OK -- the election is over, the right man was elected (and I don't mean that at all cynically -- Obama is probably the best we could have hoped for, and the alternative, with all his baggage, not to mention his VP choice, doesn't bear thinking about).
However, as regular readers of this blog will know, I've always taken Obama with a grain of salt. He is, after all, a Democrat, and moreover one who crystallized the Democrats' recent history: talk of change, but talk is cheap. What I'm seeing is business as usual, especially in regard to gay issues. This is all brought into sharp relief by the selection of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the inauguration, but here have been quite obvious signs aside from that.
Stephen H. Miller at Independent Gay Forum has written a post with which I pretty much agree, a response to this post by Jonathan Rauch. (Rauch's post merits attention simply because there is so much wrong with it, but I'll have to come back to it later.) First, Miller's summation:
Last month, you may recall, the incoming administration signaled that it won't seek repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" gay ban until some unspecified time when "consensus" emerges among military leaders.
Gays planning to attend the Obama inauguration are advised to take public transportation. Just remember to sit in the back of the bus.
I can echo that warning, based on a lot more than the selection of Rick Warren as the new face of evangelical Christianity (and don't think Obama was blind to that). In that regard, I think Obama is trying to defuse the "old guard" evangelicals -- Dobson, Perkins, Wildmon, Robertson -- and put a nicer face on things, but the idea that anyone can actually open a dialogue with the likes of Warren on gay rights, reproductive choice, or any of the social regressives' other bread-and-butter issues is dreaming.
Nate Silver had this observatoin, which I think is important:
Just who is on what side of the 55/45 split depends on what question you're asking -- a majority of the public now supports civil unions, although not yet gay marriage. That's beside the point, though; what I think the Warren dust-up reveals is that the left is now willing to raise at least as much ruckus about the issue as the right. The left, of course, has always had its own moral compass, but it's now beginning to convert that into more focused, overtly political action. . . .
Nevertheless, I think the passion aroused among the left on the issue has been fairly impressive, and is potentially fairly consequential.
Raising a ruckus, as I've been saying for a while now, is what it's all about, and converting our moral superiority on this issue into political action is a necessity. The flaw in what has become the standard thinking of such as HRC, Jonathan Rauch, Dale Carpenter, the other national rights organizations, is the desire to be "civilized" when dealing with barbarians, to demonstrate that we can, indeed, disappear into the woodwork -- as if anyone didn't know that already. We made our gains when we were being noisy and obnoxious, backed by good solid arguments. Think about the black civil rights movement (sorry, boys and girls, but that is a direct parallel -- not identical in detail, but the basics are there): it took years, and marches, and sit-ins, and speeches -- fairly inflammatory speeches, if you'll remember, but always accentuating the goals and ignoring the opposition -- it took action, not back-room negotiations before the next black-tie dinner.
The link to Obama here is just that desire not to make waves. Obama calls it reaching out. Anyone looking at it coldly, and remembering the history of the past two generations, will, I think, see it as appeasement, doomed to failure. Their side relies on dishonesty, and all that Obama is doing is buying into that and validating it.
This comment provides a good entree to discuss some of the distortions being thrown around:
With the Warren selection, Obama was basically saying "I disagree with this man's politics, but as a sign of respect and as an acknowledgment that he has a right to speak those views, I'll share the stage with him."
Well, no. That's the interpretation that the Obama team wants to see dominating the discussion, but taken in context (remember context? it's that thing that makes sense of sound bites, which is why politicians hate it), giving the invocation to Rick Warren is simpy a continuation of the "new" Democratic outreach to people who would just as soon see them dead. It's also a slap in the face not only to gay civil rights advocates, but to progressives as a whole, to anyone who sees "morality" as more than a knee-jerk repetition of 5,000-year-old tribal taboos from a bunch of Middle Eastern nomads.
It goes on:
The left's outrage, however, is no different than the typical right wing blowups. Possibly a little more hypocritical, because the left preaches tolerance and open conversation and then turns around and says "...but we can't tolerate *those* opinions, or have *those* conversations."
The left's outrage is in reaction to what is seen as a deliberate slap in the face to gays. This comment strikes me as fairly cynical, actually: to demand that "the left" accept every insult, every lie, every distortion uncritically in the name of "tolerance" is bullshit, and I think a quite deliberate attempt by the right to shift the blame for the tenor of the discourse. No one on the left is demanding that Warren be silenced; they're objecting to him and his nasty theology being given pride of place. I don't think anyone on the left has demanded that Warren somehow be shut up, and in fact those on the left are the first to say that he has a right to his opinions, no matter how unfounded, hurtful and divisive those might be. (It might be useful in this context to remember that when Richard Cizik, I believe it was, authored a recommendation for the National Evangelical Association (and I apologize if I've gotten that organization name wrong -- I can't even plead the excuse that it has "Values" or "Family" in the title) that evangelicals shift their focus away from gay rights and abortion toward poverty and hunger, James Dobson and the rest of his gang demanded that he be fired. Who's trying to silence who? And let's also recall that Warren himself is considered by many of his colleagues not to be a "real Christian" for the same reasons.)
But I am more interested in converting the likes of Warren than in silencing them, and in my experience the best way to bring people around to tolerance and acceptance is to tolerate and accept them, even when they say unreasonable things.
Just one point here: it doesn't work. It's something that liberals have been trying to do since day one, and it doesn't work. Warren and his fellow travelers will not see this as opening a conversation. They will see it as evidence of their continued power, and they will use it that way, the same way Warren used Obama's statements on gay marriage to pretend that Obama opposed Prop 8. There is no dialogue possible with Warren because in his mind he is right, based on unchallengeable authority, and you are wrong. No compromise is necessary or possible: God said so.
Ed Brayton has a post on Warren and his "Bill Buckingham moment" -- which is to say, he lied and got caught:
And he's flat out lying, as Buckingham did. He does in fact compare gay marriages quite explicitly to incest and pedophilia and when asked directly if he thinks those relationships are the equivalent of gay relationships he replies, "Oh I do." Game, set, match.
And Rachel Maddow, bless her, took the whole thing apart:
This is what we're dealing with, people, not some bright, shiny new evangelist who has any interest in allowing us the same rights he has.
Jeremy Hooper has a post about "the other preacher" at the inauguration that raises a good point:
Seems like a nice man. A nice contrast to Warren. One who is clearly working towards peace for all. But that being said -- can we please get past this silly, anti-intellectual idea that gays and lesbians can have everything except the word? It's just....bizzare.
The words "married in the eyes of God"? That is, will, and should be left up to individual denominations to decide. The words "heterosexually married"? That will still be applied only to the straight set. "A marriage I'm willing to personally accept"? Every private criticize will have the right to define their own parameters, whether in a public profession or private thought. However, when talking about the civil contract, the word "marriage" cannot and should not be denied to equal, tax-paying gay couples. We have as much right to it as anyone else. To suggest otherwise is and will always be an unacceptable, short-sighted, separatist stopgap!
Repeat after me: churches do not own the word "marriage." They never have, and I'm not going to be a party to handing it to them. That said, Lowery admits that his position is personal. He is someone with whom we can open a dialogue, as evidenced by the way his thinking has developed: in his eyes, we are not "Christophobes" or any other such ridiculous neologism. (And that's another point about Warren: I see no evidence that his thinking on gay issues has changed. In his mind, there is no reason it should. Lowery comes from a different tradition, one that admits the possibility of human error in interpreting God's will.)
Hooper also makes a point that I think needs to be in the back of our minds every time we look at anything Obama does:
Oh, and we will NEVER accept the idea that the Warren choice is simply "reaching across a divide." We certainly agree with the division part. However, by pulling Warren over despite all of the horribly anti-gay views we've heard him convey in recent days, gays and lesbians are having their lives and loves drug under a bus. And once again, America is receiving the message that gay bias is not as weighty of a problem as other forms of discrimination.
And if you think he's overstating the case, take a look at this story:
Key Democrats - even openly gay lawmakers - are quietly conceding to letting another two years go by before trying to overturn "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the controversial 1993 law banning openly gay people from serving in the military. Most fear that moving too quickly on such a divisive issue could backfire, and most would rather tread lightly, at least in the early months of President-elect Barack Obama's administration.
Which brings us full circle: Obama's already been backpedaling on this one, which should be a slam-dunk: almost everyone supports repeal, except the high-level Christianist brass at the Pentagon and the reptile-brain Southern Senators. That's who Obama has to appease.
And two years is the "early months"? Excuse me?
Although it seems rather a jolt to be offering dessert after this, here it is, courtesy of Queerty:
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