So Obama wants to reach out and end the divisiveness? I could see inviting people with all sorts of viewpoints to gather and discuss how we might find common ground, but I don't get giving a gay-bashing preacher a center-stage spot in the inauguration... I just don't get it.
Gay Bashing As Means of Ending Division?
by: David Sirota - Mon Dec 22, 2008
Has anyone bothered to explain how giving a gay basher a national platform is a decision made in the name of ending division? I'm really confused - there are lots of clergypeople in America who haven't gay bashed. And remember - it's not just that Rick Warren is against gay marriage, it's that he's very publicly attacked gay people with the worst kinds of slander.
How are Barack Obama and Joe Biden publicly claiming that their selection of Rick Warren to deliver a prayer at the inauguration is in the interest of ending division?
I mean, if they want to say its in the interest of appeasing right-wing Christians, fine - at least that makes some logical sense (as odious as such a motivation would be). But in the interest of ending division? Say what? Since when did elevating a person who bashes one group of Americans become a move specifically designed to stop division? ...(more)
And a thought on how Obama's gesture may be viewed by those on the Right.
Some other 'bridge-building' invitees to Obama's inauguration
By David Neiwert - Saturday Dec 20, 2008
It seems Barack Obama's decided to invite Pastor Rick Warren, the noted homophobe, to offer the invocation at his Inauguration as a kind of "bridge building" gesture. Maybe he's able to look into his soul or something.
It's understandable, given his background as a community organizer (not to mention someone who pitches "the audacity of hope"), that Obama believes you can reach out a hand to movement conservatives and build such bridges. Indeed, he's made it clear all along that's the kind of guy he is.
I just hope that when he finally gets that hand back after reaching it out and discovers it has been chewed clean down to the bone by a thousand vicious cuts that he has a little awakening about the nature of the nasty little beast the American Right has become in the past couple of decades. Such gestures for them are mere signs of weakness, nothing but opportunities to advance themselves and their agendas and to destroy liberals. ...(more)
UPDATE: This witty little comment from Barney Frank just reinforces the point.
Frank: I'm Suffering From Post-Partisan Depression
1 comment:
Speaking as a huge Obama supporter, I have to say that this choice of Warren is a slap in the face to all of the GLBTQ, Feminist, Pro-Choice, and Pagan supporters that worked their asses off to get him elected. You want to make a bi-partisan show? Fine. But you don't have to do it with someone who is so incredibly offensive to your base supporters. I'm so pissed off about this I can barely see straight.
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