I generally consider myself a news junkie; I usually fall asleep to CNN, spend my day at the house working with the news on in the background, and always go out of my way to steal some homeless guy’s newspaper when he’s not looking. Once in awhile, I get tired of the news and spend three days straight watching Arrested Development, or just admiring the handywork of my 600 lights on our 8′ tree. I go back to the news and am usually surprised by what I’ve missed.
Apparently large members of the gay community are mad at President-Elect Obama because he chose Rev. Rick Warren to do the invocation at his inaugration. Rick Warren, as many of you probably know, is the author of “The Purpose-Driven Life” and pastor of Orange Country’s uber-conservative Saddleback Church. I’ve read most of Warren’s books, been to his church several times, and while not outwardly appearing uber-conservative, he is in that catagory.
Why are the gays mad? Because Obama is a strong supporter of gays and lesbians, while Warren was a vocal proponent of the controversial Prop 8, which changed California’s constitution to define marriage as strictly between man and woman. The gay crowd views this as a stab in the back by Obama.
This is a bit of hypocrisy it seems, as this isn’t the first bit of relationship between the two. Warren famously hosted both Sen. McCain and then-Senator Obama to a debate at Saddleback months ago, and even though some gays were angry that Obama agreed to appear there, they still happily voted for him. In return for the now-loud opposition to Obama from the gay community, the President-Elect has bascially told the queer community to relax a bit, reminding them all that he “is going to reach out to all sides.”
I have to say that I agree with Obama on this one. I am thrilled as rainbow punch that Obama won the election, however, I also recognize that he is the President of The United States, not the Gay President. We elected Barrack Obama, not Harvey Milk. I think it is unfair to ask this man to make every single move with the gay community as his primary concern – and I would be deeply worried if the gay community was indeed so forefront in his mind. I will be the first to say that our country right now has much, much deeper issues than this.
On that note, for the last eight years we had a president who put special conservative interests in the forefront of the national agenda and who probably would have passed on a pastor just because he had spoken out against Prop 8. The very worst thing we could do right now is swing the pendulam in the entire opposite direction and have a president who ignores the entire conservative base and puts liberal special interests ahead of what is best for the country.
Liberals, and liberal homosexuals specifically, have been shoved to the back of the crowd politcally for the last eight years, and we have cried foul and discrimination, using our rights as Americans as the platform on which to insist we have equal say. Now let us not be just as hypocritical as we have accused the conservatives of being and push them to the back of the house, too. The goal for gays – and liberals – should be to be better than – not equal to – our own oppressors. When we begin criticizing that which we have worked so hard to have elected just because he is trying to actually embrace, rather than shoot down, the opposing side, we have stooped to their level. Maybe we can shove just a bit of gay pride back down our throats for one second and take greater pride in our country than we do ourselves, and then we can actually live in a progressive and unified country rather than a consistenly divided and politcally polarized environment that swings from one extreme to the next.
January 7, 2009 at 9:58 pm |
“I am thrilled as rainbow punch”. Nice word play. Good article, too. Objective and fair on both sides, while raising a thoughtful question or two. A rarity in political commentary.