As I've been hanging around the site the last few days, watching all the Warren diaries come and go, and doing my best to combat some of the more obvious manifestations of ignorance and stupidity in many of them, I've been troubled by a nagging feeling of déjà vu. I knew I'd been through something of the sort before, I just couldn't put a finger on what or when it was.
Then, as I was heading to bed early this morning after logging off from yet another crappy, whiny diary about how put-upon some diarist was at having to listen to us homosexuals whine about something as insignificant as our civil rights, it struck me. I remembered where and when and what had led to the same kind of feelings: this very site, four years ago, in the wake of John Kerry's loss to G. Dumbya Bush.
For those of you who weren't around at the time, it was not pretty. We'd been fairly enthusiastic about Kerry's chances to beat the bastard, thanks to some lousy polling information. When the results came in, people were angry, frustrated, pissed off--and looking for someone or something to blame.
That someone and something turned out to be "the gays." We were responsible, we were told, for Kerry's loss, because the Republicans had been able to mobilize and put anti-gay initiatives on the ballot in many a swing state, which energized their base and got them to turn out to vote for the Deciderer again.
Never mind that there wasn't a scrap of evidence in support of that conclusion. It was all over this site, for days and weeks on end. And an awful lot of truly hateful things were said about gays and lesbians and our rights, by an awful lot of people that we had thought were our friends and allies and supporters.
Fast forward four years, and here we are doing it all over again. And we won the farking election this time, for crying out loud! What's wrong with this picture? I certainly never expected to have to endure another month like November 2004 on this site, having to defend myself and my right to the same basic civil rights as any other American citizen. But here we are again, and we're having the same damn fight.
What's wrong with Democrats and/or the Democratic Party, or progressives, that some of us can't seem to remember the prophetic words of Martin Luther King, Jr., that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" (Letter from the Birmingham Jail)? Can it be that there really are people in the progressive movement and the Democratic Party who think that gays and lesbians should be happy they're allowed to have even half a loaf, and forget about ever enjoying full equality before the law, as promised to all by our Constitution and carved into the very stone of the Supreme Court building in Washington?
The rhetoric certainly seems to be the same. "It's too soon for marriage," we were told in 2004. "It will piss off too many moderates, and enrage too many conservatives, and we need their votes." "It would waste valuable political capital." "It would be political suicide." I've heard all of those same refrains, and then some, in the Warren "debate" (if it can even charitably be described as such) on this site this month.
What's worse, the GLBTQ contingent here has been told--repeatedly--that it is making a mountain out of a molehill, and that we really have no business being upset in the first place--or that if we did, we should just shut up about it and move on. "It's only a fucking invocation," we're told. "It isn't like it's a policy or anything." "Who remembers who gave the invocation at Clinton's inauguration?" (It was Billy Graham, by the way.) "You should have seen this coming: Obama said all along he was going to reach out to people on the other side of the aisle."
All of that may or may not be true, but that isn't the point I want to raise here. This really isn't a diary about Rick Warren--it's a diary about the soul of the Democratic Party and the progressive movement. Specifically, whether that party and that movement are committed to the full equality of gays and lesbians in this country. Because if they're not, well, then, I've got to agree with Richard Cohen in yesterday's Washington Post: the party's off:
But the real problem has nothing to do with ministers and everything to do with Obama's inability or unwillingness to be a moral leader. Sooner or later, he just might have to stand for something.
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This time it is not Obama's preacher who has decided to honor a bigot, it is Obama himself. And, once again, we get the same sort of rationalizations. Obama says he does not agree with Warren about all things. Obama says he himself is not anti-gay and, in fact, although he does not support same-sex marriage (as opposed to civil unions), he has been a stalwart champion of gay causes. Therefore, it seems to follow, he can honor an anti-gay activist.
I can understand Obama's desire to embrace constituencies that have rejected him. Evangelicals are in that category and Warren is an important evangelical leader with whom, Obama said, "we're not going to agree on every single issue." He went on to say, "We can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans." Sounds nice.
But what we do not "hold in common" is the dehumanization of homosexuals. What we do not hold in common is the belief that gays are perverts who have chosen their sexual orientation on some sort of whim. What we do not hold in common is the exaltation of ignorance that has led and will lead to discrimination and violence.
Finally, what we do not hold in common is the categorization of a civil rights issue -- the rights of gays to be treated equally -- as some sort of cranky cultural difference. For that we need moral leadership, which, on this occasion, Obama has failed to provide. For some people, that's nothing to celebrate.
The party's off.
It really is that simple: either the Democratic Party and the progressive movement supports the right of gays and lesbians to be treated equally (and does so in more substantive ways than simply mouthing a few pious platitudes in election years, and ignoring those platitudes--and gay and lesbian Democrats and their issues--all the rest of the time), or it does not. And if it does not, then it seems to me more than past time to begin building another party that will stand up for its gay and lesbian supporters--which is more than Barack Obama has managed to do thus far, and I have to say that I don't particularly like the odds that he's going to do anything different once he's actually in office. He's made it abundantly clear that, despite all his pretty rhetoric when it's safe to talk about us and our issues, he really doesn't have the guts to back up those words with actions.
What I said four years ago to someone who took a "wait and see, now's not the time" attitude still holds true today:
And I will tell you one last time, gay rights are not an option. They are mandatory. If that offends people, too fucking bad. Nobody gets to make me into a second-class citizen in my own country.
If that harshes your mellow, well, as I said then, too fucking bad. It's an issue of basic civil rights and basic fairness. Nobody should have to question his or her party's commitment to either of those things. It wounds me deeply that I do have to question the commitment to both of those things both of my party and of our next president. Even more wounding is the level of blasé unconcern (and, frankly, outright dismissiveness) of the legitimate hurts and concerns of the GLBTQ contingent here at Daily Kos. I had thought we could at least count on you guys.