The Scientist's View

12.20.2008

Good politics and oddly enough, good news for gays

Interestingly, Obama decided that the press was not giving him enough attention. So he makes it unavoidable for them to cover him. He does so by picking the right-ish slanting Christiam Rick Warren to lead the invocation at the inaguration. Pretty sly piece of politics and good press to boot.


(Chris Crain has a lengthy entry regarding Rick Warren; the posting has some interesting opinions from Chris' readers as well as Chris.)

Some thoughts.


1) People can get angry about Rick Warren's positions and stances - but he is a popular minister to many Americans. He is not of the hate-monger mold of Jerry Fallwell et al. It is pretty clear from his work over the past few years, Rick Warren represents, embodies, and regurgitates a lot of the suburban views. Those who live in their little suburban cocoons don't do well with extremes - they need their religion to be doled out in tender little morsels, essentially pablum, that are vaguely Christian-esque.

2) Obama is in a bit of a bind at the moment. Bush pushed the entire auto mess onto Obama starting March 31st. At which point, some very very very hard decisions are going to have to be made. Best to keep the press off that reality this week, next two weeks are Christmas and then January will be the inaguration (and the car companies will be digesting their allowance in the first quarter). This clever press deflection is Clintonian to the Nth degree.

3) Obama's players are just about all named and there is a gap before Christmas - time to fill it with something that has the appearance of content - but is really not that meaningful.

I, for one, don't see this as anything more interesting than press manipulation. Rick Warren doesn't want to burn gays at the stake. He doesn't want to put them on trains. He's just a garden variety homophobe that preaches in that Campbell's Soup for the Soul sort of tone. Christian Republicans, like gays, are an unavoidable reality. But there are alot more of them than us. Hence our rights get repressed and not theirs.

But what Rick Warren represents is pretty interesting from the gay angle. The hard right and the previous culture wars, whipped up most recently by Darth Rove, had a very sinister element to it. There were terms like "agenda", "activist", "sanctity", etc when talking about anything gay. The hard right's views in the W era are not the same as Rick Warren's views. That is something to mull over. If the moderates/indepedents rejected all things old school Republican in 2006 and more so in 2008 (I mean John McCain effectively ran as the anti-W) - it is something of a phase shift to wonder who/what will lead them in the short term. Is it someone like Rick Warren whose moderate tone and moderate Republican stance reflect a swining of the pendulum back towards the center? It doesn't mean that the moderate right supports gay marriage - but gay marriage is no longer being promoted as one of the key signals illustrating the deterioration of our culture/heritage/tradition (whatever term the hard right likes to use).

The gay media should put this event in perspective. Rick Warren is being asked to pray - and that is about it. He is not being given a cabinet position or being asked to be an advisor. People aligned with him represent a very key demographic in this country that POLITICALLY cannot be ignored, that being the right-slanting suburbanites. People like those that I grew up with. For Obama to ignore them would be somewhat expected - but politically, no including them is pretty short-sighted.

As I stated above - this should be, to a limited extent, considered a net positive for gay rights. I know that sounds weird - but when looking at the big picture - it is encouraging to see that Rick Warren is tacking left in being a part of the new Administration's goal to bring together the secular and the religious to continue and expand an on-going dialogue. He's not pro-gays, but he is also not using gays as chum in the on-going culture wars.

3 Comments:

At 12:21 PM, Blogger Ben Franklin America said...

I, like so many of my gay friends, gave a lot of money to Obama's campaign. We worked tirelessly to get him elected. Now Obama decides to invite Rick Warren, who equates gays to rapists and child molesters; and who excludes gays from being members of his church to do the invocation? How many of Warren's followers do you think gave as much to the campaign as gays did? How many of Warren's followers worked as hard to get Obama elected as gays did? Warren is to gays what a Grand Wizard of the KKK is to African Americans. Obama has made it perfectly clear with this invitation how he feels about the gay community.

Do you think Obama would have had as much of a landslide if it wasn't for the gay community? I don't think so. I hope for his sake that all the evangelicals he is pandering to move over to his camp come reelection time; gays will be voting for a third party candidate from now on. It's been made perfectly clear that the Democrats don't want us. Good luck to Obama with his presidency. I don't support him any longer. I, like so many fell utterly betrayed.

 
At 12:59 PM, Blogger Homer said...

What upsets me is this gives Warren so much prestige and we will have to see his revolting face and hear his stupid opinions for years to come.

Obama fell off his pedastal with this shitty decision.

 
At 12:56 AM, Blogger MoneyBonanza said...

FREE On-Demand TV Shows, Movies, Music(over 6 million digital quality tracks), Unlimited Games, Money, and FREE College Educations (Stanford, Oxford, Notre Dame and more) @ InternetSurfShack.comĀ 

 

Post a Comment

<< Home