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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Mac Con Ulaidh who wrote (43641)11/6/2008 7:51:48 PM
From: zeta1961  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 149317
 
Nah...that stripping of a right already granted gave me a kick in the proverbial stomach...terrible...

Rest well...



To: Mac Con Ulaidh who wrote (43641)11/7/2008 6:29:37 AM
From: thames_sider  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 149317
 
Hey choosie, you can always cheer up by reading Mark Morford.

sfgate.com

...
Some say the inglorious success of Prop. 8, the brutally regressive measure that removes the rights of very specific people who love very specific other people from ever marrying them, can be blamed on multiple factors.

Some say it was Gavin Newsom's smugness and political recklessness. Some blame Feinstein for daring to support Prop. 8's defeat. Some blame the black and Latino communities for their shocking and rather heartbreaking support of what essentially amounts to a civil rights abuse of the very kind they themselves fought so hard to overcome.

Or maybe it's all those sad, white, central portions of the state, the huge chunks of voters who live in places without much culture or perspective or major universities, who only hear certain strains of spiteful rhetoric and thin fearmongering, whose general lack of education means they apparently still believe certain flavors of love will poison everyone's soup and ruin the sanctity of the time-honored 50-percent heterosexual missionary position Christian divorce rate.
...

Is it not true? Once again this election, in pulpits across America, the call rang out: We must stop the gays. We cannot allow them entry into the sanctuary of Eternal Hetero Love. After all, marriage is (these people believe) the last upstanding Christian stronghold, the final barrier preventing America from becoming some sort of Sodom-iffic nipple-pierced polyamorous rave party where anyone can marry anything and pets are running scared and people stick parts of their bodies into other people's parts for sexual pleasure. The horror.

And yes, it must be said: Sad indeed to imagine many of those black pastors up there, cheering Obama's win and deeming this a new dawn for blacks after so many years of struggle for basic civil rights, while in the next breath talking up the wrath of God that will strike parishioners should they allow homosexuals to register for stemware at Crate & Barrel. Talk about disingenuous.

Let me suggest it outright: The vast majority of Yes on 8 voters seem to have been motivated, at least in part, by this sad misunderstanding of God, this harsh spiritual slant that supports a discriminatory, micromanager Almighty who fully endorses marital bliss, but only for some.

(Interestingly, I believe this is the same God who, until recently, didn't allow whites to marry blacks. Or women to vote. Or slaves to be free. Or people to get divorced. Or women to become priests. Or humans to wear condoms. Hmm.)

Then again, when you put it that way, the ugly fight for Prop. 8 makes perfect sense. After all, hetero marriage is all organized religion really has left, their last vestige of power and control. Everything else they fought so hard to inject into the national agenda -- intelligent design, God's war against Muslims, the end of reproductive choice, more prayer in schools, abstinence education, et al -- not only failed, but failed spectacularly. No wonder they're clinging to this old, failed idea of marriage so violently.
...

The good news is, I think Prop. 8's desperate, last-gasp victory merely reveals that this hollow, homophobic version of God is waning, sliding, fighting for its last taste of relevance, soon to be replaced by something just a bit more dynamic and open-hearted and, well, truly divine.

The bad news is, it's just going to take a bit longer than we'd hoped.