Comments regarding DU/Warren . . . I hope people read and think about this

[Believing Is Art]

Without question, the choice of Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration is terrible and a slap in the face to the LGBT community. It's also currently creating a lot of hate talk here at DU. It would seem that DU posters fall into the following categories:

Hope is lost. Obama is just another politician and used the LGBT community to get elected and will now forget about them. Obama may not quite be dead to this group, but he's on life support.

Really upset by the choice, but will wait to see how gay rights progress once Obama is in office before delivering a verdict.

Kind of upset but it's just a few-minute speech. What's the big deal? We've got the economy/environment/other-issue to worry about.

Obama can do no wrong. Stop questioning him! Yarr! (Yes, in my head I picture this group as pirates)

Homophobic. Yay for gay-bashing!

If you're in the last group, well, poo on you. And hate speech isn't allowed here on DU. If you're in any of the other groups, you obviously or most likely support gay rights. If you're in the "meh no biggie" group or if you worship Obama, and the anger and Obama-bashing really pisses you off, why don't you just avoid it? It's pretty obvious which threads are rant-on, just don't click on them. The vast majority of us here support gay rights. There's no reason to be fighting over the extent of other people's current anger.

Time will march on. Obama made a huge mistake and nothing is going to change that. But this too shall pass and we can all work for gay rights. But right now, some people need to vent and DU should be a safe place for this. If you don't like it, don't look.

Done.

[Booster]

1. For me, I'm just sad that Obama made such a obviously

bad judgement on this when he didn't have to. There are so many other really tolerant Christian preachers who he could have picked. Just my opinion though.

[dusmcj]

2. it better not reflect the tone they'll try to set

if this is a tactic, the deadline for showing hand is Inauguration Day, more or less. By that deadline, the O team needs to have made clear, if subtly, WTF it was doing.

God help any diehard O believers in or out of the team who think that they're going to make this a loyalty test to see if people will abandon their 'personal' issues for the greater good their team is promising or that we're going to 'strike a balance' between 'progressives' and dumbassed social reactionaries of any color or denomination. "The personal is political" was an insightful comment and still is.

We can't include everyone cause that means including ax murderers, pedophiles, and finance executives - some behaviors need to be clearly identified as unacceptable, and not countenanced in civil society (and in case you're starting to feel queasy, the tricky question is, what's the basis for such exclusion, objective measures of harm/benefit to individuals and the public (i.e. genuine 'ethics'), or conditioned tribal norms - ayy, there's the rub). We've been waiting 30 years for politicians to appear in power in this country who have the gumption to say, in the context of their office, that reactionaries who mind other people's nonharmful, consensual personal business are vermin who, yes, will be excluded, that they in fact have nothing to say in a modern civil society.

Team O promised this. The possibility that we're going to instead be offered a diet of pablum about win-win solutions and compromise and other yadda-yadda needs to be disposed of, clearly, and in time. Otherwise guess we'll just have to be looking for a new candidate for 2012 and a failed administration in between. (And anyone tempted to think I'm a racist, let me assure you once and once only that I would give no more leeway to any other candidate of any other color. Done with that.) Similarly if team O perchance has concluded that the path to votes is or maybe always was to line up with social traditionalists from any demographic who want that ol' time 'ligion about social and particularly sexual mores, and just don't want the inequality that goes hand in hand with them. They will fail, hard, if this is the case.

Gloria Steinem tacked it when she said in her NYT op-ed comparing Obama's travails to Hillary's that American society has severe problems with gender polarization compared to the rest of the developed world. That shit is at the heart of many, if not most of our current problems - douchebags who driven by personal inadequacy attempt to keep the world failing on the basis of zero-sum arguments about winners and losers and contention for finite resources - and constraining the supply of pussy and dick (or whatever permutations you prefer) is the zero point from whence it starts.

We're done with that shit. It's not time for us to pick; we have. It's time for the political class, including those who would represent and serve us, to make the choice. And they need to get it clear that in addition to making it, they need to let us know unequivocally what it is. (And of course be prepared to take the consequences.)

Oh, BTW to prevent anyone from profiling me based on assumptions and then conveniently disposing of my viewpoint, here's the scoop (partly) - I'm straight, I'd hang with LGBTQ folk any day of the week (presuming a mutual interest in getting along) and wouldn't give social norming gaspassers anything but the back of my hand, I own guns for target shooting, and I'm concerned that the Democratic party is spending too much time pandering to globalists and rich bicoastal pantywaists who are as prone to using the phrase "for your own good" as said gaspassers, while being mostly out of touch with the daily reality the people live. And I've voted Democrat almost exclusively since I've been able to vote (26 years). So far. Rubber is currently meeting the road though...

[silverojo]

3. Then vote for Sarah Palin in 2012

She'll do GREAT by the LBGT community. You betcha! :sarcasm:

[dusmcj]

5. no, no thanks. tired of as good as it gets.

if the Democratic party decides that giving a voice to defective tribal social models in government isn't really that bad, and that in a spirit of reconciliation, cooperation and compromise, a Democratic government should reflect all people, including those who seek to mind other's personal, consensual nonharmful business, then I guess the Democratic Party's gonna lose some voters. It's very interesting that 150 years ago, there were for example four candidates in a presidential election, each of which received a nontrivial amount of the vote. If you're stupid enough to think that you serve a group, rather than a group serving you, that's your funeral.

I know your reply was a kneejerk reaction, what with your immediately reaching for the Beast Du Jour. Care to spend a moment thinking before posting ? If it was intended to silence me devastatingly, you lose.

If we haven't figured out that douchebag tribalism, including social control of sexual behavior, is at the core of a variety of problems facing us today, then we're not really that 'progressive' as we like to style ourselves, now are we ?

Stylin. The personal is (still) political.

(and if this discussion reflects the schism in the 'progressive' community between a bunch of busybodying sloppyassed self-indulgent pantywaists who want their little inadequacies to be indulged on the one hand and to prescribe what's best for us all on the other, and genuine freethinkers, so much the better. I'm tired of having my time wasted by wankers who expect me to slow up and wait for them because of their mediocrity. And don't waste my time with whining that I'm a cruel heartless reactionary who doesn't have the appropriate level of waterlogged pity for suffering. Pity is uninteresting, contributing to a better world is. And that starts with yourself - the recipe for not having when you have the ability to acquire is not to demand that someone give it to you, but to exert yourself to acquire it the old fashioned way, by working for it. Lest we start talking about 'leveling the playing field' for those who are just plain lazy, and greedy, as opposed to genuinely disadvantaged.)

[fla nocount]

4. It will all pass eventually, except for the...

FISA vote and the Bungling Bankers Buffoonery Bill. In the spirit of the season, those are Marley's chains and will never pass or go away. What is more unconstitutional than FISA or more boot-licking sub-servient than TARP? I fear that there will be many more decisions in this vein but none will surpass these two as indicators of what we've been sold.