That's not change. That's more of the same.
Most of the time I love Obama, but sometimes he utterly disgusts me (see in particular his voting for the inexcusable FISA bill after vowing to filibuster it). Sadly, today is one of the latter times. Obama has invited christianist mega-church paster and homophobe Rick Warren to give the invocation to the inauguration. I'm not naive enough to expect the secular ceremony that I would prefer, but this is unacceptable. Warren has compared gay marriage to statutory rape (among other things) and most recently has said that he opposes gay marriage because allowing it would violate the first amendment, demonstrating that Warren is not only bigoted but also has a grasp of the US constitution that rivals Sarah Palin's for sheer ignorance (clearly neither of them have any idea what the first amendment means). Just when I thought my January 20th birthday would be a good thing for once, Obama had to go and ruin it by giving a big Fuck You to anyone who supports equal rights. I hope a good portion of the millions who show up for the inauguration boo when Warren gets on stage.
Update: on a tangentially related note, google chat and blogger need to learn that 'Obama' is not a mispelling of 'Alabama,' 'mamba,' or 'bamboo.'
Later Update: Obama's rebuttal, courtesy of Talking Points Memo:
My response is that there's no way Obama would simply disagree without being disagreeable if Warren also opposed racially mixed marriages on religious grounds. By giving Warren a position of prominence at the inauguration, Obama is signaling that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is more acceptable than discrimination on the basis of race. Sadly, this is probably a view shared by the majority of americans. However, we didn't elect Obama so that he could do whatever the polls say people prefer (we could have chosen Clinton if that's what we wanted), we elected him because we wanted him to lead, and to inspire americans to do the right thing in spite of themselves.
Even Later Update: Sarah Posner of The Nation says it better than me:
Warren represents the absolute worst of the Democrats' religious outreach, a right-winger masquerading as a do-gooder anointed as the arbiter of what it means to be faithful. Obama's religious outreach was intended, supposedly, to make religious voters more comfortable with him and feel included in the Democratic Party. But that outreach now has come at the expense of other people's comfort and inclusion, at an event meant to mark a turning point away from divisive politics.Absolutely Last Update, I Swear: Here's Jon Stewart vs. Mike Huckabee on gay marriage (see the comments to understand why this is here):
8 comments:
And don't forget to add Obama to your shit list for the Lieberman thing. From what I read, he had a hand in keeping him in the caucus.
I just did a post on my website yesterday that sorta addressed what I think a lot of Obama supporters are going to feel over the next year or two. When Obama said he was going to change things, he didn't mean EVERYTHING. Yet he let his supporters believe he would change things that he wasn't.
Slowly, I think people will realize that he's not the anti-Bush he ran as, he's Obama. And I still like Obama, at least compared to most other political leaders I see out there. But I think his supporters need to learn to, in his words, disagree without being disagreeable. Otherwise we fall into the same polarizing traps that have stifled progressive items like health care, pulling out of Iraq, and addressing climate change for years.
Also, I just found this article by Al Giordano. It addresses the same issue that I was trying to get at in the last paragraph above, but in much more detail.
You're right, Obama didn't handle the Leiberman thing well, but not as poorly as the senate did, since Obama didn't say 'give Joe everything he wants,' he said 'don't kick Joe out of the Democratic caucus.'
And yes, I knew Obama would disappoint me eventually, I just expected it to be later than day negative 33 of his presidency. Obama is still by far my favorite politician I've ever seen on a national level, but occasionally I get reminded of just how low that bar is. I'm expecting my biggest disappointment to be when Obama does nothing to restore the ideas of justice and rule of law in America by preventing the Bush administration from being charged with the war crimes they are guilty of.
As for polarization, I am worried about falling into the trap on the other end of the spectrum, namely, allowing extremists to get their way simply for being willing to talk. Rick Warren has a reputation as a moderate--a reputation that Obama seems determined to cement--despite the fact that he has almost identical policies and beliefs as James Dobson. Warren isn't willing to compromise or to have an honest exchange of ideas, he is just willing to put on sheep's clothing in order to convert moderates to his fringe beliefs.
Further, Warren is a polarizing figure, and Obama is encouraging polarization by having him speak. Obama has snubbed the GLTB community since day one (he opposes gay marriage), and now he is increasing that divide with this insult.
Now, don't get me wrong, I think Obama's ideas about avoiding polarization are inspired. But I understood him to mean that we should have an honest exchange of ideas, instead of the usual Washington nonsense of never adopting an idea that originated from the other side because it would be seen as weakness. I also understood it to mean that we should avoid using wedge issues like gay marriage and abortion, and instead focus on doing what we can on the common ground. The common ground of abortion is abortion reduction, and the common ground of gay marriage is civil unions, neither of which Warren is willing to accept because he is a religious extremist who would rather stick to his dogmatic position than help aleviate what he considers to be the problem. Warren is a culture warrior, he is just a relatively polite one.
In regards to the article you linked, I disagree with the premise that not having Warren speak is the same as excluding him. By all means, Obama should invite Warren, give him a nice seat, let him go to the party, and above all have real conversations with him. However, that doesn't mean he should give the guy a sanctioned platform in a setting where it will appear that Obama endorses his views, even if Obama does say otherwise before and after in interviews that only political junkies like me will see.
Unfortunately, it is true that Obama can't rescind his invitation without being polarizing and exclusive. He didn't need to give the invitation to keep with his ideals, but now that he has he has to stick with the choice.
I think Andrew Sullivan had a good response to this: If Obama actually repeals DOMA and DODT and makes civil unions the law of the land then he can invite as many christianists as he wants to his second inauguration.
The point I got from the article on The Field wasn't so much that Obama would be excluding by not giving Warren a prominent speaking role, but that, given the fact he was already invited, people speaking out against his participation were the ones who were being exclusionary.
And while Warren might share Dobson's views on gay marriage, many people I've read have said that he is much more progressive on issues of poverty. Someone is going to lead the Christianist, anti-gay movement. This is a polarizing issue, and I think people are going to believe what they are going to believe. By making Warren the "moderate", you legitimize him relative to the Christianist anti-gays who also think its fine that people wallow in poverty.
That said, if Obama doesn't repeal DODT in his first term, consider my theory bunk and hand me a bottle of beer. Given the state of the economy, I don't expect Obama will try doing anything about civil unions for the first couple years, and probably not in his first term. Its just not political capital he has. He'll also probably need to pick up at least a few more progressive seats in the Senate in 2010 to get rid of DOMA.
As much as I want gays to have the right to marry, the sad truth is that (as you said), the majority of Americans right now oppose gay marriage, and it will hurt Obama's other issues if he tries to push through civil unions right now.
At least according to the polls, the tide is obviously moving in the direction of at least allowing civil unions, if not marriage. But I think we're just going to have to wait for the old homophobes to die and young voters to take their place before any national campaign is really possible.
Good points. However, while people calling for Obama to revoke his invitation are being somewhat polarizing, and Obama actually doing so would be incredibly polarizing, it has already had the good result of Obama making by far his strongest statement of support of equal rights for gays in response. Hopefully Obama is using Warren to bring moderate evangelicals into his coalition and to get right wingers to not see him as the enemy even though he is pro-choice. I'm worried that instead of (or in addition to) Warren legitimizing Obama in the eyes of evangelicals, Obama will legitimize Warren in the eyes of everyone else.
But you're right. It's far too late to do anything about it now, and the Warrens and Huckabees of the world are far more palatable than the Dobsons and Faldwells. (Did you see John Stewart politely eviscerate Huckabee on gay marriage? It was fantastic.)
No, I missed that Daily Show interview. I'll have to go back and see it.
TDS has a good post on this (http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org
/strategist/2008/12/enemy_of_my_enemy.php), arguing that Warren and Obama are each using the other to piss off and politically weaken James Dobson, and that neither man has any intention of compromising their positions. I hope this is so, and it makes a lot of sense.
Post a Comment