Obama, Warren, and the Prop 8 Aftermath

There’s a lot of talk about the fact that Barack Obama has selected Rick Warren to deliver the inauguration address. This decision doesn’t surprise me much; although it is, as one activist put it, a kick in the gut to gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people everywhere. Lets face it, with the official Democratic platform on Gay rights narrowing and the push in the Obama administration to grab the support of the, now, disenfranchised moral majority, what’s to stop him from making such a move? Could it be his support for Gay marriage? Oh wait a minute – his stance on gay marriage is the absence thereof.

The thing that’s really ironic about this whole situation is that the disparity between the perspectives is only spawned in their attempts to get each other to “understand.” You have the people on the right crying that the definition of marriage has been changed against the will of the people and legal recourse was taken to change that; which subsequently does not affect GLBT’s since it was never a civil rights issue. Conversely, the left believes it was a civil rights issue because the GLBT comunity is a form of minority and therefore equal treatment was denied utilizing legal processes that did not follow state prescribed procedures for creating constitutional amendments.

These fundamental assertions stem from a priori mantra on what it really means to be a homosexual i.e.: choice. Leaving the choice debate aside, it seems that all other debates of “what really happened” and “getting them to see the other side” should theoretically arrest at the fact that neither share the same a priori. At which point the discussion should be redacted to first address the intrinsic disparity in the a priory.

Obama’s inauguration pick isn’t the only thing that lies within the scope of attention for the GLBT community. The GLBT community has marched and is marching and while most have remained peaceful to the concerns of an ardent pacifist some have resorted to measures almost as extreme as the one exercised in the creation of a state proposition. Cause a slightly new debate to arise in which both sides claim to be “minorities” and victims by the hands of the other the “majority”. The Christian “minorities” must be referring to the centuries of being systematically burnt at the stake. Or maybe they are referring to being publicly defamed and dehumanized. Maybe they are referring to being moved from one room to another in fear and suspicion.

As a Pacifist (or really a Christian) I feel somewhat caught in the middle here. On the one hand I definitely sympathize with wanting to smash everything that has a cross on it; on the other I feel that resorting to violence means stooping to the very level of action that I would admonish. Well, in more ways than one, we will see how this pans out.