In his Advocate piece, “Was Obama a One-Night Stand?,” Dan Savage swings and misses as many times as he hits — but when he connects, it’s a solid thwock! of leather against ash.
But when he misses, he misses by a mile.
Give it a read, and then come back and see if you wouldn’t call the same strikes I do.
New Hampshire Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, a vocal gay rights leader, will open President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration with a prayer on Sunday’s kick-off event at the Lincoln Memorial.
“I am writing to tell you that President-Elect Obama and the Inaugural Committee have invited me to give the invocation at the opening event of the Inaugural Week activities, We are One, to be held at the Lincoln Memorial,” Robinson wrote in an email to friends.
The announcement comes after weeks of outcry from the gay community over Obama’s choice of evangelical, anti-gay pastor Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation.
“It’s important for any minority to see themselves represented in some way,” Robinson said in an interview with the Concord Monitor. …
With all due respect, Rev. Robinson, no; I don’t need to see myself represented just for the sake of seeing myself represented. There’s something more important than having a Token Homosexual thrown into the mix at the last minute in a transparent attempt to pacify Those Angry Gays — like never honoring a homophobic bigot in the first place (or, having learned your lesson, disinviting the homophobic bigot).
No, Gene Robinson does not cancel out or make up for Rick Warren. Gene Robinson never compared heterosexuality to incest or pedophilia. Gene Robinson never tried to take away the rights of heterosexuals. Gene Robinson is not a bigot.
It would be a waste of time to write at length about this new insult (and that’s what it is, an insult), because I’ve said it all before — when Obama threw another Token Homosexual into the mix at the last minute in a transparent attempt to pacify Those Angry Gays over the Donnie McClurkin fiasco.
Barack Obama just doesn’t get it. He thinks that adding a gay minister to his gospel concert is going to make up for Donnie McClurkin, Mary Mary, and Hezekiah Walker — and for the most obvious fact that this concert is meant to increase Obama’s appeal to southern black homophobes. …
Dear Senator Obama:
What a lame, transparent attempt at appeasement.
You wax poetic about “reaching out” to everyone, when all you’re doing is overreaching. If you’re so bent on bringing everybody into the “big tent,” what’s next — a community singalong with White Stormfront?
If all your rhetoric about your support for the LGBT community were based in reality, you would have taken the time to get to know us well enough to realize what a hurtful affront this whole stupid idea was in the first place — and then you wouldn’t have done it.
But, having made this grave error, you might have repaired the damage by dumping the ‘phobes from the tour. But you wouldn’t, and you won’t. So, instead, you think you’re going to offset the damage by throwing a gay preacher into the mix.
Wrong. You’re only making it worse. The saddest part is that you don’t even [understand] how you’re compounding the damage, no matter how many times, or in how many ways, we explain it to you.
Finally — and oh so typically — it never occurred to you that adding a gay minister to the bill is also going to piss off the very homophobes you’re “reaching out” to. Do you think they’re as stupid as you seem to think we are? They’re not.
I first posted the following quote nearly a year ago, in January, during (not surprisingly) the Kirbyjon Caldwell outrage precious few paid attention to (except for the Obama supporters who called me everything from a racist to a Republican troll to words even I won’t type here).
For those who came in late, Kirbyjon Caldwell is another of Barack Obama’s rabidly anti-gay best-best-bestest friends, who surfaced between the Donnie McClurkin explosion and the current Rick Warren slap in the face. Here’s the Reader’s Digest Condensed Version of the story.
You can use the search thingy to find all my other posts on Caldwell, including the one titled “Any gay person who votes for Barack Obama after this is, simply, an idiot.” I feel like I should regret the wording of that title, but I’m not one to go back and revise what I’ve written just to make myself look more reasonable in retrospect. (When I screw up, and I know it, I’ll admit it and take my lumps. Doing anything else would destroy my credibility with you, dear reader, and, equally as unforgivable in my eyes, would make me feel pretty crummy about myself.)
Still, while the title isn’t exactly the sort to win hearts and minds, I meant it when I wrote it, and I don’t regret anything I’ve written about Obama, McClurkin, Caldwell, or even Jeremah Wright (except that I was dead wrong about Wright sinking Obama’s chances for the nomination *sigh*). I only feel badly for my fellow LGBTs who are beating themselves up mercilessly for not seeing the Obamahomophobia from the beginning. I feel like the dad in Breaking Away, when Dave comes home after being sabotaged by the Italian team (who were his greatest heroes until they showed their true colors), and hugs his old man, crying. Not quite sure what to make of his son’s abject pain, he finally hugs him back and says, “I didn’t want you to be this miserable. A little bit’s all I asked for.”
OTOH, if people weren’t suffering such deep pain, the LGBT community would never be gelling, galvanizing, radicalizing the way it is right now. It’s been said before that Prop 8 may be the best thing that ever happened to us; I’m beginning to believe it.
But I digress, as usual.
Anyway, when the Caldwell blow-up was happening, I was getting a lot of hate mail. Oddly, no one ever commented on the Karl Popper passage I’m about to quote (although, interestingly, the original post has been linked to, many, many times, by many other blogs and message boards). It was only recently (I’d have to dig it up, but I think it was late last summer) that some dude jumped down my throat about it. He was convinced that Popper was advocating violence to silence those who disagree with us (and that I was, too).
Nothing could be further from the truth. What Popper is saying is that if our opponents “are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument,” but instead turn to “the use of their fists or pistols,” then we must be prepared (I like to add, “as opposed to lying down like dogs and taking our beating the way we usually do”).
I say this because I know there’s going to be the random passerby who will read this quote and get it all wrong, just like Mister Reading Comprehension Failure did.
With that, I hope I’ve headed off the random right-winger compelled to run back to not-so-gay-friendly blogs and message boards with the news that “Teh Gays are threatening violence! This is HUGH!!!!111!1 I’m SERIES!!!!!1!”
Of course, that’s not the main point of the piece; to me, the first two sentences say it all.
But I think you’ll find the whole thing very useful in the coming weeks and months ahead.
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
“Every gay person who paid attention to this today felt like we were kicked in the stomach,” said longtime lesbian Democratic activist Hilary Rosen. Rosen, who is a regular political commentator on CNN, told Anderson Cooper Wednesday night that the invitation to such a “divisive figure…on a day of bringing the country together” is an “outrageous mistake.”
. . .
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force leader Rea Carey called the invitation a “direct affront” to the nature of Obama campaign’s theme of inclusivity. Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese called it a “genuine blow to LGBT Americans.”
. . .
U.S. Rep. Barney Frank issued a statement Thursday saying he, too, is “very disappointed by President-elect Barack Obama’s decision to honor Reverend Rick Warren with a prominent role in his inauguration.”
“Religious leaders obviously have every right to speak out in opposition to anti-discrimination measures, even in the degrading terms that Rev. Warren has used with regard to same-sex marriage,” said Frank. “But that does not confer upon them the right to a place of honor in the inauguration ceremony of a president whose stated commitment to LGBT rights won him the strong support of the great majority of those who support that cause.”
Frank said Warren’s participation is not as one in a series of people presenting various views but rather “a mark of respect and approval by those who are being inaugurated.” …
The piece does quote Obama, who “also noted that his inauguration ceremony will include Dr. Joseph Lowery — who supports equal rights for gays. Lowery is scheduled to deliver the closing prayer” — but also notes what the diehard Obama faithful refuse to acknowledge:
The response was reminiscent of Obama’s reaction in 2007 when the LGBT community expressed anger of his campaign’s invitation to an anti-gay gospel singer, Donnie McClurkin, to highlight his gospel tour of South Carolina. Despite the community’s calls to remove McClurkin from the line-up, Obama kept him on the program and added an openly gay minister to deliver a statement.
Two memos — one to the Mormons, and one to the Obama faithful.
Pyrrhic victory
A Pyrrhic victory is a victory with devastating cost to the victor.
The phrase is named after King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose army suffered irreplaceable casualties in defeating the Romans at Heraclea in 280 BC and Asculum in 279 BC during the Pyrrhic War. After the latter battle, Plutarch relates in a report by Dionysius:
“The armies separated; and, it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one more such victory would utterly undo him. For he had lost a great part of the forces he brought with him, and almost all his particular friends and principal commanders; there were no others there to make recruits, and he found the confederates in Italy backward. On the other hand, as from a fountain continually flowing out of the city, the Roman camp was quickly and plentifully filled up with fresh men, not at all abating in courage for the loss they sustained, but even from their very anger gaining new force and resolution to go on with the war.”
In both of Pyrrhus’s victories, the Romans lost more men than Pyrrhus did. However, the Romans had a much larger supply of men from which to draw soldiers, so their losses did less damage to their war effort than Pyrrhus’s losses did to his.
The report is often quoted as “Another such victory over the Romans and we are undone,”[citation needed] or “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.”
Although it is most closely associated with a military battle, the term is used by analogy in fields such as business, politics, law, literature, and sport to describe any similar struggle which is ruinous for the victor. For example, the theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr writing of the need for coercion in the cause of justice warned that: “Moral reason must learn how to make a coercion its ally without running the risk of a Pyrrhic victory in which the ally exploits and negates the triumph”
Mormons, enjoy your Pyrrhic victory. Your cost? Your integrity, your humanity, and your very soul.
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
Mark 8:36
And you self-righteous, holier-than-thou Mormons gloating over at Mormon Apologetics: Get the hell off my site. Bigots are not welcome here and never have been. Go waste someone else’s bandwidth. As soon as I can stop my nearly-uncontrollable crying and rein in my despair and utter disgust at your revolting attack on my very life, and get more than an hour’s uninterrupted sleep, I’m banning every IP address in Utah. You… people have been using the Newswire to prop up your lies, your high-fives, and your “We beat Teh Gays!” backslapping for far too long. If nothing else, by blocking you, at least I can stem part of the tide of your bullshit comments I delete the moment I see them — “Ohhhhhh! We’re not attacking The Gays! We’re doing it out of loooooooooooooooove! Love the sinner, hate the sin! God blessssssss!” I’m sick of you using my Web site to convince yourselves that your war on my life is some sort of mission from God. Keep your crazy-ass religion out of my face, and keep your self-congratulatory clusterfucks in your own sad, sick, insular little world of “celestial marriage,” “spirit babies,” and magic underwear.
Do you get it? I think you, and your religion, are absolutely delusional. I think you are a cult. I can tell you the truth now, because I have NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE. YOU have left me NOTHING. Instead of minding your own business and burying your noses in the Book of Mormon — while conveniently ignoring the Doctrines and Covenants you should have been heeding — you would have done better to pay attention to Sun Tzu:
“When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.”
I could humor you, and patronize you, as long as you left me an outlet. But you went over the line this time. Way over the line.
The gloves are off.
Why should I pretend to respect you and your oppressive, life-sapping, fascist agenda, when you NEVER respected my life, my pacifism, my complete and total willingness to let you live in peace?
Instead of love, you spread hate. Instead of peace, you wage war. Instead of Jesus, you conjure Lucifer himself.
If my Christian heritage was right, then I call upon the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and all the angels and saints, to see that you never again have a single night’s sleep unbothered by the wrenching knowledge that you persecuted an imagined enemy that never did you a lick of harm.
May you lie awake in anguish and torture over the wrong you have committed.
May your cries for forgiveness from your “Heavenly Father” go unheeded, and may your sin haunt you until the day you die.
May you experience the Hell you so fear.
And while you await your just desserts of eternal hellfire, why don’t you find what’s left of your “Christian mercy” in your blackened little hearts and just put a knife through my chest and twist it as hard as you can? As I’ve told you before: The only difference between you and Dan White is that Dan White murdered Harvey Milk quickly and mercifully with a bullet through the head. But you, Mormons, you enjoy teasing out my long, slow, painful death by torture.
You are a sociopathic eight-year-old boy relishing in the perverse delight of pulling the wings off flies, and in holding a magnifying glass over an ant in the summer sun.
You delight in torturing the weak to death. You just can’t confess to the perverse joy you take in inflicting as much pain on us as you can.
To you, I say: Go. To. Hell.
Literally.
In the Name of the Cross, I damn you to Hell.
Save your self-righteous “You’re persecuting the Mormons!” crap comments — I’ll delete them, so don’t waste the keystrokes.
YOU are the persecutors. YOU are the oppressors, the haters, the slavemasters, the destroyers of everything that is good and precious and loving.
To the Obama supporters:
I wanted to be big tonight and congratulate you on Barack Obama’s hard-won victory, but I can’t. I can’t count the number of times I tried to warn you that Obama really was sacrificing gays for the religious extremists — whose vote he would have had anyway! — but you just wouldn’t listen. You kept calling me a racist, when all I was trying to do was make you see that his win would be marked by the footprints embedded in our backs. I’ve been telling you this for more than a year; my very first post about Donnie McClurkin (while I was trying to make the same point on Democratic Underground, and spent the next few months getting raked over the coals) was on October 23, 2007.
You just wouldn’t listen.
Well, until tonight. I was just over at DU to see if anyone had even noticed what was happening in California — and in Arizona, and Florida, and Arkansas. It’s of no consolation at all to me to see that some of the DUers I used to go ’round and ’round with — the ones who called me a racist — are finally realizing that a significant percentage of Californians who voted for Barack Obama also voted to destroy my marriage.
It’s too late for that realization to make any difference now. It’s over. You stood by silently and let us be sacrificed.
This is not an “I told you so” post. I get no satisfaction from this. I wanted, so much, so very, very much, to be proven wrong. I didn’t want to be right about this.
But I was. There’s no other way to put it: Obama fucked us. Sideways. And you enabled him, encouraged him, went the length to deliberately overlook what he was doing to us.
I knew his deeply-ingrained homophobia would come back to bite us in the ass. Maybe you knew it too, but you were just hoping some miracle would happen, and the chickens wouldn’t come home to roost.
But my worst fears came true. Just take the mailer targeting African-American voters:
And then there was the message on my answering machine I came home to today, after blogging all night (again) against Prop 8, grabbing a couple hours’ fitful sleep, hitting the streets for three hours at mid-day — and taking shit from bigots ever-so-safe in their cars.
Listen to it. You’re not going to like it. But if you have a single fair bone in your entire body, you will listen to it — in fact, I dare you to listen:
That is what I came home to.
I should have taken it as an omen.
Look, I crapped all over your guy during the primaries, and then, after he got the nomination, I eased up, nailing him only when failing to do so would be a disservice to my own honesty.
No, I didn’t vote for him — and now maybe you understand why.
As I’ve explained too many times, I’m in California, ferchrissakes, where Obama had it sewn up. If I’d known my vote would have been the one to keep Gramps and the Alaska Airhead out of the White House, I would have held my nose one more time and given your guy my vote. But I didn’t have to, so I didn’t (and lest any boobs get the wrong idea, I voted for McKinney).
But you assured me — assured me — Obama supporters were all about CHANGE and FAIRNESS and EQUALITY and GOOD.
Yeah, well.
Look at the numbers, babes. Your compatriots betrayed not only me, but you.
More than that, Barack Obama betrayed all of us.
OK, I’ll stop. If you’re an Obama supporter, and your dazed, shocked, fabulous thrill is even the least bit tinged by the slightest pain for your gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, I’m not going to keep beating you over the head. The damage is done.
What I do want to beat you over the head with is this:
Some of us who don’t trust Obama have always had very good reasons not to.
Not trusting Obama doesn’t automatically make one a racist.
You’ve got your guy in like Flynn, so that battle is done. Now it is time for you — if you are the peace-, freedom-, and equality-loving American you say you are, if you value your gay brothers and sisters as much as you do yourself — to stand up for those of us you trampeled in the stampede.
It’s up to you. The bigots don’t listen to us — we’re just a bunch of godless, hedonistic, mentally ill, child-molesting, diseased perverts who barely deserve to live, let alone be treated like real citizens of these Dis-United States.
Now that you’ve got your guy, what are you going to do for us? How are you going to make it up to us, when — what? — 75% of us voted for your guy, at their own expense?
What are you going to do? This is not a rhetorical question. You know you owe us, every last one of us, for all the elections when we’ve held our noses and voted for the Dem, no matter how homophobic he was/is. (Wanna argue? If it looks like a homophobe, and walks like a homophobe, and sounds like a homophobe… Sorry, babes, but your guy fulfills all the criteria, and you know it).
And another thing: Don’t you ever, EVER, give ANY gay person ANY more shit about court decisions threatening to cost Democrats the election — whatever election.
I don’t know what else there is to say. I’m sure I’ll think of something after sunrise, after another futile attempt at sleep. Whether I write it or not, I don’t know. Whether I ever write another word at all, I don’t know. Everything I do is futile.
I’ve spent the past five months trying to drill some sense through the thick skulls of Mormons and other religious bigots, the past year trying to make Obama supporters understand that my resistance wasn’t a Black Thing, but an Equality Thing, and my entire fucking LIFE trying to make YOU ALL understand that this is my LIFE, not some passing fancy, not some irresistible perversion, but my fucking LIFE you’re ALL playing games with for the benefit of YOUR narrow, tunnel-visioned agenda, whatever that may be.
All I know is this: You’ve all fucked me, my wife, my community, our fucking MARRIAGES, over for your own perceived benefit.
Without so much as a kiss.
I know you thought you were doing what was right and good for our nation (sorry, I mean your nation, the one you share with the religious bigots, the one I no longer belong to), but I can’t let up on you until you try, really try, to fix this.
Are you going to get on your man’s case over sacrificing us like this? Are you going to stay on his case? Or are you going to forget about Those Gays until 2012, when you need our money and our votes again?
Not a rhetorical question. What are you going to do, Obama supporters? What are you going to do?
Or are you just going to pretend I’m just a know-nothing racist… again?
Damn it, Barry, I hate the fact that you keep proving I’ve been right about you all along — I wanted you to prove me wrong. With all my heart and soul, I wanted, so very badly, for you to prove me wrong. But here you go again:
Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign is reportedly launching a “Faith, Family, and Values Tour” next week that will include Catholic legal scholar Douglas Kmiec as one of the campaign’s surrogates. Kmiec wrote an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle this summer in which he urged support for passing California’s marriage ban, Proposition 8.
The Christian Broadcasting Network is reporting that the Obama campaign next week will kick off “Barack Obama: Faith, Family, and Values Tour,” designed to woo the votes of left-leaning Catholics, progressive Evangelicals, and some conservative mainline Protestants. If LGBT people find the tour eerily reminiscent of the South Carolina gospel tour the campaign arranged last year with antigay “ex-gay” gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, their instincts may not be far off.
CBN names Catholic legal scholar Douglas Kmiec as one of the religious surrogates who will hit the road stumping for Obama. Kmiec wrote a June 13 op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle supporting California’s Proposition 8, the ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage, titled “On Same-Sex Marriage: Should California Amend Its Constitution? Say ‘No’ to the Brave New World.” Kmiec’s first two sentences in the piece read, “The California ballot initiative intended to set aside the state supreme court’s judicial invention of same-sex marriage deserves public support. Maybe it is enough to say, as many do in conversation, that it merely re-secures a millennia of tradition and common sense.” …
Kmiec’s views run counter to those of Obama, who voiced his opposition to Proposition 8 in a letter addressed to San Francisco’s Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club. “I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states,” the Illinois senator wrote.
Contacted by The Advocate for comment, Obama campaign spokesperson Shin Inouye confirmed CBN’s report, reiterated Obama’s support for LGBT rights, and echoed the theme of diversity that Obama often trumpets himself.
Oh, for crying in a bucket, Inouye, face the music.
And, Obama… Damn it, what the hell is wrong with you?
I tell you, Barry, the only reason I don’t rip you an even bigger one right now is that the only thing I want less than for you to be POTUS is to have McCain and that freak of nature Palin in charge.
But that is all.
You want to prove me wrong, Barry? Do right by us for once in your wishy-washy life, grow some balls, and sack Kmiec, now.
Otherwise… Oh, forget it. You don’t care about us. You never have, and you never will.
Oh, and Obama supporters, if you have a problem with me raking your man over the coals again, take it up with the person who keeps causing all this bad blood: Obama. You deal with him and his Kmiec problem — and if you don’t give a damn about us LGBTs any more than Obama does, then maybe you’ll have a problem with him being in bed with “the former constitutional legal counsel to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.”
If your guy spent half the time “reaching out” to the progressive base of the Democratic Party as he has to our sworn enemies (our sworn enemies, kids — the right wing that hates you just as much as it hates me — remember them?), he wouldn’t be in quite so much trouble at the polls as he is right now.
At one time, he could have even had my vote. All he had to do was apologize for his terrible judgment for Donnie McClurkin, swear it would never happen again, and then make sure it didn’t.
Frankly, we’re stunned, in a good way, that the guy who refuses to acknowledge the validity of all marriages, actually used the word “spouse”. Here’s the micro-mini press release issued today by former Jerry Nadler staffer-turned Obama campaigner Shin Inouye:
Sen. Obama’s Statement on Passing of Del Martin
09/02/2008 (10:49 AM)
Today, Senator Barack Obama made the following statement on the passing of civil rights activist Del Martin:
“Michelle and I were deeply saddened to hear that Del Martin had passed. Del committed her life to fighting discrimination and promoting equality. Our thoughts and prayers go out to her spouse Phyllis Lyon, and all those who were touched by her life.”
That’s not about to turn me into an Obama fan — Barry’s got way too much anti-gay baggage to dump, and to make up for, for me to even begin to trust him — but it’s something. What kind of “something” is open to debate; my guess is that somebody told him that ignoring the death of Del Martin would be like ignoring the death of Cesar Chavez.
I haven’t written anything in a while about Obama and Teh Gays, because there hasn’t been a lot happening — save for another fawning “some of Obama’s best friends are gay!” piece in The Advocate, “Should You Believe in Obama?,” that’s been online for the past week or more. I haven’t blogged it until now because there just isn’t that much in it to make me do more than shrug and go “Meh!”
Well, that’s not entirely true.
The article begins with former Obama aide Kevin Thompson talking about about his long friendship with the Obamas, and how cool they were with him coming out. All well and good, until:
And after Obama marched in a Chicago pride parade for the first time, Thompson says, questions again poured forth: “He wanted to know the history of Pride — how is it that every city has one, what was the origin of it, what was the whole story about Stonewall.”
Waitasec. If memory serves, the first time Obama marched in a pride parade was in 2004. Only four years ago (and at age 43), Obama was asking his gay friend about “the history of Pride — how is it that every city has one, what was the origin of it, what was the whole story about Stonewall”?
Shouldn’t Obama have known this stuff already?
Let’s turn this around: Let’s say you’ve got a white candidate who claims to be a major ally of the African-American community, whose black friends say that he’s worked tirelessly on their behalf… What would you say about such a candidate if you found out that, just four years ago and in middle age, this guy had to ask a black friend about the history of slavery, civil rights, and the Montgomery bus boycott?
It seems I knew more about the African-American struggle for civil rights by the time I was five than Barack Obama knew about the battle for gay equality when he was 43.
That bothers me, a lot. But it doesn’t surprise me. Which is probably why the thing in this article that bugs me the most doesn’t have so much to do with Obama himself (I already know what his liabilities are), but with a certain anonymous quote.
In the piece, (Bill) Clinton campaigner David Mixner says that “Some people don’t know what to make of [Obama] because he hasn’t known the leading gay activists or even his own advisers on gay issues for very long.” Nothing wrong there; what irritates the hell out of me is the follow-up remark writer Michael Joseph Gross opted to include, from “another” unnamed “national gay political leader”:
“The mafia doesn’t know him. David Geffen, James Hormel, David Bohnett — they’re not his friends. His real gay friends are regular people in Chicago.”
“The mafia”?! Thanks for propagating that little right-wing myth from the bitter lips of Michael Ovitz, Mr. Gross.
Think about it: In an article mentioning the Dreamworks head honchos, Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen — super-rich Hollywood power wielders all — would you allow an anonymous comment referring to them as “the Jewish mafia”? Sheesh.
What else bugs me:
Jim Madigan, an attorney who was a student in professor Obama’s constitutional law class at the University of Chicago in the late 1990s, says Obama taught the course from a distinct perspective. Every civil rights case study, from Dred Scott v. Sandford to Bowers v. Hardwick, was made “from the perspective of the individual plaintiff,” Madigan says. Moreover, Obama approached race and sexual orientation with an even hand: “The approach was always, ‘Look at how the government is treating the individual,’?” Madigan recalls. “What was personal for him and what was personal for me — we treated them in the same way.”
Well, Mr. Madigan, that’s easy to do in a classroom, where every issue is dealt with in theoretical terms — and where learning from history is the safest sort of 20/20 hindsight. Outside the classroom, Obama has not yet “approached race and sexual orientation with an even hand.” He admits that the marriage of his own parents wasn’t legally recognized throughout the U.S., but can’t bring himself to make the connection between Jim Crow laws and anti-gay laws. Worst of all, in a lame attempt to justify his thoroughly unjustifiable opposition to same-sex marriage, he uses the same arguments (”tradition,” “religious beliefs,” and “states’ rights” among them) used to justify opposition to interracial marriage.
Fail.
To Gross’s credit, there is, at least, mention of some of the anti-gay company Obama keeps…
When it was reported that Obama described [James Meeks, who is also pastor of Chicago’s Salem Baptist Church and who last year was named by the Southern Poverty Law Center as one of the “10 leading black religious voices in the antigay movement”] as one of his spiritual counselors — and when the candidate was endorsed by other African-American leaders who have been outspokenly homophobic, including gospel singer Donnie McClurkin — some gay leaders condemned the U.S. senator, claiming that if he truly were our ally, he could not also be their friend.
Yeah, well, I still feel that way, even if Obama renounces all ties with his anti-gay buddies the way he did with Jeremiah Wright — because that decision was borne clearly out of political expediency, not a genuine epiphany.
I’ll also give Gross credit for ending the article with a caveat none of us can afford to forget:
Marriage marks the limit of Obama’s courage. He supports civil unions, believes marriage rights are best granted by the states, and asserts that he believes “marriage is between a man and a woman” — the phrase that’s been honed by conservative opponents of marriage equality.
His stance on marriage is the one crashingly false note in his message to gay voters. It is difficult to understand his position as anything but calculated dissembling. Rick Garcia of Equality Illinois says, “I wish he was being brave and bold and doing the right thing, but it’s his campaign’s and his determination that it would not be helpful or beneficial when running for president of the United States at this particular time. I don’t think he can risk any position other than the one he’s taken.”
Probably without realizing it, Garcia expresses the one thing that annoys me the most about Barack Obama: He’s not “brave and bold” enough to stand up for what’s right — and his anti-equality position is rooted in pure politics. If Obama is so pro-gay, and so honest and open and genuine, then he would come out in favor of marriage equality, damn the naysayers.
Finally, as long as I’m on the subject of Obama and Teh Gays, here’s something else that’s been bothering me for a while: Remember that LGBT conference call the Obama campaign (not Obama himself — he wasn’t on the call) had with a bunch of high-profile gay leaders trying to convince 1,200 listeners (including me) to go to work for Obama? The call began with Steve Hildebrand, deputy campaign manager of Obama for America, telling us that there would be another LGBT conference call “within the next two weeks, which Obama himself will join.”
That call took place June 6th. Today is September 2nd — and the Obama campaign has never followed up on its promise of a second call.
Believe me, if they had, I’d know about it — I’m on the mailing list, which bombards me with constant pleas for donations, but is conspicuously silent otherwise.
I guess I’m never going to get my questions answered.
But, you know what? All of this amounts to a whole lotta nothin’. Obama’s the nominee, and, thanks to McCain’s pick of the worst vice presidential candidate in the history of the United States, I think Obama will win. There’s not much point in my complaining about Obama anymore, as not a thing I could say or do will turn back the clock and get a real Democrat into the White House.
Oh, that doesn’t mean I’ll stop complaining about Obama — and if the guy does become the next POTUS, I’ll probably be ten times as brutal on him as I’ve ever been.
It just doesn’t matter if I criticize him or not. In case you hadn’t noticed, this politics thing is completely out of the hands of We the People, and it doesn’t matter much what we say. Our “candidates” are always chosen for us, and if we don’t vote the way TPTB want us to, there’s always election-rigging.
garychapelhill has a must-read over at The Confluence (one of the five or six blogs I can’t wait to read, every single day — seriously). Gary and Mawm went to NYC Pride and reminded gay folks that “Barack Obama is no friend to our community.” He’s got video up, too — but more important is his piece, “Obama wants our votes, not our civil rights. NO DEAL!!!,” which recaps just a few of the ways Obama has slapped us queers in the face with complete impunity.
Is there anything new here? No, nothing you haven’t heard about before — assuming, of course, you keep tabs on Obama’s duplicitous and terminally conflicted dealings with the LGBT community. But it’s a must-read because Gary provides a brief, easily digestible (while very well researched) refresher course on three of Obama’s most striking anti-gay moves: his prima facie endorsement of the anti-gay “ex-gay” Donnie McClurkin, his association with the rabidly anti-gay Rev. James Meeks, and his more recent, Janus-like* (or should that be “Judas-like”?) stance on marriage equality — all most inconvenient truths for LGBTs trying ever so desperately to justify voting for a man who is using them like a dishtowel.
*Janus was usually depicted with two heads (not faces) looking in opposite directions, and was frequently used to symbolize change and transitions such as the progression of past to future, of one condition to another, of one vision to another, the growing up of young people, and of one universe to another. He was also known as the figure representing time because he could see into the past with one face and into the future with the other. Hence, Janus was worshipped at the beginnings of the harvest and planting times, as well as marriages, births and other beginnings. He was representative of the middle ground between barbarity and civilization, rural country and urban cities, and youth and adulthood.
Forget all the other stuff you already knew about Barack Obama’s shameless pandering to evangelicals at the expense of LGBTs and other true progressives — catch this barf-marking bit reported by the NYT (”Obama Courting Evangelicals Once Loyal to Bush“) a few days ago:
Between now and November, the Obama forces are planning as many as 1,000 house parties and dozens of Christian rock concerts, gatherings of religious leaders, campus visits and telephone conference calls to bring together voters of all ages motivated by their faith to engage in politics. It is the most intensive effort yet by a Democratic candidate to reach out to self-identified evangelical or born-again Christians and to try to pry them away from their historical attachment to the Republican Party.
Christian rock concerts?
Excuse me for just a second…
I don’t know whether I’m more sickened by the spectre of thousands of right-wing evangelicals whipped into a frenzy by another HomObamaPhobia Tour, or Christian rock itself. Both are equally revolting. Hey, “shout to” your, like, most “awesome God” (don’t tell me you haven’t seen that annoying late-night TV commercial for that annoying CD set of annoying Christian “favorites”) all you like — but the plain fact is, Christian rock sucks. Always has, always will. As Greg Saunders put it:
It doesn’t make sense. Rock and roll (mostly) doesn’t suck. Christianity (mostly) doesn’t suck. But when you put the two together, you get an abomination. Christian rock is stereotypically the kind of crap that offends music fans as well as the ultra-religious
Well, look at the bright side: If this Christian rock crap is offensive enough, maybe even evangelical Obama fans will run screaming.
House Approves Unconstitutional Surveillance Legislation
WASHINGTON, DC — June 20 — Following a vote in the House of Representatives sanctioning warrantless wiretapping and handing immunity to telecommunications companies for their role in domestic spying, the American Civil Liberties Union expressed outrage at representatives who voted for the unconstitutional legislation. The bill, H.R. 6304, or The FISA Amendments Act of 2008, passed the chamber by a vote of 293-129, and is expected to be voted on in the Senate next week.
The following may be attributed to Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office:
“It’s Christmas morning at the White House thanks to this vote. The House just wrapped up some expensive gifts for the administration and their buddies at the phone companies. Watching the House fall to scare tactics and political maneuvering is especially infuriating given the way it stood up to pressure from the president on this same issue just months ago. In March we thought the House leadership had finally grown a backbone by rejecting the Senate’s FISA bill. Now we know they will not stand up for the Constitution.
“No matter how often the opposition calls this bill a ‘compromise,’ it is not a meaningful compromise, except of our constitutional rights. The bill allows for mass, untargeted and unwarranted surveillance of all communications coming in to and out of the United States. The courts’ role is superficial at best, as the government can continue spying on our communications even after the FISA court has objected. Democratic leaders turned what should have been an easy FISA fix into the wholesale giveaway of our Fourth Amendment rights.
“More than two years after the president’s domestic spying was revealed in the pages of the New York Times, Congress’ fury and shock has dissipated to an obedient whimper. After scrambling for years to cover their tracks, the phone companies and the administration are almost there. This immunity provision will effectively destroy Americans’ chance to have their deserved day in court and will kill any possibility of learning the extent of the administration’s lawless actions. The House should be ashamed of itself. The fate of the Fourth Amendment is now in the Senate’s hands. We can only hope senators will show more courage than their colleagues in the House.”
Did you really think I wouldn’t take Obamaniacs — not mere supporters, but Obamaniacs — to the woodshed on this one?
I’m not talking about his AIPAC speech, his endorsement of (and TV ad for) warmongering, Bush-tax-cuts-loving, right-wing Democrat John Barrow, or even the appalling notion that DADT darling Sam Nunn really is on his short list of VP picks — all blogworthy topics, but all of which pale in comparison to Obama’s sell-out on…
…you know what I’m going to say. G’head, say it with me: FISA.
Grab a cold one, sit back, and get comfortable.
Statement of Senator Barack Obama on FISA “Compromise”
Given the grave threats that we face, our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike, while respecting the rule of law and the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. There is also little doubt that the Bush Administration, with the cooperation of major telecommunications companies, has abused that authority and undermined the Constitution by intercepting the communications of innocent Americans without their knowledge or the required court orders.
That is why last year I opposed the so-called Protect America Act, which expanded the surveillance powers of the government without sufficient independent oversight to protect the privacy and civil liberties of innocent Americans. I have also opposed the granting of retroactive immunity to those who were allegedly complicit in acts of illegal spying in the past.
After months of negotiation, the House today passed a compromise that, while far from perfect, is a marked improvement over last year’s Protect America Act.
Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President’s illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over. It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance — making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people. It also firmly re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future. It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses. But this compromise guarantees a thorough review by the Inspectors General of our national security agencies to determine what took place in the past, and ensures that there will be accountability going forward. By demanding oversight and accountability, a grassroots movement of Americans has helped yield a bill that is far better than the Protect America Act.
It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives — and the liberty — of the American people.”
So, how ya feelin’, Obama supporters, now that your guy, Mister “Constitutional Lawyer,” has just peed all over the Constitution — or, more acurately, driven a stake through the heart of the Fourth Amendment?
Sorry (no, actually, after the rotten way you’ve treated me and every other non-Obamaite, I’m not sorry at all) to rub salt into your freshly opened wounds, but I told you so: He was bound to disappoint you, in a big, big way. Me, I’m not “disappointed” or at all surprised, because this is exactly the sort of behavior I — and more real Democrats than you want to know about — have expected of him. The signs have always been there. You just stuck your fingers in your ears and went “Lalalalalalala! I can’t hear you! Lalalalalalala!” — that is, when you weren’t channeling the dis-ease of cognitive dissonance into making schoolyard-bully, ad hominem attacks on the people who have been trying to force you to see Obama for what he is: just another slick, old-school politician — and worse, in my book, a gen-u-ine DINO.
Telling Americans that we have to give up basic constitutional rights — and allow rampant lawbreaking — if we want to save ourselves from “the grave threats we face” sounds awfully familiar. He says he will work to remove amnesty from the bill, but once that fails, will vote for the “compromise.” Obama has obviously calculated that sacrificing the rule of law and the Fourth Amendment is a worthwhile price to pay to bolster his standing a tiny bit in a couple of swing states. …
Nobody should be fooled by Obama’s vow to work to remove telecom amnesty from this bill. Harry Reid is already acknowledging that this “effort” is likely to fail and is just pure political theater: Reid said: “Probably we can’t take that out of the bill, but I’m going to try.” The article continued: “Reid said the vote would allow those opposed to the liability protection to ‘express their views.’”
We should continue to demand that amnesty is removed from the bill — and fight it to the bitter end — but this whole separate vote they’ll have in the Senate on whether to remove amnesty is principally designed to enable Obama, once he votes to enact this bill, to say: “Well, I tried to get immunity out, and when I couldn’t, I decided to support the compromise.” It’s almost certainly the case that Hoyer secured Obama’s support for the bill before unveiling it.
Either way, Obama — if amnesty isn’t removed — is going to vote for warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty, and his statement today all but sealed the fate of this bill. There is no point in sugarcoating that, though we ought to continue to fight its enactment with a focus on removing amnesty in the Senate.
— Glenn Greenwald
I kept telling you: Obama is no liberal. Obama was never a liberal.
But you let him pull the wool over your eyes. And we are all going to pay for it.
Today, from what I’ve been observing on the pro-Obama blogs and boards, half of you are sick to your stomachs over Obama’s FISA sell-out (and those rational Obama supporters who dare to criticize Teh Chosen One are getting eaten alive by the Obamaniacs; wade through the hysteria at Democratic Underground yourself if you want evidence), while the other half are still in denial, grasping desperately at straws; i.e., “Obama probably knows something we don’t, and he just can’t talk about it publicly right now! This is all part of a big plan that’s for the greater good! We have to trust him!” (And where have you heard that kind of talk before? I’ll tell you: from Bush supporters.)
And then there’s this oft-seen apologist justification: “Obama can’t be seen as soft on terror! Once he gets into the White House, then he’ll roll back FISA, completely! We have to trust him!“
So you’re worried about being seen as “soft on terror,” eh? So the Obamapologists, like the spineless, mealy-mouthed House Democrats who passed this ugly thing, are stuck in the same old groove: always running defense, in the position they allow Republicans to put them in. Some leadership. Some change.
If you can’t hold Mr. Accountability accountable now, do you really believe he’s going to give two shits what you think when he’s the one basking in all that unfettered power he’ll have inherited from Bush? (How’d ya like the juxtaposition between “the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people” and “I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary …”?)
In short, Barack doesn’t want to forfeit all that nice, juicy, limitless power George W. Bush has right now.
I know y’all are sick to death of us gays and our silly little civil-rights “wedge issue,” but damn it anyway, I’ll say it again: Didja notice how Obama didn’t give two shits about what the gay community had to say during the Donnie McClurkin flap? That was a sign — a big sign to those of us on the receiving end of Barack’s blatant F.U. But you wouldn’t sit up and take notice then, because it didn’t impact you. Well, now, this FISA thing impacts everybody. How’s it feel to know Obama doesn’t give a damn about your civil liberties anymore than he does our civil rights?
I agree with my man Thoreau that telecom immunity is a genuine test of Barack Obama’s bona fides on civil liberties. It’s also a genuine test of the liberal side of any liberal-libertarian fusionism.
I think it’s very possibly a test that Obama has already failed. I have a sneaking suspicion that, as the de facto leader of the Democratic Party, Obama could have kept the bill from getting even this far with a quiet word or two. Nothing stopped him from dragging Steny Hoyer and Harry Reid into the same corner where he buttonholed Joe Lieberman. If the House and Senate leadership really did sneak the bill past him last week, which I’m not inclined to believe, still nothing stopped him from shutting them down this week. Except if he either doesn’t consider it important enough to be worth his time and credibility, or if he’s just as happy that the measure might pass.
— Unqualified Offerings
Really, kids, when are you going to face reality? Obama going back on his word over public campaign financing should have been a big clue of what was to come (namely, something even bigger), but which had little effect on your insistence that Obama is the best thing to come along for democracy since the invention of the printing press. You know what I saw most of the Obamaniacs saying at DU? That public campaign financing was a non-issue. That the American people don’t care about public campaign financing. That the American people are too ignorant to even understand public campaign financing. That the MSM was creating a mountain out of a molehole. That this, too, shall pass.
But you didn’t get it. Whether or not anyone cares about or understands public campaign financing (which plenty of us do), those who don’t do understand the one thing you wish they didn’t: Obama did commit to public campaign financing, and he went back on his word. (I’d quote the headline in Time magazine that says it all, but it’s an AP source; let’s just say it echoes what I wrote two days ago: Obama decided to forgo integrity in favor of cold, hard cash.)
No matter how many months you’ve spent convincing yourselves that those of us who don’t live in ObamaWorld are just a bunch of bitter, old, hormonal morons, that right there should have forced you to realize that we haven’t just been talking out of our butts — and that our very real issues with Obama are just that: issues, and not the manifestion of Hillary worship.
“Work to remove” telecom immunity should be rewritten to “maybe show up to vote on some amendment that will surely be struck down and then whimper away.” What a colossal failure of leadership.
Obama earns a Wanker of the Day from Atrios. And it’s well-deserved. I thought he’d issue some vague statement of disapproval and then miss the vote. This endorsement of a X’ing out the Fourth Amendment is waaaay out of bounds.
— Digby
You should have known.
Today, at least, you’re not claiming that Obama’s FISA flip-flop is a non-issue, or that the American people are too apathetic — or stupid — to care about it. You’re upset, angry, and disillusioned. As you should be.
What you shouldn’t be is surprised.
Taylor Marsh (whom you Obama supporters love to hate) nails it:
Not Exactly the Change You were Hoping For
Democrats caved. Speaker Pelosi led the cave in, along with Steny Hoyer and so many others.
Including the Democratic nominee for president, with a teaser. About that telecom immunity he supports giving companies like AT&T, Senator Obama “will work… to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses.” …
Not that I’m in the least surprised.
Way to go Democrats! You showed them, er… Way to stand up, um… No caving to fear-mongering from you all…eh… #*@$! Spineless, the lot of them who caved on this just to make sure Republicans couldn’t say they were “soft on terrorism.”
As long as Republicans get to lead top Democrats, including our nominee, around by the nose on national security we will forever be taking a back seat to these Spy Now No Consequences Later Republicans. Pathetic in every sense of the word.
Now we wait for Senator Obama to “work” to remove the immunity so Democrats can “seek” accountability. And when he falls short of the votes what then? I suspect he’ll suck it up like all the rest of these pantywaist “war on terror” toadies. Again, not that I expected anything different from him. But I bet his supporters are having a rude awakening of what they got from this guy right now. It’s been quite a week for Senator Obama: walking away from public financing (good move, which I predicted from the start); now a cave in of all cave ins complete with a weasel word fog of monumental proportions.
Not much change so far. Keep hoping!
So, what is there to do about it? Go ahead, write all the letters you want. Obama knows he’s already got your vote. The party is “married to Obama” now, realized one DU poster (grossing me out with the allusion to the idea of “falling in love with” and “coming to” Obama; one blogger even said she feels “a little jilted. Ick.)
If “you go to the polls with the shitty candidates you have, and not the not-so-shitty candidates you wish you had” — and you keeping voting for those shitty candidates, how the hell do you ever expect to get something better than shitty candidates?
As someone once said to me: “How are we going to hold their feet to fire if they know they’re going to get our votes no matter what they do?”
…Or how loudly we bitch — and then vote for them anyway?
So, gnash your teeth and rend your garments all you want — Obama’s still got your vote (if not your money and time), and he knows it.
Me, I don’t know how to change this. I don’t have an answer. He’s your Golden Child. You know his soul, intimately, in some arcane, otherworldly way the rest of us don’t. You figure out what works.
It’s out of my hands — and has been, from the moment I wasn’t given a choice in the matter of who will best lead us.
I received a reminder for the Obama “national LGBT conference call — this time with a link to a page where one can submit questions. (Never mind that I got the message barely 90 minutes before the call!)
While I really don’t expect any of my questions to be answered, I quickly drafted a list of questions, and submitted them (knowing that I probably forgot just as many, or more — but there just wasn’t time):
1. How does Senator Obama reconcile his opposition to federal marriage equality for same-sex couples with his oft-repeated citation of his own parents’ marriage, which was not recognized in every state when Senator Obama was born?
2. Does Senator Obama consider “leaving it to the states” acceptable for same-sex couples, when “separate but equal” was not acceptable for interracial couples?
3. Does Senator Obama consider same-sex marriages less valid than interracial marriages? If so, is this because Senator Obama believes homosexuality is a choice, or for some other reason?
4. How does Senator Obama, a constitutional lawyer, reconcile his opposition to marriage equality with Article IV, Section 1 of the United States Constitution (a.k.a. the Full Faith and Credit Clause)?
5. Consider the following statement: “Giving them a set of basic rights would allow them to experience their relationship and live their lives in a way that doesn’t cause discrimination. I think it is the right balance to strike in this society.” Does Senator Obama mean to imply that LGBT Americans are the cause of their own discrimination? By “set of basic rights,” does Senator Obama mean to reassure opponents to LGBT equality that he, too, does not support LGBT equality?
6. If, as he has often said, Senator Obama bases his opposition to marriage equality on his religious beliefs, how will Senator Obama convince us that his religious beliefs will not affect his performance as President of all Americans? How does Senator Obama justify this obvious breakdown of the wall of separation between church and state?
7. How does Senator Obama explain his claim that his faith prevents him from supporting marriage equality, when his own denomination, the United Church of Christ, fully supports marriage equality?
8. Does Senator Obama understand the differences among marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnerships? Does Senator Obama understand that civil unions and domestic partnerships do not confer the same rights as marriage? Does Senator Obama understand that the absence of the word “marriage” can, and does, automatically invalidate same-sex couples’ claims to, e.g., healthcare services across state lines?
9. Senator Obama has stated that he intends to overturn the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). If he achieves this, how does Senator Obama intend to deal with the fallout of same-sex couples marrying in one state filing suit against another that refuses to recognize their legal marriages?
10. Will Senator Obama make a statement denouncing the proposed amendment to overturn the California Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage before the November election?
11. Is Sam Nunn on Senator Obama’s short list of choices for vice president?
12. As president, Senator Obama will likely be in the position of appointing two or more Supreme Court justices. Will Senator Obama give his word that his appointees must have demonstrated a consistent record of commitment to LGBT equality?
13. How does Senator Obama intend to convince gay and lesbian Americans of his commitment to us given the Donnie McClurkin fiasco, and Senator Obama’s ties to such vocal anti-gay forces as Rev. James Meeks, et al.?
14. Will Senator Obama issue a formal (and public) apology for dismissing the LGBT community’s outrage at Donnie McClurkin’s appearance in South Carolina?
Name: Angry Black Guy emailaddress: marawls@—.com Message: This is insanity.
When the majority of progressive and feminist leaders come out and support Obama in the general election, people like you will be exposed for the extremist that you are.
You look at McCain and Obama and your response is “give McCain the presidency because Obama is so evil”?
Insanity.
I have been reading blogs like this for 2 days now and I have yet to hear a clear explanation of what Obama has done to make him the most evil candidate ever (or whatever the latest term of endearment for him is).
Hillary lost. Get over it. Sore losers weren’t cool in grammar school and they are less cool in elections.
Grow up.
Where does one begin to pick apart your tired old arguments (and I’m using the word “arguments” generously), when the pickings are so ripe?
Your first dead-wrong assumption is that I’m voting for McCain. If you’d bothered to read anything else I’ve ever written, instead of hitting me with the usual reactionary “If you’re not for Obama, you’re for McCain” knee-jerk, you’d know I’d rather poke sharp sticks into my skull than vote for McCain. (You’re welcome for the visual.)
Didn’t you learn the meaning of dicto simpliciter in your freshman debate class? (You must be a college graduate, or on your way, since, after all, only smart, highly-educated people support Obama, right?)
Next: Your hyperbole undermines any shred of credibility you might have. Where did I ever say “Obama is so evil,” or that he is “the most evil candidate ever”? Putting words in other people’s mouths is not, to use a word that seems very important to you, “cool.” If you want to be taken seriously, you need to set fire to that fallacious little straw man of yours and bury his ashes, posthaste.
If — again — you had ever bothered to read anything I’ve written about Obama himself, instead of succumbing to the usual (uncontrollable?) reactionary spasm (that knee of yours must be ready to fly right off your leg with all that jerking) — it would be plain as day, even to you, that Obama has no concern for us pesky homos, and patronizes us only as much as he is absolutely forced to, so he doesn’t look like a complete homophobe.
I know your eyes will roll back in their sockets at the sight of the names McClurkin, Meeks, and Caldwell, but until the day you come to terms with the fact that homophobia is as real, as damaging, and as valid as racism (a tragic blind spot for nearly all Obama supporters), you will just never get it. You’re an Angry Black Guy? Well, I’m an Angry Lesbian.
I’m also an Angry Woman, who’s more than had it with the rampant sexism from the Obama camp (which the Obama camp adamantly refuses to acknowledge, much less remedy).
If you think Obama is so “transfromational,” or even “progressive,” then you and I are at a complete impasse. There’s nothing new or transformational about him; he’s no progressive, by any stretch of the imagination; he’s the same old DLC offering, only in a bright, shiny package. And his style of politicking is hardcore old-school — specifically, Chicago-style politics. The only thing new and fresh about him is his oratory skill — which crumbles the second he’s not working from a prepared speech.
Finally, your last line is hilarious — you illustrate perfectly one of my many complaints about Obama supporters:
“Hillary lost. Get over it. Sore losers weren’t cool in grammar school and they are less cool in elections.”
You think I give a damn about being “cool”? Maybe being “cool” is all-important to the “American Idol” generation, but my list of core values doesn’t include a slot for “being cool.” Let me check… economy, war, healthcare, that silly little business about getting equal rights… Nope, I don’t see “cool” anywhere on the list.
And thanks for the “get over it” — you illustrated, perfectly, the biggest point on the Obamaniac Behavior Cycle wheel. See what I mean about predictability?
One last thing: I find it heartbreaking that so many of you Obama supporters see this as a game to be won or lost. If there is a winner, there must be a loser, right? I guess that’s what they teach you guys in gym (”Crush that defense! Kill! Kill! Kill!”) while they’re teaching us girls to play nicely together, and make sure everybody goes home as happy as possible at the end of the day.
Silly me. I once thought that the goal of most Democrats was to craft an outcome as close as possible to “win-win.” Obviously, I was mistaken in that notion. For you New Democrats, it’s “We win! You lose! We’re great! You suck!”
Which brings us to the erroneous belief that Obama is going to be the “President for all people.” Hogwash. He is the candidate for young, college-educated, white-collar, Christian heterosexuals — and the rest of us can go pound salt.
I know this, because people like you tell me that every day.
But that’s a moot point now, isn’t it? Because you’ve also been telling me, since day one, that unless I bow down at the Altar of Obama, you don’t need me in your party anyway.
Oh, and by the way, vapid threats about being “exposed as an extremist” might have worked on me when I was a child, but you’re talking to a grown-up who went through far worse threats of “exposure” as a gay teenager — thirty years ago.
And chew on this: I heard the same thing I’m hearing from you — and received far more threatening messages — from the hardcore Bush lovers back in the early days of the Iraq War, when I was speaking out against him and his legions of “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” loyalists. Meanwhile, the “anti-American traitor!” slurs thrown at me then have just metamorphosed into “You’re not a REAL Democrat!” now. Same song, different band.
Intimidation doesn’t work anymore. I’ve been through it, and I’ve learned that unless I’m dealing with an obviously demented and potentially dangerous person (in which case I just forward everything to the FBI and let them handle it), it’s all just more playground bullying.
See, I am the grown-up here. You’re the one who needs to chill. While passion is a wonderful thing, unbridled rage directed at people you cannot strongarm into conforming to your beliefs and doing what you want them to do is something else entirely. It’s just not “cool.” (It’s also the trademark of the classic, textbook-case — and frustrated — religious fundamentalist. But I’ll return to the frightening similarities between Obamanation and the Radical Religious Right another day.)
One last thing: If you’re getting so hot under the collar after “reading blogs like this for 2 days now,” maybe it’s time you stopped reading these blogs. You’re going to need all your energy to defend Obama once the Republicans go to work on him. Besides, we little non-Obamanauts are nothing but fly specks in the course of the Obama Cosmos — I know, because you keep telling us that, too.
Now, you go back to your echo chamber, wherever that is, and complain to your friends about the lesbian who was just too stupid, unreasonable, hysterical, and “insane” (that’s your word) to drink the Kool-Aid.
Just when Obama supporters were hoping the Jeremiah Wright flap had started to die down, and that Donnie McClurkin was already just a distant memory (as if), the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell of Houston’s Windsor Village United Methodist Church raises his ugly head, reminding voters all over again that Barack Obama’s choice of the company he keeps, frankly, sucks major weenies.
No doubt you heard that Jenna Bush, the snottier of George and Pickles’ two vacuous party-animal daughters, got married yesterday.
Anyway, Jenna (who wore white *snort!*) married a geek (who parts his hair on one side as if this were 1964) named Henry Hager, who, we think, is perfect for her; he’s the son of John H. Hager, “Virginia’s first director of homeland security and a former lieutenant governor … [who in 2005] joined the Bush administration as an assistant secretary of education.” Henry himself interned for Karl Rove, and went on to work for the Bush-Cheney reSelection campaign.
(We wish Jenna and Henry everything they deserve in life. We only ask that they refrain from breeding.)
So, what’s the big deal about Kirbyjon Caldwell? Why should we care, or be surprised, that a right-wing preacher who somehow forgot about his own involvement in the “pray the gay away” movement joined a Bush Twin and her icky boyfriend in the bonds of unholy Republicanism? Caldwell is, after all, George W. Bush’s own “spiritual advisor.”
And if you don’t get the symbolism of “marrying” the Obama camp to the Radical Right camp once and for all, then you have no sense of irony whatsoever.
We’ll discuss it in detail later. For now, I’ll just say Barry walks a very thin tightrope, deflects the most important questions with his usual slick doubletalk, and is as disappointing as ever.
Barack Obama has taught me that racism — even faux outrage over nonexistent racism — is worse than the most egregious sexism or homophobia.
Always. Without exception.
I’ve also learned — from Obama supporters — that the word “urban” is racist. (And for nearly half a century, I thought “urban” meant “of or pertaining to a city,” as opposed to the country, or the suburbs. Silly me!)
I’ve also learned — from some backwater ‘burb (oops, sorry! is “‘burb” racist, too?) in Illinois called Carpentersville — that saying a couple of kids are climbing a tree “like monkeys” is racist. (That would have come as a surprise to my dearly departed grandfather, whose pet name for me was “macaca” — and not in the George Allen sense, either. As much as I detest the idea of agreeing with Tony Blankley on anything, even the weather, it’s true: “macaca” is indeed an Italian term of endearment expressing good-natured exasperation with a mischievous child; it means “clown,” or “goof.”)
Moving to nip in the bud some potential bad press, White House hopeful Barack Obama’s campaign persuaded a delegate to step down after she was ticketed for calling her neighbor’s African-American children “monkeys.”
Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski, a Carpentersville village trustee, was elected as an Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention. She sports an Obama sign in her front yard.
On Saturday, two neighbor children were playing in the tree next-door to her house.
Ramirez-Sliwinski “came outside and told the children to quit playing in the tree like monkeys. The tree was not on Ramirez-Sliwinski’s property,” Carpentersville Police Commander Michael Kilbourne said.
Ramirez-Sliwinski admitted she used the word “monkeys,” but said she did not intend racism. She said she was only trying to protect them from falling out of the tree.
“Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski said she saw the kids playing in the tree and didn’t want them falling out of the tree and getting hurt. She said she calls her own grandchildren ‘monkeys,’” Kilbourne said. The mother of one of the children did not see it that way, noting she and Ramirez-Sliwinski have clashed before.
“She felt it was racist because of the fact the children were African-American,” Kilbourne said.
Told of the incident Monday by the Sun-Times, Obama’s campaign called Ramirez-Sliwinski and persuaded her to step aside as a delegate because the campaign felt her remarks were “divisive and unacceptable.”
“Given the incident, she is stepping down as a delegate and will be replaced,” said campaign spokesman Ben Labolt.
Let’s recap:
• Calling Hillary Clinton a “big f*****g whore” and Geraldine Ferraro “David Duke in drag” is not “divisive and unacceptable” enough for Obama to dress down Randi Rhodes (hey, ya think Obama returned the money raised at Randi’s Hillary-bashing event?)…
• Preaching about evil, children-killing gays is not “divisive and unacceptable” enough for Obama to fire Donnie McClurkinbefore handing him a microphone and giving him free reign to spew his hateful, “ex-gay” tripe (hey, ya think Obama returned the blood money from that fundraiser?)…
• Condemning America to hell, blasting mythical “rich white people” for all the evil in the world, making appalling cracks about “stemen-stained dresses,” and slurring Italians as “garlic noses” is not “divisive and unacceptable” enough for Obama to stand up and walk out on the bigot he calls his pastor, “spiritual mentor” and “role model” who “helps keep his priorities straight and his moral compass calibrated,” Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. (ya think Obama plans to take back the tens of thousands he’s tithed over two decades?)…
• Consorting with such organizations — established for the sole purpose of demonizing and legislating gay and lesbian Americans out of existence — as Americans for Truth and Focus on the Family, calling various mayors “slave masters” and certain politicians “house n****rs,” warning “white people who believe in Jesus” that “I will stand on top of the Sears Tower and call every one of y’all racist” is not “divisive and unacceptable” enough for Obama to cut ties completely with another of his “closest religious advisors,” Rev. James Meeks…
• Expressing the desire to “rip Bill Clinton’s eyes out” is not “divisive and unacceptable” enough for Obama to take his own wife aside and tell her to chill the anti-Clinton crap, her condescending reluctance to back Hillary as the Democratic nominee, and the grim view she takes of America, at least when she’s representing him in public…
…but saying a couple of kids were climbing a tree “like monkeys” is “divisive and unacceptable” enough for Obama to kick Ramirez-Sliwinski to the curb?
So, now what? If you call playground equipment “monkey bars,” are you a racist? I guess so, since anything and everything — as long as it suits a pro-Obama agenda — can and will be deemed racist.
(It’s also not lost on us that Ramirez-Sliwinski was an elected delegate, more beholden to the wil of the people than to the will of any candidate.)
What’s more, you read that first line in the story right: Ramirez-Sliwinski was ticketed — cited and fined — under the stupidest ordinance we’ve heard of in a long time. From the Chicago Tribune:
Carpentersville Trustee Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski vowed Monday to fight a citation she received over the weekend for a comment that apparently offended her African-American neighbors. …
Ramirez-Sliwinski, who is Hispanic, was issued a citation alleging that she violated a village ordinance prohibiting disorderly conduct. The ordinance bans conduct that disturbs or alarms people, and one of the boys told police he was scared by Ramirez-Sliwinski’s comment, Police Cmdr. Michael Kilbourne said.
The citation carries a fine of $75.
“She was not arrested. She was not fingerprinted. It is a local ordinance violation,” Kilbourne said.
“Conduct that disturbs or alarms people”? Remind me to stay the hell out of Carpentersville then. The way this stupid law is worded, I could be cited if my “Christian Right is Neither” T-shirt “disturbed or alarmed” somebody.
(On the other hand, I could go to Carpentersville and lodge a criminal complaint against every right-wing church that preaches anti-gay rhetoric from the pulpit. Now that would be fun. And it would also trigger an emergency meeting of the town council to repeal that stupid law, quick-smart.)
The Trib piece also provides more detail on the “monkeys” incident, in Ramirez-Sliwinski’s own words:
[Ramirez-Sliwinski] said the parents were outside, but she intervened because she was concerned about the boys’ safety and because the small magnolia tree was being damaged.
“I went over to the kids and told them to get out of the tree,” Ramirez-Sliwinski said.
The father of one of the boys told her it was none of her business, she said, and “I calmly said the tree is not there for them to be climbing in there like monkeys.”
There has been friction between Ramirez-Sliwinski and her neighbors in the past. She said she has told them to turn down loud music and has instructed them on how to properly use the village’s new garbage bins.
Ramirez-Sliwinski said she intends to contest the citation in an effort to force the neighbors to talk to her. …
Attempts to reach the neighbors for comment were unsuccessful.
“My take on this is that it is really being blown out of proportion,” Village President Bill Sarto said. “To a great extent, you have to take the remarks and put them in proper context. The trustee saw children playing in a tree, and she made an observation that they should be careful because they are acting like monkeys. Had they not been in a tree, it could be inappropriate.”
Hey, but what do I know? In Obama’s book, I’m just another “typical white person.”
Here’s the last word, from Village President Bill Sarto, quoted in the Sun-Times piece):
“Frankly, I don’t see a law that was broken here,” [Village President Bill Sarto] said. “I think this entire thing has been blown out of proportion. She’s a good neighor. She went over to caution the children to be careful not to fall out of a tree.
She has never indicated to me any prejudice whatsoever. We have a trustee who has been convicted on four counts of domestic battery and refuses to resign from the board. He beat his wife with a baseball bat. This seems far less egregious to me.”
How many times have you heard one of the anti-gay brigades (oh, I don’t know — just pick your favorite gay-hater, like Pat Robertson, or some idiot from the American Family Association) protest, “I am not homophobic!” quickly followed by the explanation that a “phobia” means you’re really a-skeered of something? “I’m not homophobic,” they say, “because I am not afraid of homosexuals.”
You know, and I know, that that’s just so much horse puckey, as the definition of “homophobia” has evolved to mean an aversion to — and usually outright hostility toward — homsexuality, and gay people.
But the tighty righties do have a point. If we’re going to do a Greg Brady and live by exact words (or definitions), then technically the gay-haters of the world are not homophobic — they don’t (usually) run screaming in fear at the sight of k.d. lang.
So, until now, I’ve been, yes, defending Barack Obama as not-a-homophobe. In truth, he fits the non-literal, right-winger definition of a homophobe — one who is averse to gay and lesbian people, but not necessarily scared of us.
Well, I take it back. Obama is scared of us. I’m certain of it.
What happened to make me so certain occurred a few days ago, but I’m glad I waited to blog about it, because some other interesting stuff has come to light since.
I’m talking about the April 4-16, 2008, issue of the Philadelphia Gay News. Here’s the front page:
The headline says: “Clinton talks; Obama balks.”
The little box in the middle of the big white space says (misspelling of “Barack” deliberate or not): “It’s been 1,522 days since Sen. Barak Obama has spoken with local gay press. See EDITORIAL, Page 11.”
And on page 11, we find:
At this point in the Democratic presidential campaign, we’re able to view the candidates by their actions. And we have found that Sen. Barack Obama would rather talk at the LGBT community than with it. While Sen. Hillary Clinton has been accessible to the local LGBT press with numerous “no rules” interviews, Obama simply has not. The fact is that Obama has spoken with the gay press only twice, and one of those interviews, which appeared in chicago’s Windy City Times, was in 2004 before he became a U.S. senator. The other limited interview occurred after controversy erupted when his campaign added an anti-gay minister to his tour of the South. It has now been 1,522 days since Obama has been accessible to our community. The question is now this: Is he trying to play it safe or has he become a managed candidate?
But there’s more to this story.
The LGBT press, which has been fighting for respect since its inception, expected this to be the year that candidates would respond to us as they do to the Hispanic, black and other community press… The local gay press is to our community what churches are to the black community — our lifeline for information. The local gay press now has a national weekly audience of some 2.2. million readers, not including our Web sites. Collectively, we reach more LGBT people than any other source. While Obama has issued numerous statements, he has only granted one interview in this campaign. This begs the question, is he uncomfortable with the LGBT community? …
So whom has he spoken with in that time? Christianity Today, local Philadelphia sports radio station, Grist and Paris Match. Guess he’s going for the French vote.
After giving PGN the runaround, PGN complained to Obama’s communications director that the campaign’s “actions, not just to PGN, but to the entire LGBT press, have been disrespectful,” noting that Republicans Bob Casey and Arlen Specter (no friends to the gay community, they) and even “nightstick-carrying” former Mayor Frank Rizzo have granted interviews to PGN.
“The last candidate running for office that refused an interview with PGN,” the paper reminds us, “was Sen. Rick Santorum.”
PGN then speaks directly to Obama, whomping him over the head with this hard little truth: “We were treated with more respect by Republican John McCain’s campaign than yours.”
The lone interview Obama has given during this campaign was to The Advocate, in which he made a pitifully lame attempt to defuse the outrage over the Donnie McClurkin insult (and during which he stepped even deeper into his own doo-doo by suggesting that queers and Democrats — as if the two groups were mutually exclusive — are “hermetically sealed from the faith community”).
And that interview was six months ago.
(And, for the record, the pandering, meaningless campaign ads he took out in gay print publications just prior to the Ohio and Texas primaries do not count as “interviews.” Neither does his appearance at the LOGO debate; for one thing, his absence would have been more than conspicuous, and for another, the questions lobbed at him weren’t even softballs, but wiffle balls.)
So what, you say? So, Obama hasn’t given an interview to the gay media (even the outlets that support him) since.
And it’s not like he hasn’t been asked. Repeatedly.
Immediately following the February 18 Wisconsin presidential primary, I began, on behalf of the Gay People’s Chronicle, to work on getting interviews with Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. …
Both candidates were approached for interviews through multiple routes, including calls and e-mail directly to their Ohio and national press offices, through the Ohio Democratic Party, and through LGBT individuals working at high levels with the campaigns.
Initially, both campaigns were thrilled to be asked for interviews.
The Obama campaign stopped being “thrilled” after Resnick laid out two simple ground rules: no surrogates, and live interviews only — “no written statements or written questions.” (Resnick reflects: “Having candidates only speak through open letters and privately to small groups offering endorsement does not build confidence.”)
That was Wednesday. On Thursday, the Obama campaign offered an open letter in lieu of an interview. I told them no. I can’t ask a letter questions. Then they suggested written questions, even though I told them earlier that wouldn’t be acceptable. Again, I told them no.
By Friday, about the time it would take for them to figure out the [New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission report] contradicts their candidate, the Obama campaign stopped returning my calls. When I was lucky enough to reach press staff, they were very quick to tell me they didn’t think they could work an interview into the candidate’s schedule.
Resnick (who, it must be noted, is a Kucinich supporter with no dog in this fight) wisely follows his editor’s edict not to “speculate in the article as to why the Obama campaign got cold” — but adds that “reasonable people can come to reasonable conclusions.”
Resnick goes on to compare the way Obama “denounced” and “rejected” the endorsement of Louis Farrakhan (albeit under heavy pressure from Tim Russert and finally Hillary Clinton, whose support was not solicited, with the way Obama refused to do the same with Donnie McClurkin, whose support was solicited.
Had Obama used the same rationale to explain Farrakhan, the Jewish community would have been irate.
Resnick wanted to ask Obama to “explain the difference between McClurkin and Farrakhan.” A fair question indeed — but one with which the Obama campaign took umbrage:
The Obama campaign, however, treated the question with indignation, claimed that the reporter mischaracterized events, and erroneously claimed that “Senator Obama spoke out against the hateful views of both Donnie McClurkin and Louis Farrakhan.”
As far as the Obama campaign is concerned, the issue was resolved last January:
It is also apparent that Obama sees his obligation to the LGBT community as fulfilled since his Martin Luther King Day speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church where he called on African-Americans to work against homophobia. …
Obama spokespeople pivot to the MLK Day speech as though it settles every debt to the LGBT community, past and future.
This attitude is mirrored, ad nauseam, by Obama supporters. (If we had a nickel for every Obamabot who rails hysterically against any mention of McClurkin with “Obama spoke out against homophobia! In a black church! What more do you want from him?!” we would have many, many nickels.)
Finally, Resnick’s frustration explodes, and rightfully so:
In my 12 years as a reporter, I have never experienced anything quite like Obama’s national communication director Robert Gibbs, either.
I wasn’t biting on the crap he tried to feed me, and he got offended.
When I stood there not writing any of it down, Gibbs said to me, “Let me tell you how this works. I talk and you write down what I say.”
“I’ll write down what you say when you answer the question,” I responded, adding that “I’m no campaign’s stenographer.”
Gibbs actually took the pen and pad out of my hands and wrote his own answer!
Take a moment to catch your breath. No matter how many times I read that last sentence, I’m still flabbergasted.
I’m not so sure what I’m flabbergasted by, however — that the media contact for a major presidential campaign would act like such a jerk, or by the now-obvious fact that the bullying so characteristic of Obama supporters is not some strange fluke, some spontaneously-generated anomaly, something isolated or unusual, but comes from the top down.
I’ve long believed that there was no way the Obama campaign could possibly be as nasty as Obama’s supporters — but that there must be something about Obama that evokes such nastiness.
It’s no secret that the Obama cult is creeping us out. In meatspace conversations, I’ve opined, many times, that while Obama himself may not be entirely responsible for the drooling infatuation of far too many slack-jawed, glassy-eyed Obamaniacs (who react with sheer hostility when you ask them to cut the “He’s so inpirational!” crap and actually define their idol’s policies), he’s not doing anything to tamp down the frenzy, either.
You have to wonder what “inspires” this kind of cult-like frenzy in the first place. Obviously, there’s something The Man is saying, or doing, that taps into some primeval instinct devoid of rationale. Do they implant chips in Obamaniacs’ brains at every rally? Are they beaming some sort of subliminal signal through the TV during Obama’s speeches that turns viewers’ brains to mush?
Ironically, when I wrote that, the answer was staring me right in the face: I was blogging about the indocrination of Obama supporters by campaign organizers.
But I digress. As usual. Back to the rightfully-exasperated Mr. Resnick, and the practical slap in the face he got from Obama mouthpiece Robert Gibbs:
Would Gibbs treat a New York Times reporter this way? How about a Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter?
Look, both senators Obama and Clinton are opportunists. Either would throw us under the bus for their own political advancement. That’s why, both lawyers who know that separate is not equal, continue to claim that civil unions are equal to marriage. …
Both campaigns knew that talking to me wasn’t going to be like the made for Saturday Night Live performance of Melissa Etheridge on the Logo forum. (This is not an insult to Etheridge. I can’t sing. We should all do what we’re good at.)
Nonetheless, it was Hillary Clinton, with her much longer record of talking to our community, who stepped up to the guillotine, and Obama who refused.
Here’s another article you’ll want to read on this subject:
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.
Last October, Barack Obama attempted to defuse the Donnie McClurkin debacle by issuing a statement (actually, burying it deep within his campaign Web site) that affirmed his “belief that gays and lesbians are our brothers and sisters and should be provided the respect, dignity, and rights of all other citizens.”
While Obama supporters screamed, “What else do you want him to do?!” I explained that Obama could say whatever he wanted, but if he didn’t back up his words with actions, his words were meaningless.
As it turned out, his words were meaningless. Obama refused to dump McClurkin (or any of the rest of the anti-gay bigots) from his “Embrace the Homophobia Change” Gospel Tour, despite the widespread outcry from gay and lesbian Americans pleading with Obama not to allow a homophobic, “ex-gay” bigot to speak on his behalf, and especially not to exploit the deeply-ingrained homophobia endemic to conservative Southern black churches as a means of gaining a few political points.
But Obama didn’t listen to us, and “after the tour when asked why the campaign would seemingly reject gay voters for far-right leaning blacks a campaign insider replied, ‘We got what we needed to get out of it.’”
It’s not as if Obama wasn’t aware of McClurkin’s virulently anti-gay views and vile rhetoric before the concert tour; even if Obama could feign ignorance prior to the announcement of the concert, he couldn’t once the news hit the blogosphere, and certainly not after Human Rights Campaign head Joe Solmonese spoke directly with Obama to express (albeit with the HRC’s usual cloying spinelessness) “our community’s disappointment for his decision to continue to remain associated with Rev. McClurkin, an anti-gay preacher who states the need to ‘break the curse of homosexuality.’”
Why am I rehashing this old news? Because Barack Obama just used the exact same, ineffectual game plan (with one variation; this time, he dumped his human albatross, posthaste) in his attempt Friday to distance himself from the inflammatory, racist, and anti-American sermons of his church pastor, “spiritual mentor” and “role model” who “helps keep his priorities straight and his moral compass calibrated“: Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.
In response to the nuclear explosion that finally hit the MSM over the past 48 hours, Obama issued a statement, “On My Faith and My Church“. Let’s look at his dodge-and-weave points one at a time:
The pastor of my church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who recently preached his last sermon and is in the process of retiring,
And you mention his imminent retirement, why? As if to suggest he’s old, past it, and won’t be saying these outrageous things anymore? Or to imply that he just started pulling these ideas out of the air only recently, and it’s time he be put out to pasture?
Wright has been preaching his Gospel of Hate for a long time — we suspect since day one, but at least for the past seven years. His “God Damn America” screed (in response to the 9/11 attacks) dates to September 16, 2001.
And his retirement has nothing to do with anything. His upcoming retirement was common knowledge well over a year ago.
What’s important is what you, Barack, have been absorbing at the feet of your spiritual advisor for two decades.
…has touched off a firestorm over the last few days.
A firestorm in the MSM, yes, but then the MSM usually lags far behind the Internet. Wright has been on our radar since well before you decided to run for President.
He’s drawn attention as the result of some inflammatory and appalling remarks he made about our country, our politics, and my political opponents.
Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy.
With which statements, specifically, do you disagree?
I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies.
How about his anti-white statements?
I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit.
Then why did you refuse to fire Donnie McClurkin from your gospel tour?
And if you believe that “words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit,” why, after “strongly disagreeing” with McClurkin’s views, did you refuse to “exclude from [your] campaign the many Americans including many in the African American community who believe the same as Pastor McClurkin”?
In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.
Again, which statements? It sounds like what you’re really saying is this: “I don’t want to to be pinned down to anything specific, because if I reject Wright’s anti-white remarks, I’ll piss off Black Liberation Theology believers, and if I don’t, I’ll alienate a vast swath of my white base. So I’ll just say that whatever you disagree with, I disagree with. Just think of my statement as part of the ‘blank screen’ concept, where you project whatever you want onto it.”
Because these particular statements by Rev. Wright
Which “particular statements” were those again?
are so contrary to my own life and beliefs,
Are they? How do we know that if you won’t tell us exactly which statements you disagree with?
And if you “reject outright” all of Rev. Wright’s racist, anti-American remarks, then why did you continue to attend his church for twenty years, and donate a healthy chunk of money ($22,500 in 2006 alone) to a church whose pastor who has been “disparag[ing] our great country” and “degrad[ing] individuals” from the pulpit for years?
But issuing vague statements of condemnation without addressing specifics is just par for the course for you, Barry. As Ronald Kessler re-caps in Friday’s Wall Street Journal (emphasis mine):
Considering this view of America, it’s not surprising that in December Mr. Wright’s church gave an award to Louis Farrakhan for lifetime achievement. In the church magazine, Trumpet, Mr. Wright spoke glowingly of the Nation of Islam leader. “His depth on analysis [sic] when it comes to the racial ills of this nation is astounding and eye-opening,” Mr. Wright said of Mr. Farrakhan. “He brings a perspective that is helpful and honest.”
After Newsmax broke the story of the award to Farrakhan on Jan. 14, Mr. Obama issued a statement. However, Mr. Obama ignored the main point: that his minister and friend had spoken adoringly of Mr. Farrakhan, and that Mr. Wright’s church was behind the award to the Nation of Islam leader.
Instead, Mr. Obama said, “I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan. I assume that Trumpet magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree.” Trumpet is owned and produced by Mr. Wright’s church out of the church’s offices, and Mr. Wright’s daughters serve as publisher and executive editor.
Meeting with Jewish leaders in Cleveland on Feb. 24, Mr. Obama described Mr. Wright as being like “an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don’t agree with.” He rarely mentions the points of disagreement.
In fact, you’ve been forced to “clarify” the remarks of so many of your closest supporters (your wife Michelleamong them), you have your standard condemnation speech nearly down pat.
In addition to your deliberate vagueness, there’s another big problem with the way you deal — or don’t deal — with the stunning gaffes of the people you surround yourself with, Barack: You ignore the problem — and ignore it, and ignore it, and ignore it — until you are wedged so far into a corner, you are forced to deal with it.
During the Cleveland debate (February, 2008), Tim Russert asked you a simple yes-or-no question, and you, in your usual indirect manner, dodged and weaved until you were pinned to the mat:
MR. RUSSERT: Senator Obama, one of the things in a campaign is that you have to react to unexpected developments.
On Sunday, the headline in your hometown paper, Chicago Tribune: “Louis Farrakhan Backs Obama for President at Nation of Islam Convention in Chicago.” Do you accept the support of Louis Farrakhan?
SEN. OBAMA: You know, I have been very clear in my denunciation of Minister Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic comments. I think that they are unacceptable and reprehensible. I did not solicit this support. He expressed pride in an African-American who seems to be bringing the country together. I obviously can’t censor him, but it is not support that I sought. And we’re not doing anything, I assure you, formally or informally with Minister Farrakhan.
RUSSERT: Do you reject his support?
OBAMA: Well, Tim, you know, I can’t say to somebody that he can’t say that he thinks I’m a good guy. (Laughter.) You know, I — you know, I — I have been very clear in my denunciations of him and his past statements, and I think that indicates to the American people what my stance is on those comments.
RUSSERT: The problem some voters may have is, as you know, Reverend Farrakhan called Judaism “gutter religion.”
OBAMA: Tim, I think — I am very familiar with his record, as are the American people. That’s why I have consistently denounced it.
This is not something new. This is something that — I live in Chicago. He lives in Chicago. I’ve been very clear, in terms of me believing that what he has said is reprehensible and inappropriate. And I have consistently distanced myself from him.
RUSSERT: The title of one of your books, “Audacity of Hope,” you acknowledge you got from a sermon from Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the head of the Trinity United Church. He said that Louis Farrakhan “epitomizes greatness.”
He said that he went to Libya in 1984 with Louis Farrakhan to visit with Moammar Gadhafi and that, when your political opponents found out about that, quote, “your Jewish support would dry up quicker than a snowball in Hell.”
What do you do to assure Jewish-Americans that, whether it’s Farrakhan’s support or the activities of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, your pastor, you are consistent with issues regarding Israel and not in any way suggesting that Farrakhan epitomizes greatness?
OBAMA: Tim, I have some of the strongest support from the Jewish community in my hometown of Chicago and in this presidential campaign. And the reason is because I have been a stalwart friend of Israel’s. I think they are one of our most important allies in the region, and I think that their security is sacrosanct, and that the United States is in a special relationship with them, as is true with my relationship with the Jewish community.
And the reason that I have such strong support is because they know that not only would I not tolerate anti-Semitism in any form, but also because of the fact that what I want to do is rebuild what I consider to be a historic relationship between the African-American community and the Jewish community.
You know, I would not be sitting here were it not for a whole host of Jewish Americans, who supported the civil rights movement and helped to ensure that justice was served in the South. And that coalition has frayed over time around a whole host of issues, and part of my task in this process is making sure that those lines of communication and understanding are reopened.
But, you know, the reason that I have such strong support in the Jewish community and have historically — it was true in my U.S. Senate campaign and it’s true in this presidency — is because the people who know me best know that I consistently have not only befriended the Jewish community, not only have I been strong on Israel, but, more importantly, I’ve been willing to speak out even when it is not comfortable.
When I was — just last point I would make — when I was giving — had the honor of giving a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in conjunction with Martin Luther King’s birthday in front of a large African-American audience, I specifically spoke out against anti- Semitism within the African-American community. And that’s what gives people confidence that I will continue to do that when I’m president of the United States.
MR. WILLIAMS: Senator…
CLINTON: I just want to add something here, because I faced a similar situation when I ran for the Senate in 2000 in New York. And in New York, there are more than the two parties, Democratic and Republican. And one of the parties at that time, the Independence Party, was under the control of people who were anti-Semitic, anti- Israel. And I made it very clear that I did not want their support. I rejected it. I said that it would not be anything I would be comfortable with. And it looked as though I might pay a price for that. But I would not be associated with people who said such inflammatory and untrue charges against either Israel or Jewish people in our country.
And, you know, I was willing to take that stand, and, you know, fortunately the people of New York supported me and I won. But at the time, I thought it was more important to stand on principle and to reject the kind of conditions that went with support like that.
RUSSERT: Are you suggesting Senator Obama is not standing on principle?
CLINTON: No. I’m just saying that you asked specifically if he would reject it. And there’s a difference between denouncing and rejecting. And I think when it comes to this sort of, you know, inflammatory — I have no doubt that everything that Barack just said is absolutely sincere. But I just think, we’ve got to be even stronger. We cannot let anyone in any way say these things because of the implications that they have, which can be so far reaching.
OBAMA: Tim, I have to say I don’t see a difference between denouncing and rejecting. There’s no formal offer of help from Minister Farrakhan that would involve me rejecting it. But if the word “reject” Senator Clinton feels is stronger than the word “denounce,” then I’m happy to concede the point, and I would reject and denounce.
CLINTON: Good. Good. Excellent.
(APPLAUSE)
Is getting a straight answer out of you always like pulling hen’s teeth?
Back to your statement on Wright:
…a number of people have legitimately raised questions about the nature of my relationship with Rev. Wright
You mean how Wright is “like an old uncle who sometimes will say things that [you] don’t agree with”?
I’m not sure you want to go there, Barry; after all, you can’t choose your relatives, but you do choose your pastor, and you do choose to spend two decades listening to and learning from a racist.
As Ben Wallace-Wells wrote in Rolling Stone (more than a year ago, mind you): “Obama wasn’t born into Wright’s world. His parents were atheists, an African bureaucrat and a white grad student, Jerry Falwell’s nightmare vision of secular liberals come to life. Obama could have picked any church — the spare, spiritual places in Hyde Park, the awesome pomp and procession of the cathedrals downtown. He could have picked a mosque, for that matter, or even a synagogue. Obama chose Trinity United. He picked Jeremiah Wright. Obama writes in his autobiography that on the day he chose this church, he felt the spirit of black memory and history moving through Wright, and ‘felt for the first time how that spirit carried within it, nascent, incomplete, the possibility of moving beyond our narrow dreams.’”
Barry, in my culture, there’s an old saying about people who claim to be straight after having gay sex: “Once is an accident. Twice is a phase. Three times — they like it.”
…and my membership in the church.
Let me therefore provide some context.
As I have written about in my books, I first joined Trinity United Church of Christ nearly twenty years ago. I knew Rev. Wright as someone who served this nation with honor as a United States Marine, as a respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago. He also led a diverse congregation that was and still is a pillar of the South Side and the entire city of Chicago. It’s a congregation that does not merely preach social justice but acts it out each day, through ministries ranging from housing the homeless to reaching out to those with HIV/AIDS.
It’s probably not a good idea to mention HIV/AIDS right now, as you’ve just reminded the reader of Wright’s belief in the tinfoil-hat theory that “The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.”
Most importantly, Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life.
Oh, you didn’t just say that. You did, didn’t you?
No matter how carefully your writers crafted that sentence, you just said that 1) Wright preaches the gospel of Jesus (if so, that’s a different gospel, and certainly a different Jesus, that the one I was raised on); and 2) you “base your life” on the teachings of a man who hates whites.
Fire your speechwriters, Barry.
In other words, he has never been my political advisor;
Well, he was one of your political advisors, until yesterday — although the African American Religious Leadership Committee on which he served has been dismissed as, among other things, “the sort of largely honorary, advisory body that in recent days has recently been used mostly to throw people off who say controversial things.”
But where you’ve really backed yourself into a corner, Barry, is in saying Wright “has never been my political advisor.”
“Though Wright and Obama do not often talk one-on-one often, the senator does check with his pastor before making any bold political moves.
“Last fall, Obama approached Wright to broach the possibility of running for president.”
If that’s not political advice, then what is it?
(You also said: “What I value most about Pastor Wright is not his day-to-day political advice.” Does that mean you do get political advice from Wright — just not on a “day-to-day” basis?)
…he’s been my pastor.
He’s a heckuva lot more than just your pastor.
You said Wright is your “sounding board” who helps you keep your “priorities straight and [your] moral compass calibrated.”
He’s the pastor who brought you to Jesus. He’s the pastor who married you, baptized both your daughters, and blessed your home.
He’s the pastor whose sermon — the first sermon you ever heard him preach — served as the basis for your keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and inspired the title of your second book, The Audacity of Hope.
“If you want to understand where Barack gets his feeling and rhetoric from,” your good friend, the Rev. Jim Wallis, told Rolling Stone, “just look at Jeremiah Wright.”
Wright is a lot more than just your pastor. A lot more.
And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.
The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation.
Twenty years, and you never heard him say anything as inflammatory as we’ve heard over the past few days?
Or are you saying you didn’t hear these specific statements that have gotten so much airplay?
Even when you aren’t attending “the 11 a.m. Sunday service at Trinity in the Brainerd neighborhood every week,” don’t you think, especially if you’re so deeply involved in the fellowship of your church, you would have heard about something so controversial as your pastor damning America to Hell from the pulpit? Or blaming Italians for killing Jesus?
Nothing? You never heard him say anything like that?
Guess what, Barry? I don’t buy that for a second. And neither do a lot ofother people.
When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments.
When “these statements” — meaning these specific statements we’ve been watching on every news channel?
There you go choosing your words a little too carefully, Barry — as if to suggest you were blissfully unaware of Wright’s radicalism until just over a year ago, when in truth:
“In his 1993 memoir ‘Dreams from My Father,’ Obama recounts in vivid detail his first meeting with Wright in 1985. The pastor warned the community activist that getting involved with Trinity might turn off other black clergy because of the church’s radical reputation.”
And in February, 2007, you personally “disinvited” Wright from delivering the invocation for the announcement of your presidential campaign. Reported the New York Times:
“Some black leaders are questioning Mr. Obama’s decision to distance his campaign from Mr. Wright because of the campaign’s apparent fear of criticism over Mr. Wright’s teachings, which some say are overly Afrocentric to the point of excluding whites.
“Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said the campaign disinvited Mr. Wright because it did not want the church to face negative attention. …
“‘Senator Obama is proud of his pastor and his church, but because of the type of attention it was receiving on blogs and conservative talk shows, he decided to avoid having statements and beliefs being used out of context and forcing the entire church to defend itself,’ Mr. Burton said. …
“‘When his enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli’ to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Mr. Wright recalled, ‘with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.’ Mr. Wright added that his trip implied no endorsement of either Louis Farrakhan’s views or Qaddafi’s.
“Mr. Wright said that in the phone conversation in which Mr. Obama disinvited him from a role in the announcement, Mr. Obama cited an article in Rolling Stone, ‘The Radical Roots of Barack Obama.’
“According to the pastor, Mr. Obama then told him, ‘You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public.’”
Tell us again, Barry, how you didn’t hear any of Wright’s trash talk over the course of twenty years.
But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.
Not even at the cost of exposing your two little girls to anti-white hate? Is that the “gospel” you want them to live by?
Let me repeat what I’ve said earlier. All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn. They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country.
You don’t “vehemently condemn” anything until you’re forced to.
With Rev. Wright’s retirement and the ascension of my new pastor, Rev. Otis Moss, III, Michelle and I look forward to continuing a relationship with a church that has done so much good. And while Rev. Wright’s statements have pained and angered me,
Not half as much as they’ve pained and angered me as an Italian-American whose people didn’t arrive in this country until 1901, were scorned as non-white for a generation, and who never had a college graduate in the family until 1974.
To have this filth thrown in my face by your spiritual mentor and role model, when it’s you preaching such empty platitudes of “unity” and “transcending race,” is the ultimate insult to my intelligence, and the ultimate self-assassination of your character and integrity.
I believe that Americans will judge me not on the basis of what someone else said, but on the basis of who I am and what I believe in;
Barack, you own this. You were the one who made your faith just a gigantic issue in the first place. You’re constantly on about how faith informs your politics. Your faith is integral to your life; you’ve made that clear in almost every speech you’ve ever made.
How you choose to worship, and who you choose as your teacher in your walk through this life (and the next) goes right to the heart of who you are.
… on my values, judgment and experience to be President of the United States.
That is exactly how I judge you, Barack. Sadly, you have only proved once again that your judgment is not to be trusted — any more than your empty words.
Obama’s Pastor: God Damn America, U.S. to Blame for 9/11
Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor says blacks should not sing “God Bless America” but “God damn America.”
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s south side, has a long history of what even Obama’s campaign aides concede is “inflammatory rhetoric,” including the assertion that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own “terrorism.”
In a campaign appearance earlier this month, Sen. Obama said, “I don’t think my church is actually particularly controversial.” He said Rev. Wright “is like an old uncle who says things I don’t always agree with,” telling a Jewish group that everyone has someone like that in their family.
Rev. Wright married Obama and his wife Michelle, baptized their two daughters and is credited by Obama for the title of his book, “The Audacity of Hope.”
An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright’s sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.
“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people,” he said in a 2003 sermon. “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”
In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda’s attacks because of its own terrorism.
“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye,” Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.
“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost,” he told his congregation.
. . .
“He has impacted the life of Barack Obama so much so that he wants to portray that feeling he got from Rev. Wright onto the country because we all need something positive,” said another member of the congregation.
. . .
Obama has praised at least one aspect of Rev. Wright’s approach, referring to his “social gospel” and his focus on Africa, “and I agree with him on that.”
Sen. Obama declined to comment on Rev. Wright’s denunciations of the United States, but a campaign religious adviser, Shaun Casey, appearing on “Good Morning America” Thursday, said Obama “had repudiated” those comments. …
No, we’re not done discussing Jeremiah Wright.
Provoked by an Obama supporter’s remark that white people can’t possibly understand what goes on in a black church, I’ve spent a good deal of time over the past 24 hours trying to understand the particular brand of theology that fuels much of Wright’s rhetoric.
I think I have a handle on it. While my opinion of Wright’s methods is even dimmer than it was yesterday, I think I have a better understanding of its origins, and even of some of the code phrases he employs.
I want to give myself some more time to gather my thoughts — or revelations, actually, as what I’ve discovered explains a lot of things, such as Barack’s refusal to do the right thing with regard to the Donnie McClurkin imbroglio, and Michelle Obama’s ongoing disparagement of America, among other things (and how all of this plays into a fascinating perspective of religious identity) — before I attempt to explain where I think this is all coming from… and the insight it provides into the real Barack Obama.
Judging from the astronomical number of hits yesterday’s Wright entry received, I know there are many, many people as simultaneously interested in and outraged by the Wrong Reverend Wright as I am.
We’re royally pissed off at Elliot Spitzer — not because he was patronizing a prostitute (or ten, or a hundred), but because by letting his little head do his thinking, he’s really screwed over gay and lesbian Americans.
Elliot Spitzer was one of the best friends American LGBTs could ask for. He’s been a longtime advocate for marriage equality, and last April introduced a same-sex marriage bill in the New York legislature — the first governor in the country to do so. Although the GOP-dominated state senate killed the bill, we were hopeful that New York would be one of the next states (competing with Rhode Island and California) to offer full, equal marriage, à la Massachusetts.
Now it looks like we’re going to lose our best friend in the Empire State. And even if Spitzer doesn’t resign (and, really, he has to; he violated the Mann Act), his power is effectively neutered.
We don’t care a whit if Elliot Spitzer wants to pay for sex, and whatever damage he’s done to his marriage (and his relationship with his children) is his own concern. What a person does sexually, in private, is nobody’s business — unless his behavior puts a crimp in somebody else’s freedom. That includes conservatives trying to force the rest of us to live by their “moral values,” or, in Spitzer’s case, a single individual setting back the march toward LGBT equality by way of a really stupid choice he made for his own selfish pleasure. In short, Elliot Spitzer traded our freedom for the promise of a lousy orgasm.
A lousy, expensive orgasm. It’s difficult to imagine what you get for $4,300 — the price Spitzer was going to pay for a call girl named “Kristen” — but we imagine it wasn’t seven minutes in the missionary position.
Whatever Spitzer was going to get for his money, he didn’t get it. We were the ones who got screwed — without, as my dear departed father used to say, so much as a kiss.
Then, of course, there is the damage Spitzer has done to the Democratic Party, the extent of which remains to be seen. We already have a hint about the extent of the damage he’s done to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign; within minutes of the story breaking on the newswires, Barack Obama supporters on the Message Forum That Shall Remain Nameless were using the Spitzer scandal to smear Clinton. First, they somehow rationalized (if you can call this line of thought “rational”) that Clinton was tainted merely by her association with Spitzer, one of her most high-profile supporters; furthermore, they decided that this association by default cancels out Obama’s relationships with Donnie McClurkin, Kirbyjon Caldwell, and the rest of the homophobic bigots from whom Obama refuses to distance himself.
As if.
Second — and this is very real damage — the widely-circulated image of Spitzer’s wife, the silent, suffering Silda, standing by her man…
…brought the image of Hillary standing by Bill during the Monica Lewinsky scandal back into razor-sharp focus.
Counter-clockwise from upper left: Mr. and Mrs. Elliot Spitzer, Mr. and Mrs. Larry Craig, Mr. and (now ex-) Mrs. Jim McGreevey, and Mr. and Mrs. Bill Clinton.
What’s wrong with this picture? For starters, three of the four disgraced politicians are Democrats. Having researched political pecadilloes for years, I can tell you that Republicans far outnumber Democrats in the cheating department. Granted, represented are four of the most infamous sex scandals in recent memory (although it’s a stretch to call the Lewinsky scandal “recent”), but if ABC had asked for my input, I could have given them dozens of examples of humiliated wives standing by their men — from the other side of the aisle.
In any case, Clinton (Hillary, not Bill) is screwed no matter whether Spitzer resigns or not. As Peter Baker wrote in WaPo:
Spitzer has been a bad-luck charm for Hillary Clinton to this point. His illegal immigrant driver’s license proposal arguably became the first time she was thrown off her stride in this campaign. … That led to a bad patch for her that lasted all the way through the Iowa caucuses. …
Now Spitzer may throw her off stride again at a moment she needs to keep her momentum going. And on top of that, even if he does spare her by resigning soon, that has a cost too — one fewer superdelegate for her at the convention.
It’s not lost on us, by the way, that this scandal comes at the most inopportune time for Democrats — and at a very convenient time indeed for Republicans. (You’ve already forgotten all about Vicki Iseman, haven’t you?)
And it’s not lost on us that Spitzer was nailed by a federal wiretap — you know, that part of the USA Patriot Act that allows the feds to listen in on your phone calls for any half-assed reason they want (or no reason at all). It was the Bush Machine that turned the U.S. into “one nation, under surveillance” — and we knew Big Brother wasn’t going to confine wiretapping to terrorism suspects.
OK, OK, so the Spitzer hooker bust was a by-product of a “routine tax inquiry” by the IRS, and prostitution was said to be “the furthest thing from the minds of the investigators” looking into the suspicious movement of funds through Spitzer’s hands. But the timing of the emergence of a “confidential informant, a young woman who had worked previously as a prostitute for the Emperor’s Club V.I.P., the escort service that Mr. Spitzer was believed to be using” who enabled the investigators “to get a judge to approve wiretaps on the cellphones of some of those suspected of involvement in the escort service” seems awfully convenient. To the Republican Party, that is.
But, all speculation aside, what’s done is done — and what’s been done is irreversible.
As for how badly Spitzer has hurt the Democratic Party, hurt Hillary Clinton, and hurt us LGBTs — who saw in Elliot Spitzer the closest thing we had to a savior — only time will tell.
But it’s gonna hurt every last one of us.
And all because Elliot Spitzer couldn’t keep his penis in his pants.
In addition to this magnificently worded missive, Obama also announced plans to run the aforementioned open letter in an ad campaign specifically targeted to the gay community.
But my question is: Where was all this love, respect and concern for the gay community back in October, 2007, when the junior Senator from Illinois was actively courting the conservative African-American vote in South Carolina with his pal and supporter, ex-gay minister Donnie McClurkin? …
Where were the ads in the local gay press in South Carolina talking about what a friend the Senator was to the LGBT community? …
And in what forum back in South Carolina, when his campaign was struggling, did Obama espouse lofty goals like using “the bully pulpit to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws,” as he does in this new and timely appeal to the LGBT community?
Senator Obama had none of these messages in South Carolina, more than likely because it was not politically expedient for him to write such a letter back then. However now, with the race tight and the stakes high, Obama is now finally extending an olive branch to the very gay community that he quite unashamedly distanced himself from in South Carolina.
The fact of the matter is that when the Human Rights Campaign’s Joe Solmonese and other gay rights leaders urged Obama to cancel Donnie McClurkin’s appearance at one of his Faith and Family Values tour stops, their arguments fell on deaf ears. …
Boldly ignoring the obvious implications of such a slight, Obama and his staff brushed off the criticism simply citing the Senator’s belief that the country needed to broaden its reach of equal rights.
. . .
It’s clear that if McClurkin had been a Nazi sympathizer, Senator Obama would not have expected the Jewish community to accept the singer’s appearance on a program designed to attract votes from a constituency known to have neo-Nazi tendencies. Nor would the Obama campaign now be reaching out to the Jewish community in Texas and Ohio touting their candidate’s long-standing friendship and support for them.
So in what way does Obama’s latest outreach to the LGBT community at this critical juncture in Texas and Ohio not appear disingenuous? …
How on earth is “equality for all” achieved when one constituency’s value is weighted differently from others possessed of more mainstream appeal, until such a time as that constituency’s support becomes critical?
Sorry Mr. Obama, this is where the rubber hits the road. …
Point by point, let’s look at Barack Obama’s statement, released February 28, 2008:
I’m running for President to build an America that lives up to our founding promise of equality for all — a promise that extends to our gay brothers and sisters. It’s wrong to have millions of Americans living as second-class citizens in this nation. And I ask for your support in this election so that together we can bring about real change for all LGBT Americans.
So, Barry, where was this appeal before Camp Obama realized how badly they’ve been screwing over the LGBT community? Why didn’t you make this statement before the South Carolina primary, instead of handing an “ex-gay” bigot a microphone so he could tap into the raging homophobia of throngs of religious bigots at the expense of the LGBT community you’re suddenly sucking up to now? Why wait until just before the Ohio and Texas primaries to cozy up to the queers — because you just realized Ohio and Texas are full of queers who don’t go in for that “love the sinner, hate the sin” sermonizing you do so well?
That’s why throughout my career, I have fought to eliminate discrimination against LGBT Americans. In Illinois, I co-sponsored a fully inclusive bill that prohibited discrimination on the basis of both sexual orientation and gender identity, extending protection to the workplace, housing, and places of public accommodation. In the U.S. Senate, I have co-sponsored bills that would equalize tax treatment for same-sex couples and provide benefits to domestic partners of federal employees. And as president, I will place the weight of my administration behind the enactment of the Matthew Shepard Act to outlaw hate crimes and a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act to outlaw workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
If these issues are so important to you, then why wait until you’re president to “place your weight” behind them? Why haven’t you introduced any domestic-partnership bills as a U.S. Senator? You’re allowed to do that, you know.
As your President, I will use the bully pulpit to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws.
Not good enough, Barry. You can “urge states” all you like, but when you leave equality to the states, you get separate but equal — just like the validity of your parents‘ marriage was “left to the states” when you were born.
That’s not good enough. You can’t claim your intention to push through “equal treatment” of LGBT Americans on a federal level, while leaving “family and adoption laws” to the states.
Only federally-recognized marriage equality will do.
I personally believe that civil unions represent the best way to secure that equal treatment.
But I also believe that the federal government should not stand in the way of states that want to decide on their own how best to pursue equality for gay and lesbian couples — whether that means a domestic partnership, a civil union, or a civil marriage.
Again, with the “states’ rights” argument. You’re just wrong, Barry. You’re misinformed, deluded, and just plain wrong.
Unlike Senator Clinton, I support the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) — a position I have held since before arriving in the U.S. Senate.
You can promise “the complete repeal” of DOMA — in fact, you can promise anything you want — before you’re president. Bill Clinton did; he promised to allow gay and lesbian Americans to serve openly in the military, and look what happened to him: He was blindsided by Congress, and forced to compromise with DADT.
So, you can promise us anything you want, Barry — or you can be realistic about DOMA, like Hillary Clinton has been: She’s promising to overturn the part of DOMA she believes she can overturn — she’s not making a promise that is absolutely impossible to keep.
Now, you could say that your eagerness to compromise on marriage equality via the baby step of civil unions is based on political expediency, but I won’t believe it for a second. Your aversion to full marriage equality is based on your religious beliefs, and nothing else — which we’ll address further in just a moment.
While some say we should repeal only part of the law, I believe we should get rid of that statute altogether.
So do I, but I have no confidence whatsoever in your ability to get rid of it altogether. If you can, great — I’ll praise you for it — but I’m not holding my breath.
And let’s not forget that you can’t do it alone, Barry. It’s going to be up to Congress to overturn DOMA; you’re just the guy who’ll get to sign the bill, if it ever gets to your desk.
Finally, don’t think for a minute that I believe you’re going to go to work on repealing DOMA right away; LGBT equality has never been a priority for you in the past; especially with the mess left to you by the Bush administration, LGBT equality is going to be further down on your to-do list than you’d like to admit.
Federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples, which is precisely what DOMA does.
Then why aren’t you pushing for federally-recognized civil marriage — not civil “unions,” but civil marriage — right now?
I have also called for us to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and I have worked to improve the Uniting American Families Act so we can afford same-sex couples the same rights and obligations as married couples in our immigration system.
Oh? Since when did this issue hit your radar? Last I heard, your position on the UAFA was identical to Senator Clinton’s: You have both been withholding your support for the UAFA, citing concerns about immigration fraud.
Well, here’s my question to you, Barry: If immigration reform is such a big issue to you, why not propose a moratorium on all immigration-by-marriage until you’ve got it sorted out? By holding up passage of the UAFA, you are denying only same-sex couples immigration rights. Either open immigration to everyone, now, or deny immigration to everyone, now, until you figure out how to deal with fraud.
Or, as Immigration Equality noted: “The fraud protections in the UAFA are exactly the same as they are for married (opposite-sex) couples. I perhaps haven’t pushed this point hard enough in previous exchanges, but the fraud protections in the UAFA are not the problem. The problem is that politicians do not understand LGBT relationships and do not consider them bona fide. Whether it is because a marriage certificate cannot be issued, or some deeper discomfort with LGBT marriages we do not know, but to deny LGBT couples a marriage certificate and then say that because there is no marriage certificate you must be subjected to more intense scrutiny is discriminatory, and wrong. Let’s not forget that Obama does not support gay marriage while at the same time claims civil unions extend exactly the same rights as does a marriage certificate.
“The fraud protections in the UAFA are no more loose or no more strict [than] current fraud provisions for opposite-sex couples. It is unfortunate that Sen. Obama, the child of a binational couple whose marriage was once as frowned upon as LGBT relationships does not see this double standard for what it is. We are continuing to work with the Obama camp to bring them onto the UAFA but we will not let them off the hook so easily.”
The next president must also address the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
And this issue is specific to an “open letter to the LGBT community” why, exactly?
Did you mention HIV/AIDS because you’re so accustomed to associating HIV/AIDS with gay men — and “the unfaithful husband or the promiscuous youth” and other “sinners” — the way you did in your 2006 World AIDS Day Speech at your “friend” Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church?
“Like no other illness, AIDS tests our ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes — to empathize with the plight of our fellow man. While most would agree that the AIDS orphan or the transfusion victim or the wronged wife contracted the disease through no fault of their own, it has too often been easy for some to point to the unfaithful husband or the promiscuous youth or the gay man and say ‘This is your fault. You have sinned.’
“I don’t think that’s a satisfactory response. My faith reminds me that we all are sinners.”
Are you so compelled to distance yourself from the AIDS epidemic by asserting your heterosexuality that you must, again, compartmentalize HIV/AIDS as a “gay issue”?
When it comes to prevention, we do not have to choose between values and science. While abstinence education should be part of any strategy, we also need to use common sense. We should have age-appropriate sex education that includes information about contraception.
Can’t find a thing wrong here. But then, there’s a first time for everything.
We should pass the JUSTICE Act to combat infection within our prison population. And we should lift the federal ban on needle exchange, which could dramatically reduce rates of infection among drug users. In addition, local governments can protect public health by distributing contraceptives.
Fine, but: Why are you bringing the issue of HIV/AIDS and prison inmates and intravenous drug users into an “open letter to the LGBT community”? Are you lumping felons and heroin addicts in with “the unfaithful husband or the promiscuous youth or the gay man,” too?
We also need a president who’s willing to confront the stigma — too often tied to homophobia — that continues to surround HIV/AIDS. I confronted this stigma directly in a speech to evangelicals at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, and will continue to speak out as president. That is where I stand on the major issues of the day.
I’m glad you brought up your visit to Warren’s church. You pissed off a lot of left-wingers — and Warren pissed off a lot of right-wingers — by “consorting with the enemy.”
Oh, I know it by heart: These are the people you want to “reach out” to — this is your attempt to make “post-partisan unity” a reality. But you shouldn’t be consorting with them, Barry; these are the people who want no middle ground. Surely, you’re not stupid enough to think they are going to compromise with us — the “us” being the Americans “they” have built successful careers of demonizing, and at best want to run out out of the nation on a rail: the gays, the pro-choicers, the atheists, the evolutionary scientists and teachers, the Muslims… anyone who isn’t a heterosexual, anti-choice Christian opposed to full marriage equality.
They are not going to compromise their core values, Barack — and those of us whose rights hang in the balance (where our rights exist at all) will be damned if we compromise our core values for theirs.
The Christofascists are not going to budge an inch. You may get their votes, but you’re a damned fool if you actually believe you’re going to bring them around to any mode of rational thinking.
As my friend David G (whose nail-it-to-the-wall observations I’ll be quoting again soon) remarked regarding your “gay ad”: Like Donnie McClurkin and Kirbyjon Caldwell and Hezekiah Walker and all the rest of the religionists you call your “friends,” they are in fact “fundamentalist activists, anti-choice, anti-science… They are the same as Robertson or Dobson. Not ‘good folk who haven’t accepted gays,’ but dogmatic, rigid fundies. …
“Those of you who think these members of the Religious Right are only ‘a tad homophobic’ are living in denial. They are the clinic blockers, the school boards who sue over evolution. And you are voting them to power in our party.”
Which begs the question: Is that really your intention, Barack, to bring these bigots around? You pay a lot of lip service to maintaining the separation of church and state — even a few atheists positively swooned over your remark that “we are not a Christian nation; we are a nation of Christians and Jews and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists. We are also a nation of non-believers and non-church going folk who may not have ‘Sunday-best’ hanging in their closets but who most assuredly carry the best of intentions within their hearts.”
Yet you continue to infuse your rhetoric with religious buzz phrases — yes, I’ll say it: “code words” — that seem contrived as a “dog whistle” for the religionists, but are more than familiar to those of us against whom your Bible has been used as a bludgeon. I’d like to give you the benefit of the doubt, Barry; it’s tempting to think your own religiosity is so deeply ingrained, you don’t even know you’re doing it (which, to be honest, isn’t much comfort either). But I am convinced you are doing it deliberately.
In the same speech that wooed a few atheists, you also said:
My religious upbringing taught me that homosexuality was sinful and that gay unions should not be allowed. But my political belief is that all people are created equal and thus should be treated as such, homosexual couples being given the same civil rights as their heterosexual counterparts.
I’m not so sure about that, Barack. In fact, I’m dead certain your political belief is informed, and formed, solely by your religious belief. Remember what you said in Iowa (and have repeated in one form or another ever since you started stumping in churches)?
“Doing the Lord’s work is a thread that runs through our politics since the very beginning. And it puts the lie to the notion that separation of church and state in America means somehow that faith should have no role in public life.”
And:
“My faith teaches me that I can sit in church and pray all I want, but I won’t be fulfilling God’s will unless I go out and do the Lord’s work.”
I can think of another president who was convinced that he was doing “the Lord’s work” by merging religion with politics: George W. Bush.
That is not a comforting thought.
And, as David Domke and Kevin Coe observed: Since the Saddleback sermon, “Obama’s religious politics have only grown. He often begins speeches — including his address in February 2007 in which he announced his intention to seek the presidency — by giving ‘all praise and honor to God,’ and regularly cites the biblical story of Joshua.”
To those of us not swayed by biblical ecstasy, that’s pretty chilling stuff.
But having the right positions on the issues is only half the battle. The other half is to win broad support for those positions. And winning broad support will require stepping outside our comfort zone. If we want to repeal DOMA, repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and implement fully inclusive laws outlawing hate crimes and discrimination in the workplace, we need to bring the message of LGBT equality to skeptical audiences as well as friendly ones — and that’s what I’ve done throughout my career. I brought this message of inclusiveness to all of America in my keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention.
I’ll give you credit for your 2004 DNC speech, Barry. I was stunned with delight to see this kid with the funny ears even mention “gay friends in the red states.”
What’s sad is how inspired I felt at the time — and how small a bone you threw to me, and how I jumped at it, with nearly feverish hope.
What’s sad is how much my opinion of you has changed in less than four years.
I talked about the need to fight homophobia when I announced my candidacy for President, and I have been talking about LGBT equality to a number of groups during this campaign — from local LGBT activists to rural farmers to parishioners at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Dr. Martin Luther King once preached.
Don’t bring Dr. King into this, Barry. Not when your campaign and your supporters virtually slit Hillary Clinton’s throat for making a historically accurate remark about what it took to get the Civil Rights Act passed. You don’t have a monopoly on Dr. King’s message or legacy — and, frankly, Dr. King was far more evolved on the issue of true equality than you are.
And as far as your appearance at Ebenezer Baptist Church, do you remember what you told BeliefNet after that?
“The prayer that I tell myself every night is a fairly simple one: I ask in the name of Jesus Christ that my sins are forgiven, that my family is protected and that I am an instrument of God’s will.”
I don’t want “an instrument of God’s will” in the White House, Barry. I want an employee who doesn’t drag his religious beliefs to the office every morning.
Just as important, I have been listening to what all Americans have to say. I will never compromise on my commitment to equal rights for all LGBT Americans.
Barry, until you commit to marriage equality, you are not committing to full equal rights for all LGBT Americans. Period.
But neither will I close my ears to the voices of those who still need to be convinced. That is the work we must do to move forward together. It is difficult. It is challenging. And it is necessary.
Why? Your stubborn refusal to “close your ears” to homophobes is impossible to defend in light of your swift and unyielding condemnation of racists.
Finally, what rankles me, Barry, is that you presume to speak for the LGBT community, when you don’t “get” the LGBT community. Your intentions may be (may be) good, but you lack an innate understanding of us, what we’re about, what motivates us, and — yes — why we can’t pretend the McClurkin issue was an isolated incident and just let it go.
You are not our “voice,” Barack. You may think you’re listening to us — and this letter of yours, and your “gay ad” show you’re at least vaguely aware that many of us queers are none too pleased with you — but you’re not hearing us. You don’t have the authority to speak for us, as a genuine ally.
Which is yet another reason I say you need some more “seasoning” before you’ll be anywhere near ready to lead us all, as a nation.
Americans are yearning for leadership that can empower us to reach for what we know is possible. I believe that we can achieve the goal of full equality for the millions of LGBT people in this country.
Again, “full equality” means marriage equality. Not some “set of basic rights,” as if we were children, or animals, who must prove we can be trusted indoors without piddling on the rug before you give us a set of grown-up rights.
“Full equality” means exactly equal with what you aready have, Barry. And as long as you have what we don’t, you have privileges, while we have merely second-class citizenship.
“Separate but equal” is not equal.
To do that, we need leadership that can appeal to the best parts of the human spirit. Join with me, and I will provide that leadership. Together, we will achieve real equality for all Americans, gay and straight alike.
I don’t think so, Barry. I don’t believe in you, because you don’t understand what you’re promising us — and yet simultaneously denying us.
You’re not ready, Barry. You’re nowhere near ready.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you know Clinton has too much “baggage” to win the general election.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you know Clinton has successfully fought off the Republican attack machine for the past 16 years, and there’s nothing new to throw at her that will stick.
If you’re an Obama supporter, asking how Obama will deflect right-wing attacks (such as questioning his “Muslim family ties” or dealings with Tony Rezko) during the general election campaign is good strategy.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, asking how Obama will deflect right-wing attacks (such as questioning his “Muslim family ties” or dealings with Tony Rezko) means you’re just a paid Hillary shill and/or “concern troll” trying to smear Obama.
If you’re an Obama supporter, suggesting that Latinos are not voting for Obama because “Latinos hate blacks” is a valid observation.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, noticing that African-Americans are voting overwhelmingly for Obama is racist.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you hate Hillary for her pro-Iraq War Resolution vote, and remind everyone within earshot that Obama never voted in favor of the IWR.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you remind everyone within earshot that Obama was not a Senator at the time of the IWR, and thus no one knows how he might have voted (especially when you consider his votes to continue funding the war ever since), but you get drowned out by the Obama supporters reminding everyone within earshot that Obama never voted in favor of the IWR.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you don’t like the fact that Clinton voted to authorize the Iraq War, but you realize that 76 other Senators, many with far more liberal leanings than Clinton, were duped into a “Yea” vote by the Bush administration’s lies.
If you’re an Obama supporter, Hillary started the Iraq War all by herself.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you remember than Barack supported John Kerry in his 2004 run for the White House, and you think this is fine, because both are solid, anti-war Democrats.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you remember that Kerry voted the same way Clinton did on the 2002 Iraq War Resolution.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you cheer Obama’s plan to start withdrawing troops from Iraq within 16 months after taking office.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, nobody listens when you mention Clinton’s plan to start withdrawing troops from Iraq within 60 days after taking office.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you know you can’t reasonably assume that Hillary is going to bring all the best things about her husband’s eight years of peace and prosperity to the table — you may be getting a “twofer,” but ultimately, it’s Hillary running, not Bill.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you know Hillary is going to bring all the worst things about her husband’s eight years of — well, you can’t remember what was so bad about the Clinton years, except for the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but you’re sure there’s plenty of bad stuff that will carry over into a Hillary Clinton administration.
If you’re an Obama supporter, it’s time for those old, out-of-touch, irrelevant Baby Boomers — in fact, it’s time for everyone over the age of 45 — to get the hell out of the way and hand the reins over to the youth of America.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, of any age, you suddenly become irrelevant the moment you remind the Obama supporters that Obama himself is 46 years old, which makes him a Baby Boomer, too.
If you’re an Obama supporter, 54-year-old Robert F. Kennedy is an out-of-touch Baby Boomer (he did, after all, endorse Clinton).
If you’re an Obama supporter, 50-year-old Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg is a savvy, intelligent American (she did, after all, endorse Obama).
If you’re an Obama supporter, you use to revere 80-year-old poet laureate and living American treasure Maya Angelou — until she endorsed Clinton, which suddenly made her old, out of touch, and irrelevant.
If you’re an Obama supporter, 76-year-old Ted Kennedy is neither old, nor out of touch, nor irrelevant, because he endorsed Barack Obama.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you stand behind Obama for demanding that Don Imus and John Tanner be fired from their respective jobs for making racist remarks.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you agree that marriage equality for same-sex couples is a decision that should be left to the states.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you wonder how Obama can use the same “states’ rights” argument against same-sex marriage that was used against his own parents’ interracial marriage (which wasn’t recognized in a handful of states at the time they were married).
If you’re an Obama supporter, you echo Obama’s repeated mantra of “post-partisan unity,” and agree wholeheartedly that it’s time to “reach out” to Republicans because we can’t get anything done if we’re not all working together.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you insist that Obama has not interjected religion into this campaign.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you want to know how Obama can justify his refusal to support same-sex marriage equality based on his own religious beliefs — as well as the religious beliefs of Dick Cheney, “and over 2,000 religious leaders”.
If you’re an Obama supporter, anyone who won’t sign a loyalty oath to vote for Obama in the general election is a traitor to the Democratic Party.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you’re not allowed to take issue with Michelle Obama’s reluctance to support Hillary Clinton if she wins the Democratic nomination.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you remember how quoting passages from a speech by British Labor party leader Neil Kinnock, and “forgetting” to attribute those passages to Kinnock, cost Joe Biden the 1988 Democratic nomination.
Stay tuned for Part 2. There’s just so much more, presenting it all at once would result in the longest blog entry in the history of the Web.
Copyright (c) 2008 LavenderLiberal.com. Permission is granted to reproduce “If You’re An Obama Supporter… / If You’re A Clinton Supporter…” in part or in full, on the World Wide Web or through email only (i.e., not in any hardcopy or other permanent storage medium), solely on the condition that 1) this copyright notice, 2) proper attribution (”Lavender Newswire”) and 3) a live hyperlink back to this post or to the Lavender Newswire home page ( http://news.lavenderliberal.com ) is included with the reprinted content.
ruggerson gave us his gracious permission to print this here.
I was impressed and intrigued with Barack Obama at first. His speech in 2004 at the convention was a barn raiser, a clarion call to reach past the politics that the Republicans had perfected so well over the last quarter century and find something more substantial and more sustaining in both our political process and in the American spirit.
I eagerly anticipated his announcement speech in Springfield last year and watched him speak on a cold day, announcing his candidacy for President. I was a little surprised that I was not as taken with this speech, as I was looking for something a bit deeper and clarifying, a glimpse into who this man really is and in what he really believes. It was, again, a finely crafted speech full of poetry and inspiration. But it left me somehow unsatisfied and hungry. I knew now that Barack Obama believed in hope, but I didn’t know why or to what end. I didn’t yet know the man beneath the flowery prose.
The first alarm bell for me went off at the Logo debate. Again, nothing specific, but he seemed, somehow, uncomfortable and out of his element discussing issues of importance to gays and lesbians. He went through the motions, as if a student preparing for an exam, and gave many of the right answers. But I saw no there there. I didn’t see a man who deeply felt and understood the struggles that gay people face on a daily basis. John Edwards was trying to get it, it was very easy to see he had agonized and thought deeply about the issues facing gay families. Hillary Clinton gets it on a very deep level, she understands the nuances of our concerns and her respect and commitment shine through. But Senator Obama was off key and removed. I remember registering an almost dissonant moment of disconnection. This man does not understand who we are.
Then came McClurkin. At first I gave him the benefit of the doubt and waited patiently for him to cancel the offensive tour or change the lineup. His campaign, obviously flustered, took a couple of days to come to a decision. Senator Obama decided to keep a man who seriously harms gay youth and who represents a movement that wants to destroy gays and lesbians, as a headliner at his concert. The motive was all too apparent and cynical. He was making a naked appeal to the black evangelical community at the expense of gays and lesbians, black, brown and white, everywhere. It was a breathtaking moment of betrayal, and for many people it brought into sharp focus the value system and priorities of this man who would lead us. This time I did get a glimpse into his soul.
Recently, Willie Brown made it public that he and Gavin Newsom had thrown a fundraiser for Barack Obama during his Illinois senate run in ‘04. This was shortly after Mayor Newsom had shocked the nation with perhaps the most electrifying act of civil disobedience in a generation. He sat through George Bush’s state of the union speech that year, listened to Bush’s call for a consitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, came home to San Francisco and decided, in a moment of sheer courage, to unilaterally declare same sex marriage legal in his city. His constituents, overjoyed and living as if in a dream, actually started getting married, and it was all carried live on national television. Couples who had been living under Jim Crow heterosexist laws for their entire adult lives together, couples of twenty, thirty, fifty years could actually walk down the marble steps of City Hall, having made their union legally equal to those of their straight friends, neighbors and family.
Senator Obama came to this fundraiser in San Francisco after Gavin Newsom had confronted the nation’s homophobia dead on and what did he do?
He told Willie Brown that he wanted to make sure he did not take a picture with Mayor Newsom. He did not want to be publicly associated with the man who just did for gays and lesbians what Martin Luther King had done for African Americans fifty years ago.
Senator Obama is fond of quoting Dr. King and speaks regularly of the “fierce urgency of now.” Gay people know this concept far too well. We have been told for many, many years that this is not the time, this is not the moment, keep quiet and we will take care of you later, don’t make a ruckus this election cycle and your demands will be addressed next time. We know what the “fierce urgency of now” means, because we have lived through decades of being told it’s not our turn.
If Senator Obama understood what he was uttering, if he really understood what the phrase meant and believed it in his heart and soul, he could never have refused to take a picture with Mayor Newsom. On the contrary, he would have been eager to be identified with a man who not only understood the “fierce urgency of now” but had just put it into practice, jolting an entire nation in the process.
I can’t listen to Barack Obama’s poetry now without wincing. “The fierce urgency of now” rings hollow, as for him it is a selective urgency, apparently excluding an entire population.
When will you address us, Senator? When will we become not only a part of the litany of your ritual poetry, but part of the fabric of your soul?
We’re over here watching you, still hoping that you will lift us up too. Not just in words delivered in a sermon, but in actions and deeds.
We’re your chance to prove that the “fierce urgency of now” is more than a revarnished political slogan, but something you actually feel deep in your heart.
We’re still waiting for you to reach out to us.
We’re still waiting for you to demonstrate that you understand who we are.
Gay City News has endorsed Barack Obama. You can read the whole empty justification here; I have no desire to stain the Newswire with such sorry, stale apologetics.
I will, however, repeat for you my reaction to the piece (which, as of this writing, GCN has not yet posted):
“We must yet take it on faith…”
That sums it up right there: Your confidence in Obama is faith-based. Sorry, folks, but I want plans, not platitudes.
It’s especially disheartening to see a gay publication buy into the “building bridges” meme; how can you justify “building bridges” with the very people who marginalize, demonize, and ultimately want to destroy LGBT Americans? Your wunderkind Obama, and by extension you, extend more consideration to the Republicans (and other sworn enemies) than he/you extend to your very own gay and lesbian family.
Put down the Kool-Aid.
I’m not the only one who feels this way. Among other, even more pointed comments (and yes, the NObamas far outnumber the Kool-Aid drinkers):
Audacious, But No Hope for Gays
This is NOT a plug for Hillary Clinton, but a criticism of boarding the electoral train as if it is the way to effect social change. Particularly with a guy like Obama (or Clinton, for that matter). Neither candidate backs our full legal equality. Why do we endorse anyone who doesn’t endorse equal marriage rights for same-sex couples? As Larry Kramer asked, “Where’s the self-respect?”
Obama, a corporate candidate, advocates spending more money on national “defense,” such as enlarging the army. He has recklessly suggested bombing Iran and invading Pakistan. Will there be anything left over for domestic programs, drastically cut in recent years to funds wars for US empire?
Historically, social change has been made in the streets. Movements involving women, African Americans, workers and gays attest to this fact.
Bob Schwartz, Chicago, IL
Obama Does Not Believe In Equal Rights
How can any gay person vote for this man? He does not believe that we should have the same rights as he. He is opposed to gay marriage. [Civil] Unions? Separat but equal does not work, as any student of cilvil rights knows.
Obamas own parents would not have been married when he was born in many states, or they could have been prosecuted. Miscengation was still on teh books in 1967 in 16 states and was not repealed by the Supreme Court until that year.
I refuse to vote for anyone who does not believe I am equal and says so.
You want to vote for him because he is better than any repub? Go ahead. I refuse. Remember how Clinton betrayed the gay community?
How long is the Democratic party gping to take us for granted? Forever until people make a stand and say no, I am equal and deserve equal rights and you better support that.
Stephen Brown, New York, NY
Not a well formulated endorsement
I am no fan of Hilliary Clinton, or Bill for that matter, but your endorsement of Obama has obviously not been thought through clearly enough. It seems based on what would sound better then what is sound. For example, “He will serve the nation well if he can articulate a comprehensive approach..toward the mess in Iraq..of America’s standing in the entire Islamic world.” In order for someone to get my vote they first have to articulate why they should. “In his recent comments about…Ronals Regan…Obama ought to have made more clear his understanding…hope for unity can not substitute for hard choices.” To me he made clear his praise of a mass murderer!!
Then you breeze over what you refer to as, “The McClurkin episode.” Which I would not term as simply misguided, but openly homophobic.
Then you push aside Clinton’s support of Robert Johnson, Charles Rangel, and Maxine Waters, to basicaly accuse her of running a racist campaign.
This inept journalistic viewpoint is one of the main reasons gay journalism is not taken seriously.
Robert Rizzuto, New York, NY
How does this help us at all
Obama is spouting one thing and then in the next he’s embracing, not just mcklurkin but also Bush’s “spiritual advisor” Rev Caldwell.
I can’t endorse that and neither should you be. The fact that Obama is embracing a lot of republican ideas and and is also willing to use obvious anti gay pastors to gain votes within the black community is disturbing. I can tell you now, if Obama wins the Presidency, he will be very right of centre.
You have been warned.
L:aurance Allen
Obama ties to homophobic ministers troubling
Nationally syndicated columnist Rev. Irene Monroe, an African American lesbian, has written often about her opinion that Obama’s campaign is using gays — tossing us crumbs and then backing off to cut slack for anti-gay ministers — not just McLukin. Her views are disturbing and make it hard for me to back Obama any more than Clinton. It’s vote-for-the–lesser-of-two-evils time again. I’d like to trust Obama but I don’t feel I can.Your endorsement seems too idealistic.
Susan Jordan, Rochester NY
Are you NUTS?
Obama’s own parent’s marriage was not recognized in some states yet he can oppose gay marriage?
Is this a gay newspaper or a political journal? Why don’t you defend your readers? Hope and Change and No Queers.
michael, new york
If you truly have the best interest of this country at heart, Hilary Clinton is who you should be endorsing.
As you summed up in your article, both candidates have had similar attitude towards the LGBT community and either will be a step in the right direction. So, let us put this aside as this isn’t the only issue we need to look at for this primary race.
We need to look at experience, leadership, and who can be President. I watched all 2 hours of the democratic debate, where an inexperienced politician fumbled with his words and didn’t answer questions. He gave ideals- instead of real situations and potential solutions- and he stated that “he wants to be right from day one”. We all have started a new job, sometimes with all the qualifications and sometimes with some of the qualifications, and the one thing you can be sure of is that you will not start off “right” from day 1. So, what make him think that he can make those promises?
… From Clinton, we know she has the experience, the ability to jump right in and hit the floor running, and the same amount of passion that interests us from the other candidate. …
Ron Zacchi, Astoria, NY
I consider this a betrayal
Obama cynically exploited homophobia first with the McClurkin incident, then with Kirbyjon “ex-gay minister” Caldwell. Although neither candidate supports marriage equality, Obama consistently states his opposition in the most RW-friendly, religious terms possible (”something sanctified between a man and a women.” I don’t know what you people are thinking, but this gay voter will never support Barack Obama.
DJS, New York, NY
If you want to see the pro-Obama comments, they’re there — and they’re decidedly in the minority.
Tweet This Post! 
I was impressed and intrigued with Barack Obama at first. His speech in 2004 at the convention was a barn raiser, a clarion call to reach past the politics that the Republicans had perfected so well over the last quarter century and find something more substantial and more sustaining in both our political process and in the American spirit.
Senator Obama is fond of quoting Dr. King and speaks regularly of the “fierce urgency of now.” Gay people know this concept far too well. We have been told for many, many years that this is not the time, this is not the moment, keep quiet and we will take care of you later, don’t make a ruckus this election cycle and your demands will be addressed next time. We know what the “fierce urgency of now” means, because we have lived through decades of being told it’s not our turn.
We’re your chance to prove that the “fierce urgency of now” is more than a revarnished political slogan, but something you actually feel deep in your heart.
