A_Wanderer
ONE love, blood, life
I never said you should vote for the worse evil, but spreading the contempt between both sides could be a nice start.it's a familiar feeling.
what would you have me do? it was never alright. am i going to vote for McCain? what else do you expect the gay community to do other than support politicians who at least mouth support? are we to support Republicans who sleep with the very people who'd cheer our social death? are we to support Republicans who've made their opposition to gay people the very center of their social policy?
it seems to me that the positions you've outlined above are easy to say when you, yourself, don't have to actually live them out. in the real world, we have to make choices. and we also know that we're going to get thrown under the bus because more work remains, and because unthinking religion holds a preposterously central place in the lives of many Americans.
so we deal with it. the best we can.
GWB has justified his AIDS spending with faith, his public language is not the same as Buchanan or Falwell, and the more recent statements have been pretty damn middle of the road. Why is it that GWB playing up his faith for a base "spiteful, hateful, white evangelical protestantism", while Obama is inclusive, empowering and generally non-exclusionary (in spite of his pastors hip, down with whitey, rhetoric).i agree with you here -- you're preaching to the choir. simply because i know why Obama chose Warren (it was shrewd and calculating) doesn't mean i support the decision. it means i'm able to hold more than one thought in my head at one time. i have never been comfortable with Obama's religiosity, but i also have to accept that a president has to have some pretense of religiosity to be elected. for chrissakes, go back and look at how much i mocked the Democratic "Faith Forum" silliness. but what else are we going to do? at least Obama's religious leanings are inclusive and empowering and generally non-exclusionary, and not the spiteful, hateful, white evangelical protestantism of GWB. though each man claims a strong spirituality and professes Christ as his savior, there are world's of difference between the kids of Christianity each practices.
I recognise that most Christians are middle of the road, I know there is a difference between a social conservative and someone who wants to drop walls on people, but that shouldn't matter when it comes to keeping religion out of politics.i'm every bit the secularist you are.
but, again, as i said earlier, "they" are not all the same.
It's not as though we were asked to contextualise Falwell, to understand where he came from and have some sympathy for his wretched genesis (like we were for Jeremiah Wright); why should Obama's religious pals be rationalised but George W. Bush's be open to derision?
Not entirely.i don't think this paragraph was aimed directly at me. but if it was, it missed the mark.
A consensus position would be getting evangelical leaders to a point where they can agree that gay marriage is alright for state sanction, and they won't mobilise their voters against it.what consensus position have i argued? i've said that i'm not interested in simply labeling people a bigot and that's that. that isn't productive. it's not consensus building -- that's the GCU position, one i am very clearly against. i just don't think we're well served by provoking people in the middle, and i think we are well served by engaging, say, a nathan1977, where as a diamond is probably best left to humor.
This only actually works when their being challenged, gritting teeth while they are given backstage passes to a presidential inaugurations doesn't count.and the more we argue with those who are equipped with actual skills, and the more we watch them twist their arguments and strain for something resembling coherence and consistency, the more discredited they are to the mainstream.
that's always been the point.
Rick Warren is mainstream, recognising the pragmatic bipartisanship of Obama picking him doesn't challenge that at all.