God hates gays, God bless America

I wanted to say something more thoughtful about Rick Warren's role in Obama's inauguration. First I had to get past the sputtering anger phase.

I have to clarify that my giant temper tantrum was not out of surprise. I'm not surprised.

"I told you so" is verboten in some places, but, well. There it is. i am full of acrimony and not in the mood to be kind to those who pushed for Obama in the primaries by ignoring or obfuscating the problems with his broad coalition approach. That there are people in comments sections of some blogs still defending Obama and playing the "what he really means" game is almost as infuriating as the selection of Rick Warren itself.

There is nothing surprising here. The selection and the talking points surrounding it are nothing new from Obama. And they are still bullshit. As my favorite English prof used to say, one can say there are similarities and differences between almost any two things.

The truth is, some views are considered so far from a respectful disagreement that no matter how much an individual neo-Nazi*, for example, might hypothetically agree with progressives on a single issue, that person would not be invited to play a large public role in the President's inauguration. But being against civil rights for gays and lesbians, and lying and spreading hate to fight against those rights is something that can just be overlooked as a difference of opinion. It makes me sick.

Oh, and his stance against abortion is not even controversial enough to be addressed in the talking points.

The talking points might almost make sense (almost) if Rick Warren were being ivited to speak about those common ground issues. If Warren's importance to the evangelical community were being leveraged to gain support for those issues, it would at least be understandable. But instead he is being given a prominent role specifically as a pastor, and that lends him authority he does not deserve. It comes at the expense of women and the LGBTQ community, for whom Obama has demonstrated less respect than the religious right.

*Think that's too extremist? Am I shamelessly Godwinizing? Rick Warren has compared abortion to the holocaust, and homosexual marriage to rape. Nazis are invoked too easly and often because most of us have learned an almost instinctual revulsion for them and what they did. Neo-nazis, though they haven't been successful in engaging in widespread, institutionalized genocide, are recognized by most people as unreasonably hateful because of their association with German nazis. Those views taint and discredit anything else they do in the eyes of people who view themselves as not bigoted or racist. Certain bigotries have less impact and less influence on public policy only because leaders have been pushed to reject people who hold these views. Obama is proposing the exact opposite of this tactic, and that has never been shown to work in the past.