I think we can all agree this guy is a homophobe
but some people might disagree that this guy is too
perhaps because he masks his homophobia behind a business suit and niceties. That doesn't change the fact he's a homophobe. There are degrees of homophobia, just as there are degrees of racism, sexism, anti-semitism, etc.
These guys are plainly virulently racist
But so are these guys, even though their racism isn't and wasn't as overt
So let us look at some of the Obama administration's actions and Obama's statements and apply them to the measuring stick of race instead of sexual orientation as see how they come off to you.
If someone said, "I believe that marriage is the union between a white and a white or a black and a black. Now, for me as a Christian ... it’s also a sacred union. You know, God’s in the mix.
I am not somebody who promotes mixed-race marriage, but I do believe in civil unions. I do believe that we should not — that for mixed race partners to want to visit each other in a hospital, for the state to say, you know what, that’s all right — I don’t think in any way inhibits my core beliefs about what marriage are. I think my faith is strong enough and my marriage is strong enough that I can afford those civil rights to others, even if I have a different perspective or a different view."
That sounds pretty racist to me. Not too much different from that Justice of the Peace in Louisiana who refused to marry a mixed race couple, even though he's totally OK with black people!!! Yet the statement above is a paraphrase of the words of then Senator Obama as candidate for President at Rick Warren's Saddleback Church.
Obama has repeatedly stated he is against marriage equality and favors civil unions…he favors segregation, a separate, but "equal," institution to handle people who are different. If this were race we're talking about, bar none, pro-segregation=racism, but people here become livid at the notion that Obama's Jim Crow position on marriage equality is homophobic.
Now imagine a Presidential candidate trying to shore up support in his campaign with white southerners. To do so he invites gospel singer popular with white southerners to emcee and sing at a concert. After making the booking, the candidate discovers the singer's racist past, but the candidate declines to cancel the event or replace the singer. The concert goes on and the singer uses his position with the microphone to pop off a mildly racist comment at the event. After the event, the campaign of the candidate circulates a memo to the media that strenuously tries to distance the candidate from the singer's racist positions, but also says, in all capital letters that the singer "IS NOT TRYING TO INTIMIDATE BLACKS WHO AREN'T UPPITY." Would that be racist?
Well, that's just what happened in the Donnie McClurkin fiasco in South Carolina with Barack Obama and the GLBT community. McClurkin went up onstage and talked about God delivering him from homosexuality, repeating a lie that is dangerous poison to gay youth. After the Concert, the Obama campaign distributed a statement that included, and I quote
MCCLURKIN DOES NOT WANT TO CHANGE GAYS AND LESBIANS WHO ARE HAPPY WITH THEIR LIVES AND HAS CRITICIZED CHURCH LEADERS WHO DEMONIZE HOMOSEXUALS.
The fact the statement also says "OBAMA DOES NOT AGREE WITH MCCLURKIN'S VIEWS ON GAYS" hardly negates or abrogates the homophobia displayed by allowing McClurkin on stage and the earlier statement in the release. The campaign never apologized for the incident.
But that was the campaign, right? "Things will be different once he's in office" you might say. That's hardly been the case. For one, his position on marriage equality hasn't changed and as I said above, it is homophobic to oppose marriage equality, especially if based on your religious belief and you are fine imposing those beliefs on others.
Now imagine the Department of Justice defending a Federal anti-miscegenation law (a law barring mixed race marriages) under the false notion proffered here that it is their duty to defend any and all laws on the books zealously, no matter how abhorrent or unconstitutional. In defending that miscegenation law, imagine the DOJ filing a brief that states the state has the authority to ban interracial marriage because they found a case where the state ruled against a person who wanted to marry a monkey. By citing that case as authority, the DOJ is saying the case of a person trying to marry a monkey is sufficiently similar to the case of a white trying to marry a black that the state has the authority to ban marriages of a white to a black because it can ban a person from marrying a monkey. No where in the brief does it make the direct comparison blacks=monkeys, but the juxtaposition of the two makes it an abhorrent citation to make. Indeed many, especially in the American-American community, would almost certainly denounce the DOJ for the brief, call it racist and demand an apology.
And yet many people here saw absolutely no problem with the brief last summer where the DOJ cited cases of incestuous and ephebophilic marriages to argue against marriage equality, completely tone deaf to the decades of history of Focus on the Family, the American Family Association, the National Organization for Marriage, etc, comparing gays to pedophiles. We even see this heinous comparison being made today by religious homophobes like Rick Warren. In a 2008 interview, here is what Rick Warren had to say about same sex marriage:
Warren: [...] The issue to me, I’m not opposed to that as much as I’m opposed to redefinition of a 5,000 year definition of marriage. I’m opposed to having a brother and sister being together and calling that marriage. I’m opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that marriage. I’m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.
Interviewer: Do you think those are equivalent to gays getting married?
Warren: Oh, I do. For 5,000 years, marriage has been defined by every single culture and every single religion – this is not a Christian issue. […]
Against the backdrop of the history of the GLBT equality movement, bringing up incest, pedophilia, bestiality is the province of right wing homophobes. And the Obama DOJ did it in its brief.
Now imagine the DOJ defending a law that prohibits blacks from serving in the military and as justification of why such a law is constitutional, they use old, outdated, racists statements made by Congress when they passed Jim Crow laws or laws pertaining to slavery, quotes that demean the professionalism of African Americans, and make them out to be these sexual beasts that will rape white soldiers if they are allowed to serve. They did up some old quotes from a generation prior by a well respected general who was racist at the time and cite that as justification. They take the modern depositions of two experts on racial minorities in the military and twist their statements in the deposition to mean the exact opposite of what they actually said. Is that racist?
That equivalent is to what the DOJ did in the recent brief in the Log Cabin Republicans' suit against DADT. They cited Congress's homophobic "findings of facts" from 1993, "facts" that are patronizingly condescending to the service of thousands of gays and lesbians, particularly those that have made the ultimate sacrifice. They took General Powell's 1993 statements on gays, statements that were ignorant and homophobic, and cited them as authority when General Powell had repudiated those statements before the brief was submitted. Powell admitted he was wrong and now believes gays and lesbians should be able to serve openly. The DOJ took statements from the sworn depositions of Aaron Belkin and Nathaniel Frank of the Palm Center, a military think tank of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and twisted them to support the military ban when in fact the statements by both vehemently oppose the ban.
Now imagine that in 1964, LBJ delivered his State of the Union telling Congress to make this session of Congress the one that did more for civil rights than the last one hundred sessions combined. Actually you don't need to imagine that. He did that. But imagine that instead of pressing Congress repeatedly to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he instead went quiet, not muttering a word on the issue while having his press secretary give nothing more than nebulous "of course we support the Civil Rights Act" statements devoid of any timetable. Imagine that in the impending election, the ability of the Congress to pass a Civil Rights Act after the election would be severely compromised if not obliterated. Imagine the NAACP and other activists pressing for the Act's passage that year, without delay because of the reduced ability that was imminent. Against that backdrop, would it be racist for LBJ to then send his legislative liaisons to Congress to tell members not to pass the act this year? I dare say it would. It'd be working against the interests of the African-American Civil Rights Movement and the members of that movement would be justifiably livid with the administration if they were caught doing that.
Today, we are faced with a similar proposition with the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Obama mentioned it in the State of the Union, but hasn't pressed for it one iota since. They claim they want to study it more, when over a dozen studies of gays in the military now exist. The GLBT Civil Rights Movement is pressing for a repeal this year because it is likely, based on both long standing history and the enthusiasm gap in recent polling, that Democrats will lose seats in Congress, making passage of a repeal next year even more difficult or, if the Republicans gain control of either house, impossible. Against that backdrop, John Aravosis and Joe Sudbay have reported the Obama administration's Congressional liaisons have told members of Congress not to pass a DADT repeal this year. The White House denies the report, but fails to call for a repeal this year, even if the repeal contains the flexibility the administration may need to implement the repeal.
We are even seeing suggestions on the DADT front that they are considering segregation in the military, 60 years after racial segregation of the military was ended by Truman. Army secretary McHugh suggested they may create segregated units and/or barracks for gays and lesbians. There was no doubt that 60 years ago such a notion was racist, even if common. It is no less abhorrent today.
These incidents show a pattern of homophobia by this administration. It may not be Fred Phelps style "god hates fags" virulent in nature, but it is homophobia nonetheless. In some ways it is more insidious in that try to mask their homophobia behind the niceties of "we support equality" while their track record tells a far different story. If you want to read the other evidence I cite to show the administrations pattern of being homophobes and unhelpful to the GLBT Civil Rights movement, by all means read the diary.
I think it does a huge disservice to claim that these acts are not homophobic. What other word would you use? I guess I could use homobigot and say they are bigoted, but I venture to guess that would see an even more negative reaction. Calling it something milder is not appropriate. It would be asinine to say Jesse Helms wasn't racist or that Pat Buchanan isn't. Being socially polite about it only lets them continue to be as racist as they like. Helms didn't "have a mild dislike of African Americans," he was a racist. Part of the way racism in America has declined was that people didn't want to be called racist. There is a social stigma to being racist and many people moderate their tone and become more supportive, at least publicly, if they fear they can and will be labeled racist. It is no different with homophobia. Homophobes and those that act homophobic deserve to be called out on their bigotry. They need to be sent into the closet with their bigotry, to be forced to stop oppressing the civil rights of minorities. If they want to hold racists and/or homophobic beliefs privately, that is their right, but we need to create a society where such public expressions of hate are unacceptable. I guarantee you that if every time Democrats advocated civil unions as a solution to the marriage equality issue that gays called them segregationists, most Democrats would drop the civil unions "compromise" and be shamed into supporting full equality. Sure some would switch to the anti-marriage side. Let them. History will judge them just as it has those that defended segregation.
Even Martin Luther King understood all this. In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, King expressed his profound disappointment in the moderates who had become a greater barrier to equality than the KKK or the white Citizen Councils:
First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
I'll conclude with this analogy courtesy of the comments in the other diary. One commenter pointed out that a neighbor threw out his daughter out of the house when she came out as being a lesbian. The commenter said "That is a fucking homophobe." I agree, that is and it is the worst kind. Few things in this world get my blood boiling faster than such expressions of homophobia directed at GLBT children. And we've seen this scenario play out on this site and in the news recently with the stories of The Nephew here and the plight of Derrick Martin, a Georgia HS student thrown out by his parents after it became public news that he won approval from his school to take his boyfriend to the prom. I think we can all agree that throwing people out when they come out is homophobic…so what does that say for President Obama, who has overseen the throwing out of over 500 people from the military for coming out or being outed. Sure, the neighbor tossing his daughter to the curb, The Nephew's parents disowning him initially (though slowly making some strides towards a reconciliation) and the parents of Derrick Martin kicking him out are worse, but it is functionally the same as what Obama is doing. The difference is only a matter of degree.
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