Capitol Hill Blue Forums We shall overcome

Julia, I completely understand and agree with your points. I really do. The prayer is something I never remember. I don't pay attention. In fact, I normally automatically disregard most of that stuff as part of the pageant.

I really had to think about this to understand why it was sticking in my craw.

I believe Obama is reaching out and I believe that this action is fairly consistent with his whole message and one of the reasons I embraced that message. Warren is not being assigned a post in Obama's cabinet, he's firing off a prayer for a couple minutes that will likely not contain anything of much substance and little to no specifics on social issues... and it will be forgotten in the hoopla of the follow up.

I think the reason it bothers me so much goes back to my election night post. The vote to strip me of a recently gained right (that for one brief shining moment, made me equal at least in my own State) measurably diminished my elation of the Obama victory. I didn't expect that. At all. That one little ballot result completely killed the celebration that I had been anticipating for nearly a decade. The end of the Bush presidency. The man 'appointed by God' who gave Evangelicals free reign. Supported abstinence only sex ed, fought stem cell research and gave lots of money to faith based organizations (I know, Obama supports that too - but not exclusively).

I suppose I internalized the message of CHANGE that Obama was selling. I thought I was being cautiously optimistic but I now think it went much deeper and I didn't realize it. I knew that none of the candidates supported gay marriage. I could accept that because I know that no one running for President would stand a chance if they openly embraced the gay community and supported equal rights for us.

I just feel like I've been Evangelicaled out. I'm tired of other American's choice of religious beliefs trumping my rights as a tax paying American citizen. As you say, there are Christian congregations that have come to grips with gay rights, but that didn't happen because we were quiet.

Rick Warren being given this brief honorary opportunity is like pouring salt in a freshly opened wound. Not because he will use the platform for anything inappropriate and not because he will have any power beyond the prayer. But because he is one of the many faces that supported the stripping of our right to marry. He represents the kinder gentler homophobe. The 'some of my best friends are" type. Does he hate gay people? No. Does he see them as his equal? That's not what I'm getting from him.

I have a difficult time splitting out the emotionalism from these issues anymore. It used to be easy because we almost always lost.

The inaugaration will go on. Warren will deliver the prayer. All will be fine. Obama's gesture will likely be forgotten quickly during our National economic belly-flop. The gay community's gesture of objection will also be forgotten. It just feels important to object. I know some feel like we are shoving our lives down their throats but, believe it or not, we have in the past been mostly patient and accepting of most of our defeats (I didn't see any protests about gays being widely voted against in all the other States that actually changed their Constitutions). It just feels important to express our opinion right now. Like I said earlier, the Christian congregations did not change their views on gay rights because we kept silent.

Should we choose our battles more carefully? Perhaps, but when you're in the middle of it, sometimes it's difficult to prioritize.

Indeed. That is why I try to choose my words carefully. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't (but, I just don't seem to ever shut up... sheesh )

For the record: I wasn't trying to be pedantic in my little experiment. I know you understand and I didn't mean to diminish your own experiences with that. It just popped into my head because I try to hear these people objectively and I know that sometimes they sound reasonable unless you are the subject of their statements. I just thought it would be an easy way to read between the lines and hear what they are really saying.

I couldn't agree more. Indeed, the very concept of allowing faith to control your life and perceptions is to assume that you are superior to your non-same-believing fellows. You have "the answer" and "the authority" of your chosen text which represents the "word of god." Being of the "chosen" - and god makes many, and often conflicting, choices, apparently - puts you in a different, and superior, status.

I am not saying that all people of faith are blind adherents incapable of rational or compassionate thought, but those that place "the word of god" above the "law of the land," or even rational thought, are pernicious indeed. For all the good that religions and religious fervor can do - I think of Katrina relief - the strings attached to such help can often overwhelm the positives (consider the Spanish Inquisition). We are, in this nation, presently faced with the same oppression that caused our forefathers to flee the lands of their birth, and we are so blind as a population to our own history that we, or at least the majority of us, fail to see it. We have forgotten that the first proscription in the Bill of Rights is "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." There was a reason for that! It makes me sad, it makes me angry, but that frustration spurs me to action. That may be the only good that comes of it.

Julia, that is an excellent point! Big damned deal! A minister who does not pass the sniff-test with many Obama votaries will give the invocation at his inauguration...and everyone is going through the most ridiculous of philosophical contortions in order to rationalize it in some way as indicative of agreement, control acceptance, acquiescence or whatever between Rev. Warren and Mr. Obama.

Mr. Obama's agenda of change is insufficiently iconoclastic for many of the [progressive | liberal | left-leaning] who voted for him, and now they present that deer-in-the-headlights look as they realize that the change promised - or at least the change they uncritically assumed was promised - fails to materialize to the degree they think it should.

Personally, I am absolutely astounded that otherwise intelligent people are allowing themselves to be completely distracted and wrapped around the axle over something that, in a couple of months, will not be anything but a sub-footnote in the continuing narrative of presidential history.

And the inauguration still a month away...

I have made my own peace with the Warren issue, not so much because my thinking has changed, because frankly it has not. But I am heartened by the fact that it is even a point of controversy and that so many have had to reconsider their fundamental ideas about gender identity and equality.

The very fact that we are going on 40 pages of this thread speaks volumes about those of us who share this forum. For each of you, no matter where you come down on this issue, I am thankful.

Hear hear! That is what it's all about. If we can talk - and listen - we can learn and change.

If we can't, we won't.

From Melissa Etheridge, who was invited to sing by Rev. Warren:


Huffington post

I think Obama is just following the instincts that got him elected. I read a story on Slate that explains how PE Obama tapped into people's emotional responses:
Obama in your Heart

The key to influencing people is not so much what you said, but rather how you made them feel. Nobody will remember Warren's prayer during the inauguration, but plenty of Evangelical Christians will remember how it made them feel to see one of their own up there with President Obama. I think we will see Obama's approval rating jump because many E.C.s will stop fearing him.

But now let's segue back onto the thread topic: I think that inducing these same types of feelings will be the key to acceptance of same-sex marriage. It may be lot's of fun to march in a parade with groups of guy's wearing jock straps or leather chaps, with a giant penis float. (And I have nothing aginst celibrating your sexual identity!) But scenes of those events on TV only induce fear in the hearts of Gay Marriage opponents.

If instead LGBT people (and their friends to a lesser extent) can reach out to those who fear them, and help them see that "they are just like me", and deserving of all of life's joys, then we might get somewhere. This approach has certainly worked for some politicians who have reversed their positions after learning that a loved one is gay or lesbian.

I know it's difficult to reach out to your enemies, but that's the only way to turn them into friends.

Is extremism and unyielding political positions only apparent in the religious community? Is it not prevalent in secular Conservatism and Liberalism as well? All I see is a bunch of people trying to push their own agenda and exert their own control and purport their own self-thought superiority.

Here it seems that President-elect Obama is "reacing across the aisle" to further discussion between two opposing views. This is precisely what he promised. It is what most of us expected in relation to foreign policy, instead of the attack mode so associated with the outgoing administration. It only seems logical to apply it at home first. We would do well, to remeber a quote from one of Barack Obama's speeches:


What is more representative of that than his choices for his cabinet and the inauguration ceremonies? We elected him for that, and now some of us are complaining because he is fulling that?