Obama and his supporters' defense of Rick Warren's role in the inauguration keeps angering me more and more from a progressive perspective. Now, after doing a little more digging on the subject, I'm even more upset. Why? Obama has taken a completely different position with respect to Warren than the one he held last year regarding racist shock jock Don Imus.
Although Obama piously admonishes his GLBT critics to "disagree without being disagreeable" and to respect the many "noisy and opinionated" voices that exist in this country, he argued something very different regarding Imus. Rather than defending Imus, Obama condemned his words as "degrading" and became the first presidential candidate to call for broadcasters to fire him.
What could cause such conflicting approaches? Well, Obama's comments concerning Imus were made in advance of the general election. He was still simply "presidential candidate" Barack Obama seeking his party's nomination. He catered to the Democratic base which is dominated by women and blacks. Now, he is catering to a moderate-to-conservative general electorate and is clearly willing to diss gays and lesbians in order to gain and maintain broad support for his presidency.
Unfortunately, many liberals have validated his selling out of gays and lesbians by offering apologia and describing his "reaching across the aisle" philosophy as an act of nobility, rather than betrayal and contradiction. This is quite unfortunate.
It is even more unfortunate given the reality that opponents of same-sex marriage and gay rights generally are already well represented "at the table" in American politics. Obama himself does not support same-sex marriage, so he is not enhancing diversity with Warren. Instead, he is only giving us "more of the same."
By linking glbt relationships with pedophilia, Warren has degraded the glbt community, just as Imus degraded blacks and women. Yet, Obama defends Warren despite having insisted that Imus lose his job. I can only reconcile these two disparate positions by viewing them both as helping Obama gain politically.
Source: Rick Warren versus Don Imus: Obama's Inconsistent Positions
DLH