned for Prop 8 (and yes, it was HIS choice, ultimately). I don't think, even, that people would have minded so much if Warren simply opposed gay marriage. Most religious figures do. But Warren's comments and actions were beyond the pale.
Criticizing Obama is not calling his future presidency a failure. It's an attempt to make it better. An attitude like this makes it far easier for Obama to get away with things that will make our country worse.
12/22/08
And I'm criticizing all the people who willfully ignore Obama's stated desire to emphasize the ties that bind us rather than the issues that divide us, and see his election as just a shift in the balance of power in our stupid culture war and an opportunity to stick it to those no-good Christians.
And I'm criticizing the "tolerant" liberals who refuse to even admit that Rick Warren has done a lot--and through his public platform, done all the more by proxy--to help ease poverty, fight AIDS, etc. I am the farthest thing possible from an Evangelical Christian but even I can admit that Rick Warren stands for more than simply "Gays are bad." Are these sort of black/white, good/evil distinctions okay only when we employ them? Remember how we all hate single-issues values voters when they only care about outlawing abortion and gay marriage? Why should we tolerate that kind myopia and tunnel vision from "our" side?
My point is: Obama is "their" President too. Rick Warren is a complex figure whom we may not entirely agree with but is beloved by many of "them." The inaugural valediction means absolutely fucking squat. So let them have their fat priest up there for three minutes, in the spirit of kumbayah, because why the fuck not? This is not policy, this not a political appointment, it's one fucking prayer. And it will bring comfort to many who are disinclined to trust our new President.
12/22/08
12/22/08
Here is one of the best, least hysterical arguments against Warren that I've read. It states my position in this far better than I'm able to:
[yglesias.thinkprogress.org]
12/22/08
I say this purely in the spirit of criticism of Gawker to make it better.
12/22/08
A brief point to make is that it's very easy for a person who isn't part of the minority group that's being symbolically dissed to dismiss someone else's concerns as merely symbolic and not that big a deal.
Okay, right, symbology is important. Which is why it is not a terrible idea to give a symbolic inch to Christians who fear we have elected a Muslim terrorist in light of the fact that we will have to go a mile, policy-wise, to the left in order to fix our economic disaster and produce a conclusion to at least one of our current wars. And I say this as a known gay who would like to get married one day.
In fact, symbology-wise, I think reaching out to very influential and relatively moderate (simply supporting Prop 8 does not a rabid fundie make, that's par for the Christian course) religious leaders is actually a good move in the long run. These are the people we need to win over if gay marriage is ever to be instituted as more than a hotly-contested government mandate. For sure, there will never be a total consensus supporting gay marriage. But someone like Rick Warren, if approached in a humble and reasonable way, could go a long way towards mitigating the symbolic stigma around gay marriage if he wanted to (far more than any court case or ballot measure could). At the very least, his followers will be faced with a choice on January 20: Do we reject our pastor because he associates with scary Obama? Or do we consider the idea that Obama is not so scary, if big ol' Rick is blessing his freakin' Presidency?
12/22/08
I'll give you both this: it's amazing how this issue has gotten so many people back in primary mode. And by "so many people," I mean "rabid Hillary Clinton supporters."
12/22/08
If you can believe it, I supported Obama over Clinton and McCain even though I knew he didn't believe in gay marriage, seeing how he said as much over and over again. Anyone who projected their own agenda onto Obama and is now horrified that he's living up to the promises he made rather than the promises they imagined is hysterical, and a moron.
12/22/08
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12/22/08
It's amazing how quickly and easily a majority can find rationalizations for hating those on the losing side. Hate does indeed breed hate, particularly among the self-righteous.
12/22/08
you would know xoxo
12/22/08
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12/22/08
homosexuality is not protected under the civil rights act of 1964 and are not identified as a discrete minority needing special protection. it sucks, but until these things are changed, any progress made by the courts in certain states can be put to a vote and undone. which would hurt way more than rick warren being at the invocation.
it sucks that civil rights have to be eased into rather than demanded (as they should be) but that's the shitty america we live in.
12/22/08
[www.last.fm]
12/22/08
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12/22/08
[www.hyperarts.com]