A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the notion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary but every thing hath affinities infinite.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
You can cool it for a while with the hate mail, Obamaniacs — you know what I mean: the ones that go “You racist!” and “You quoted Fox News! That proves you’re a paid political operative for Hillary and/or the GOP!”
Here’s one you can’t lay at our doorstep, from Queerty.com — a news blog (one of our favorites, in fact) even queerer than the one you’re reading right now, and one that’s been extremely fair (often to a fault) to The Anointed One:
… First, we had Donnie McClurkin, the man who nearly derailed the Senator’s mega church campaign. Then came Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s preacher who damned the United States and spurred that revolutionary race speech.
And now Fox’s ire-inducing Sean Hannity & Alan Colmes have turned their attention to another Obama “spiritual counselor,” Reverend James Meeks, a state Senator who spends his free time blasting the bent boys and girls. Obama’s camp already denounced the remarks, saying:
Obama has appeared at hundreds of churches and served with scores of colleagues and can hardly be expected to be held responsible for all that they say.
While that may be true, Meeks’ history will certainly propel a few news stories this week. …
Meeks, who’s closely associated with anti-gay groups like Americans for Truth and Focus On The Family, told a reporter during his 2006 gubernatorial run that he’s the perfect candidate for conservative white voters: “Theologically, politically, for the white conservative voter, I’m their guy. I have their philosophy.” That philosophy became his common call during that year, when he was swiftly defeated:
Come on with me white churches … Call me and tell me to run for governor. White people who believe in Jesus, call me and tell me to run for governor”
…
If I do run and there are two people in the race who both are not standing for morality, if I don’t have every white Christian vote in the state of Illinois, I will stand on top of the Sears Tower and call every one of ya’ll racist.Just one year earlier Meeks railed against white Christians…
Meanwhile, like Wright, Meeks has come under fire for using the pulpit to dispense racialized opinions, even referring to mayors as “slave masters” and some unnamed politicians as “house n****rs…
Though he’s since apologized for those remarks — and, again, Obama himself has denounced them — we’ve got no doubt Meeks’ Obama connection will be making the rounds this week. Can we expect another speech or will Obama be able to shrug this one aside and start focusing on the task at hand: the campaign. We’re hoping the latter, because the Democrats need to make sure they’re strong enough to fight John McCain. And the past few weeks have not been helping their case.
More — including links, an embedded video of Meeks, and some spirited reader comments (”Obama describes Meeks as one of his ‘closest religious advisors’; Meeks appeared in TV ads for Obama’s US Senate campaign; When he ran for US Senate in 2004, Obama campaigned at Meeks’ Salem Baptist church; Meeks’ church was Obama’s last stop on the night he won that primary … Obama appointed Meeks to his exploratory committee for the Presidency; Meeks is listed on Obama’s campaign website of influential black supporters”…) — at the link.
Words fail me — but in reality, you don’t need me to comment; if you can’t see Obama’s own racism in full bloom after reading this, then you’re blind in one eye, and can’t see out of the other.
I can no more disown him [Jeremiah Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother — a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
We thought we heard this, but we wanted to go back and listen to the clip of Sen. Barack Obama on 610 WIP this morning to be sure.
610 WIP host Angelo Cataldi asked Obama about his Tuesday morning speech on race at the National Constitution Center in which he referenced his own white grandmother and her prejudice. Obama told Cataldi that “The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know (pause) there’s a reaction in her that doesn’t go away and it comes out in the wrong way.”
Gross doesn’t quote Obama 100% verbatim, so here’s my transcript (listen here, or here):
“The point I was making was not that my grandmother, uh, harbors any racial animosity — she doesn’t — but she is a typical white person who, uh, you know, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know, you know, there’s a reaction that’s been bred into, uh, our experiences that— that don’t go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way.”
Continues Gross:
We doubt this story will have legs, but wonder if Hillary Clinton referred to a “typical black person,” would we ever hear the end of it?
UPDATE: We gave the Obama campaign a chance to respond to this post. “Barack Obama said specifically that he didn’t believe his grandmother harbored any racial animosity, but that her fears were understandable and typical of those often shared by her generation,” said Obama’s PA spokesman Sean Smith, who added that Grandma is 86-years-old. He might have meant that specifically, but that isn’t what he said, especially as he spoke of his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, in the present tense. The Clinton campaign has not yet returned our request for comment on Obama’s remarks. We aren’t holding our breath for a Clinton comment.
Again, words fail me — so I’ll let this emoticon say it all:
You really have it in for Obama; I’m not clear on why you think Clinton is a better pick (especially after your early faves in Demo-land were Kucinich and Edwards)
Don’t assume I made the leap from Kucinich to Edwards to Clinton without a lot of “help” from Obama.
Until the Donnie McClurkin fiasco last fall, Obama seemed a perfectly acceptable candidate to me. I was, frankly, ambivalent about him; I had planned on voting for Kucinich in the primary, and, knowing Dennis would never get the nomination, lining up to vote in the general for whichever Democrat did. I assumed that would be Edwards or Clinton or Obama, and I was fine with any of them (as fine as I could be, that is, since I know I’ll never really get the president I want).
But then came McClurkin, and— and, honestly, I’m so tired of writing about Obama and McClurkin (and at the moment, I can’t think of anything I want to say that I haven’t already), I strongly suggest you read all my entries on McClurkin, as well as Kirbyjon Caldwell (here and here).
Mind you, it was not solely the McClurkin issue that turned me off to Obama; it was (and is) a huge issue, yes, but it served more to open my eyes to everything else that is Barack Obama.
I discussed my revulsion at the way Obama mishandled the McClurkin flap with my better half. My question to her was: “Are his supporters right? Am I just piling on the guy because he used us to get the bigot vote in South Carolina, so I’ll never be able to see him in a positive light?”
The answer, we both decided, was no. The McClurkin issue forced me to take a harder look at Obama — his slim record, his flip-flopping (on issues having nothing to do with The Gay Thing), his convenient memory losses, his sucking up to the GOP, his whiney-ass schoolyard games, the vast emptiness of his rhetoric — and I didn’t like what I saw. And, as time went on, I began to see a very clear pattern in Obama: He was (and is) exposing his own feet of clay with each and every new incident.
You also need to understand that my support for Clinton is lukewarm, at best, and I’m not afraid to point out her missteps (although, in sharp contrast to Obama, has improved). Because Kucinich and Edwards dropped out before Super Tuesday, the only choices left on my ballot were Clinton and Obama — and by the time the California primary rolled around, I knew far too much about Obama to even entertain the thought of voting for him.
I gather that Clinton is someone you trust more on gay issues in particular. No one in my family has flagged Obama as weaker on these issues than Clinton; Obama may in fact be, but it hadn’t been brought up as a concern before I read your pieces.
Let’s say I dis-trust Clinton less than I distrust Obama on gay issues. In reality, their positions are very similar; the difference (on the gay angle alone) is that Clinton didn’t exploit raging, religion-based homophobia to win votes at the expense of gay and lesbian Americans, and then pretend she didn’t do it, and didn’t do it deliberately.
I’m thinking no one’s brought it up because during her Senate run she said she opposed same-sex marriage and would have voted for DOMA and apparently she remains opposed to gay marriage.
As DOMA goes (and she didn’t vote for it, as she wasn’t a Senator at the time), Hillary was wrong to support it when it was passed, and she’s wrong not to support its complete repeal now. (There is a “but” in that, which I’ll get to in a second.)
If you wanted a fight out of me on that, you won’t get it; I’m well aware of Hillary’s flaw here (she wants to overturn only one part of DOMA), and Obama’s strength (he wants to repeal the whole thing). I also recognize that Clinton has attempted to compensate for her earlier support of DOMA by striking a middle ground: retaining the part of DOMA that continues to leave marriage equality to the states, while overturning the part that would prohibit federal recognition of same-sex marriage.
While that would leave the possibility of federal recognition open, that’s not good enough for me. But (and here’s the “but” I warned you about a moment ago) — as much as I rail about having to take “baby steps,” especially when it comes to issues of full equality — I’m pragmatic enough to understand that Clinton’s approach is more likely to succeed, thus staving off another attempt by the Hard Right to write a federal marriage ban into the U.S. Constitution.
Yes, I understand very well that a constitutional amendment is a massive undertaking than can span decades, even generations — I cheered and pumped my fist in the air at ERA rallies in the 1970s, you know — but I also know that a wholesale threat to strip individual states of their so-called “right” to deny us equality would result in a backlash that would plunge the fight for equality back into the Dark Ages.
As much as I want federal recognition, and as much as I detest the “states’ rights” argument, I’m not above setting my emotions aside long enough to consider — and admit — that perhaps the “baby steps” strategy really is the most workable plan. I could be wrong either way, but as I often say, if you keep doing something one way, and it’s not working, it’s time to think about doing something else. That “something else” in this case, as it is fomenting in my thoughts these days, is to take the same path as that of anti-miscegenation: Go ahead, leave it up to the states — and then challenge each state, through the court system, to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages.
That’s a hard road, a longer road, and one that promises to clog our already-overburdened court system. But I think, at least today, that a constant chip-chip-chipping away, state by state, may be the only practical way of getting there. Plainly put, the bigger a headache it becomes — i.e., the more time, money, and resources that are wasted — for each state to defend its archaic anti-marriage laws, the more likely… How does that Confucian (or perhaps Zen) saying go? “Water continually dropping wears hard rocks hollow.”
Now, it’s fine, even commendable, that Obama intends to overturn all of DOMA — and if he can manage to do it, I’ll be the first to thank him, praise him, and re-evaluate everything I’ve ever said about his commitment to equality. (Re-evaluate, mind you, not retract; he’s got a lot to make up for, and I will never accept the rubbish that he is a true ally as long as he remains opposed to full marriage equality — and until he completely repudiates all his “love the sinner, hate the sin” rhetoric, and patently ignorant and offensive remarks about giving us a “set of basic rights,” to “allow” us to live our lives “in a way that doesn’t cause discrimination” — for starters.)
But can he do it? Will he do it? I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume, generously, that he is sincere; after all, Bill Clinton was sincere about allowing gay people to serve openly in the military (he even made it his first priority, just days after taking the oath of office) — but look what that got us: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Bill, for all his good intentions, was forced into that compromise.
And that is how, in retrospect, I perceive DOMA: It was a rotten compromise. It sucked. It sucks now. I hate it. But it did serve one purpose: as a stop-gap measure to stave off a major backlash, and at least delay the push for a U.S. constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.
Bill handled both DOMA and DADT badly, due to his underestimation of the anti-gay forces against us, and we’re still suffering for his lack of judgment. I don’t want anything like DOMA or DADT (or something worse that I haven’t even imagined yet) to happen again. And yet I am told, repeatedly, by Obama supporters, that as a gay person I’m a fool not to support Obama on his promise to repeal DOMA alone — whereas I see Obama ignoring the outcome of Bill’s promise to us, and the resulting DADT policy. Obama is taking a gamble on our lives in a way that’s already been proven reckless. And that in itself is reckless.
Since that seems that’s largely the raison d’etre of your site…
It depends how you look at it. The raison d’etre is to point out injustices and hypocrisy (legal and otherwise), in the hope it will open a few eyes and effect change, through the “water continually dropping” effect.
Marriage equality, of course, is a huge issue, but if we were granted full federal recognition tomorrow, I wouldn’t go away. (Sorry! LOL) I want to reiterate something I don’t think I say enough: Marriage equality is not a single, narrow lens through which I view life; it is a wide-angle lens which offers a nearly 360-degree view of countless life issues lost on those lacking the same peripheral vision.
I suggest you read what my better half (who is far more direct and succinct than I could ever hope to be) had to say about it recently, from the perspective of LGBTs being thought of as “one-issue voters.” In short, we’re not just fighting for the right to say “I do”; we’re fighting for a plethora of rights and protections that we would have automatically through federally-recognized marriage. As it stands (and by leaving it all “to the states”), we have to fight for each of those rights and protections, one at a time.
So, yes, marriage equality is a major reason for this blog, but not the only one. Frankly, I wish I never had to write about marriage equality again; I’d rather concentrate on eradicating homophobia on a social (instead of legal) level, through education, interfaith networks, whatever works through peaceful, nonviolent means.
I’d also like to spend more time celebrating gay culture, art, film, literature, and recognizing people (especially young people) and programs making a positive difference in the world.
But until we do get those “I do’s” and everything that goes along with them, I can’t.
…I’m surprised by just how much the Church Lady you can sound on the topic “Obama does not make me happy.”
Wow, that’s the first time I’ve ever sounded churchy to anyone. LOL
Monday’s guilt-by-association-with-Wright-rant was great. You slam Wright for brining up Lewinsky; you talk about how astonishing it is to see a Democrat mention that scandal…. and then you use Fox as one of your primary news sources for analysis of Wright’s statements?
I’m hard-pressed to find where I used Fox as one of my “primary news sources for analysis of Wright’s statements,” unless you mean the quote I cited from Fox recounting Wright’s Christmas and January 13th sermons from this article — in which case I don’t see a conflict; everything in that article appears to be factually correct, with little if any editorializing.
In the end, it was Fox that broke the story the MSM had been ignoring up to now; if you’d rather I’d quoted ABC or MSNBC (or even CNN, which came into the game last), well, I could, but as the other networks piggybacking on Fox have only supported Fox, why bother?
Following on that, your use of the term ‘heterosexual privilege’ in today’s leader was jolting.
One of the things you accuse Wright of is being racially divisive by pointing out the racism inherent in our culture; I have not heard him speak, but that sounds very much like a man pointing out white privilege to me.
I have no problem with pointing out white privilege — I’ve never once pretended I’m not automatically privileged by my white skin — but there’s a big difference between pointing out white privilege and 1) blasting all whites for black oppression in the 21st century, and 2) preaching a theology that seems to have no goal other than the endless perpetuation of anti-white hate.
The difference between Jeremiah Wright and me is this: I don’t blame all heterosexuals for my oppression.
And the difference between Barack Obama and me is this: If my “spiritual advisor” — since I don’t have one, let’s say Harvey Milk — had ever “preached” against straight society, and fired up the gay masses against straight society as a whole, I’d condemn Harvey faster than you could say “Anita Bryant.”
Pointing out white privilege can indeed make white folks very flinchy; we don’t like to admit how much of a pass we get.
Not this white woman. I do recognize my free pass, and I don’t like it one bit.
But I also don’t like being lumped in with every ignorant jackass who happens to share my skin tone. I don’t know how to make it clear to you, or to anyone else, that not all of us deserve to be the target of Wright’s harpoon, since all white people cry, “But I’m not a racist! Some of my best friends are…”
But I do recognize it, and I do fight racism, with the same angry passion as I fight homophobia. Without looking, I can tell you from memory that since I started blogging in 2003 (one of these days, I’ll have to move the old stuff over here, but if you want to find it, go Google the long-dormant “doublethink” blog at Salon.com; that was mine), I’ve blasted fark through George W. Bush for his Pickering nominating because I recognized the racism; I blasted some idiot Florida state rep (whose name escapes me) for making a joke about blacks and basketball because I recognized the racism; I’ve spilled tons of pixels attacking first-class jerks like Trent Lott and Ted Nugent and Toby Keith and that spawn of Satan Michael Savage because I recognized the racism.
I do see it, and I do scream about it. Loudly. Being white, it’s my responsibility to scream about it — precisely because I recognize how much more weight the words of heterosexual allies carry when speaking out about homophobia — and it is a responsibility I welcome.
It just pisses me off when everything I’ve tried to do is tossed aside because I’m white.
I guess some of us have never lived in a big city and seen a driving while black checkpoint in operation nor made a truly boneheaded traffic mistake and gotten off with a warning, nor seen an interracial couple getting harassed by local cops.
Wrong-O. I’ve seen it, and I’ve lived and worked amidst it. In my long entry about Michelle Obama, I mentioned that for a couple of years I worked as a photographer in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Who do you think attended those schools, the Waltons? Years before that, I lived near the corner of Wilshire and Crenshaw in L.A.; from the moment the news started covering the Rodney King riots live, I didn’t have to look at a map to see where Reginald Denny was getting his head bashed in — I could name every fast-food joint around the intersection of Florence and Normandie.
The only new thought that came to my mind was: “Denny is white… I am white… I would be killed without anyone stopping for one second to consider whether I was on their side or not.”
On the flip side, I could say: “I guess some of us have never lived in a big city” — or a small town — “and seen a driving while queer checkpoint in operation nor made a truly boneheaded traffic mistake and gotten off with a warning, nor seen a gay couple getting harrassed by local cops.” Or a straight person bashed because he was mistaken for being gay. Or a transgendered woman sentenced to a cruel death because of the paramedic who was supposed to be treating her after an auto wreck but wouldn’t touch the “chick with the dick,” the doctor who denied her treatment, and the host of other “care” givers who finally performed only the most perfunctory (read: half-assed) procedures after she lay unattended for half an hour, in a state of what was probably “sheer terror.”
As I wrote at Democratic Underground (ironically, regarding the way people gloss over homophobia yet go insane when it comes to racism, anti-semitism, etc.) nearly two years ago:
Now, listen: I am not playing the “my persecution is worse than yours” victim game. As far as I’m concerned, all persecution is equal; when you’re the one getting lynched, or burned at the stake, or herded into a gas chamber, your victimhood is 100%. And it doesn’t matter if you’re gay, or Jewish, or black, or even an Australian in the wrong place at the wrong time when a bomb goes off in an Indonesian pub. You’re just as dead as everyone else, and your family is just as destroyed as any other.
You could argue that Jewish persecution has occurred on a larger scale, and you’d be right; e.g., the Nazis gassed some 6 million Jews, and “only” about a million male homosexuals. But persecution is persecution, and dead is dead is dead.
Matt Shepard is just as dead as Anne Frank.
Anne Frank is just as dead as Emmett Till.
Emmett Till is just as dead as Brandon Teena.
And only by the grace of God (or providence) is that 17-year-old Texas boy not as dead as any of them.
Dead is dead is dead.
And hate is hate is hate. And while I can fathom the many reasons for it, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to accept the fact that the general public just doesn’t care much (or at all) when it’s the queers who are being bashed, murdered, or verbally assaulted.
Don’t you see? I don’t see any difference between homophobia and racism. They both destroy lives — whether we’re talking about the life of the gay man or the black man, or about the pervasive hate and fear that drive homophobes and racists to oppress, and beat, and kill.
But okay, so that’s racially divisive, a rhetoric that aggregates all members of a group into a group eligible for privilege.
And then today, you’re using heterosexual privilge, which is an idea that derives directly from white privilege? And in the following sentence, you lump all of your opponents into kinky Jesoids who want piss on you?
If by “all my opponents,” you mean people who use their religion as an excuse to maintain both my second-class citizenship and their privilege, then yes, I do.
Yes, I do lump my “opponents” together — but only not only into one big “Jesoid,” because there are plenty of non-Christian religionists who oppose my equality, too. However, it is only those who base their anti-gay crusades on their “deeply held religious beliefs” who oppose me at all. I have never once heard a secular argument against same-sex equality. If you’ve ever heard one, please clue me in; I’d be fascinated to hear a compelling argument that has nothing to do with religious beliefs.
Randall Terry — founder of Operation Rescue and absolutely maniacal anti-gay crusader — unknowingly made this point crystal clear (in part 2 of an essay he wrote bemoaning his son Jamiel’s homosexuality); bold emphasis mine:
But more simply put: Homosexual behavior is wrong because it violates the way our Creator made the world, and the Laws He gave us. This brings me to the most important part of this article: The Name, the Person, and the Standards of God.
If you have followed the fight over homosexual marriage, there has been a steady drumbeat to keep the Name and the Standards of The Almighty out of the debate. This, of course, is not new. Whether it is the debate around abortion, or over prayer in schools, or the Pledge of Allegiance, or the posting of the Ten Commandments in government buildings, there is a blatant, unashamed effort to drive the Name and the Laws of our Maker from the public square.
Tragically, many well meaning people in our camp have decided to go along with these rules. I tell you plainly: If we surrender on this point, we will lose the war. We will not win. We cannot win.
Why? Because absent the Created order and standards of the Almighty, there is no reason to oppose same-sex-marriage. Why should we deny two consenting people who love each other the right to be married?
The arguments against homosexual marriage involving children (having or raising them) won’t hold up. Older couples who marry cannot have children. And children are raised in homes without two natural parents every day. Sometimes a grandparent raises a child. These scenarios might not be optimum, but it is done by millions every day.
Arguments over “traditional marriage” are also of little value. We’ve had a lot of traditions that needed changing. This could be another one. Traditions are important, unless they stand in the way of liberty. Moreover, who is to say which tradition is the best? America’s, or ancient Greece’s or ancient Rome’s, where they openly practiced homosexuality?
The reason we oppose homosexual marriage is because it violates the way God made the world — it attacks the institution He created; it betrays and defies the Laws He gave us.
If there is no God; if we are the chance arrangement of molecules that happened to evolve from some primal swamp; if we are merely animals and there is no such thing as moral absolutes, good and evil, right and wrong — defined by the Ultimate Lawgiver — then anything goes. Let the homosexuals do what they want. Who are we to impose our morality on them?
But if there is a God who makes the rules, then He has imposed His morals on all of us, and we are obliged to obey and defend those ethics in the public square.
Here, for comparison, is a short discussion of the same subject by two atheists; the argument is essentially the same as Randall Terry’s!
Bottom line: There is no compelling secular argument against same-sex equality. It is always based on religion. Always.
That’s not to say I lump all religious people in with the bigots. I have only one complaint about the religious left: They won’t take the religious right to task. But then, that is an integral part of being a Christian: not judging others, but simply emulating Christ, turning the other cheek, being meek, that sort of thing.
Still, even Jesus got angry enough to turn over the moneychangers’ tables in the temple. I wish the meek-and-mild religious left would turn over a few more tables.
Ah well. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind, right?
Talk about damning with faint praise.
But you know what? I’ll take the faint praise; it’s one of the small benefits of refusing to march in lockstep with any group to which I belong, be it by default (women, gay people, Caucasians, Italian-Americans) or by choice (Democrats — and that’s subject to change at any moment).
I just finished watching The Race Speech. It was a nice speech — but I don’t need a history lesson in race relations; I wanted Obama to address the specifics of the Jeremiah Wright issue, and then get very specific about the theology he’s pledged his loyalty to — and the church he’s pledged his money to — for the past twenty years.
At best, he dismissed Wright as a member of a dying generation, for whom “the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away,” and downplayed the constant, consistent message of his own brand of “liberation theology” as only “occasionally” finding “voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews.”
It also irritated the hell out of me that he compared Wright’s long history of anti-white rhetoric to Geraldine Ferraro’s one-time gaffe:
We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
And, again, while Wright may sound like a crank to those of us to whom his brand of fire and brimstone are foreign, his divisive demagoguery is entirely consistent with the theology to which Obama subscribes.
That is worrisome.
In short, Obama really didn’t say anything new. It was the same “hate the sin, love the sinner” speech he’s been making since the Wright firestorm erupted, only padded with a lot of historical references.
Of course, I’m a hard sell — but that’s the point: I am the person very Obama had to convince. He didn’t — no matter how his followers praise this as the greatest speech since Lincoln’s “House Divided.”
So, mission not accomplished.
Now, there was something even more interesting to me, as a gay American, that jumped out near the very beginning of the speech:
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution — a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
There’s nothing remarkable about alluding to the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution when discussing slavery; it is, however, highly ironic that Barack Obama — staunch opponent of same-sex marriage equality — would invoke the Equal Protection Clause, on which the most elementary argument in favor of marriage equality is based.
I know his devout flock won’t see it, but Obama’s double standard on issues of equality becomes only more pronounced every time he speaks.
Read it and weep, Barack (or better, yet, save the party and drop out now) — it’s on the front page of the Politics section in today’s New York Times:
In the interview last spring, Mr. Wright expressed frustration at the breach in relationship with Mr. Obama, saying the candidate had already privately said that he might need to distance himself from his pastor. But perhaps the two could repair things, said Mr. Wright, pointing out that Mr. Obama’s opponent, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, had faced worse.
“At least there are no semen stains on any dresses,” Mr. Wright said, one of several digs he has taken at the Clintons.
“That kind of frankness scares people in the campaign,” he added.
It shouldn’t scare anyone — it should simply disgust and anger the hell out of all Democrats, no matter who they support.
Sadly, however, it has become the norm for Obama supporters (among whom Mr. Wright remains, despite his previous “frustration” over being “disinvited” from The Big Obama Show) to fling every piece of poo recycled from the Newt Gingrich / Ken Starr era at Hillary. It’s déjà vu all over again — only this time the attacks are coming from within the Democratic Party. (Or are they? It’s often difficult to believe that even half the most vocal Obama supporters are anything but Hillary-hating GOP plants.)
The minister’s defenders say the statements that have been playing this week on television are outliers, taken out of context, and that he is not antiwhite. The United Church of Christ, the denomination of the Chicago church, is overwhelmingly white. And Mr. Wright is an equal opportunity critic, often delivering scorching lectures about black society, telling audiences to improve their education and work ethic.
“I can remember Jeremiah saying in probably half his sermons: Everyone who’s your color ain’t your kind,” Richard Sewell, a church member, said in an interview last year.
Peter Rosenstein gives you plenty (and you too, you young “post-feminist” women who think you have it made in the shade with Obama):
I didn’t realize the extent to which sexism is still alive. As a gay man I have been more focused on homophobia in the last few years. But having worked for the late Rep. Bella Abzug (D-N.Y.) many years ago, I should have been aware that we have not come very far.
It is clear that racism is now politically incorrect. It is there in large measures and if Barack Obama is the nominee we will see just how widespread it still is, but we have come to the point that you cannot be racist in public and get away with it. … But we have seen in this campaign that we can still call women a word rhyming with witch, hold a sign up at a Clinton rally saying, “Hillary iron my shirts,” and everyone just laughs.
It is the same with discrimination against gays and lesbians. It is OK to discriminate and to call someone the “f-word” and most people still laugh.
Many gays and lesbians have found a way to excuse Obama for hiring Donnie McClurkin to speak for him and to accept bland statements of support with no proof that anything will ever be done. Women forget that they are still making only 77 cents to the dollar of what men make and that there is a glass ceiling for most jobs. They apparently continue to believe that by electing a man they will get what they deserve. I agree — they will get what they deserve.
I AM A little more understanding of black women who are torn between their race and their gender. That at least is understandable. But for other women to turn their back on another woman is crazy. For gays and lesbians not to support the person who has a history of supporting us is also not rational. It is Hillary who had a lesbian friend babysit for her daughter; the person holding her father’s hand when he died was a gay man. The relationships are long and deep. It is in Hillary’s office that the fight against the Federal Marriage Amendment was coordinated.
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So I understand what it means to fight for the rights of the GLBT community everywhere even if that fight isn’t impacting me right now. So why can’t the young women of today understand what it will mean not only to them but to women around the world if the United States were to elect a woman president? Why can’t they realize what breaking the highest glass ceiling in the world will do for them? Why can’t they understand that having Hillary in the White House will mean a personal commitment to having judges who will protect Roe v. Wade? After all, I understand what having Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin at the table with personal commitments to GLBT rights in Congress means to me. …
