It could be that Barack Obama is simply smarter than the rest of us. The first black president of the Harvard Law Review has made a career of turning conventional wisdom on its head.

When people said that America was not ready for an African American president, he ran anyway – and won. He was counseled by countless talking heads to “go negative” against Hillary Clinton in the primaries and then John McCain – but he largely stuck to his strategy of staying positive – and won. In the middle of the campaign, Obama hit an iceberg named Rev. Jeremiah Wright, injecting race into a campaign that had desperately tried to shy away from this explosive issue. Obama discarded advice to spin the crisis and instead delivered a lecture on race relations that has gone down as one of the greatest speeches in the history of American politics – not to mention it saved his campaign. So, at this point in his rocket-propelled career, it is unwise to bet against the political instincts of Barack Obama.

Still, choosing pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration seemed like a gaffe that has served, if nothing else, as a distraction to Obama’s central message of unifying America. This olive branch to evangelical Christians, who largely supported John McCain, felt more like poison ivy to gay and lesbian voters, who overwhelmingly cast ballots for Obama.

After all, Warren has a program to “help” homosexuals “pray away the gay” and played a prominent role in passing Proposition 8, which prohibits same-sex couples from marrying in California. He has even compared same-sex couples marrying to incest and child abuse.

Even if scientists find that homosexuality is genetic, Warren would still counsel gay people to fight their “sin,” reducing our love to nothing more than perverted impulses. While Warren presumably gets his basic needs met by his wife, he expects gay people to abandon fulfilling relationships for dour lives of loneliness, severe depression and suicidal thoughts.

Obama can talk about unity all he wants, but what he is really doing is upholding the “Great Gay Exception. Obama would never have an anti-Semite on stage in the name of common ground. If so, why did he distance himself from fellow Chicagoan Louis Farrakhan during his campaign? Obama would also never dream of giving a platform to an open racist. But, Obama seems to think we should not object to him elevating Warren, who we find deeply offensive.

My hope is that Obama’s plan is to offer heavy doses of symbolism and style to power hungry preachers, like Warren – while delivering substantive policy achievements to the gay and lesbian community. When gay and lesbian leaders reacted with understandable indignation, Obama’s rebuttal was, people need to “learn to agree to disagree without being disagreeable.”

This phrase, that many Evangelicals are nodding their heads to in agreement, is a rhetorical trap. If they agree to this principle over the Warren flap, they have essentially forfeited their moral high ground if they get “disagreeable” when Congress passes a law that prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

The only flaw in this logic is that social conservatives rarely play by the same rules because they think they represent God. It is possible that Obama may have outsmarted himself by appealing to his sanctimonious enemies, who will never return the favor, while forfeiting support among his closest friends.

But, then again, maybe he really can buy goodwill by stroking the egos of narcissistic holy men. Rick Warren begins his best selling book The Purpose Driven Life with the refrain, “this is not about you.” Of course not! It’s always been about Rick Warren – whose camera-ready compassion is legendary.

If any good can come from this controversy, it is that many Americans now realize that Warren is masquerading as a moderate and posing as a pragmatist. Many Americans – who previously respected Warren – now view him as a poll-tested Pat Robertson who hides hate behind a Hawaiian shirt. He seemed arrogant and out of touch on NBC’s Dateline when he told Ann Curry that he wasn’t homophobic because he provided protesters outside his church with doughnuts. Gee, thanks, maybe next time you take away our rights we’ll get ice cream from His holiness.

The alternative storyline is really unthinkable.

In this version, Obama cynically used gay and lesbian people for money, votes and volunteers. Then before he is sworn in, he swears off equality. This plot was certainly advanced when not a single openly gay person was appointed to a high-level cabinet position.

Within a year, we will learn whether Obama’s decision to choose Warren was cagey, careless or cruel. If it is the former, we will soon view this cultural flashpoint as a flash in the pan. If it is the latter, it will cause an explosion of gay activism, giving many people who were previously apolitical, purpose driven lives – protesting Barack Obama.

U.S. President-Elect Barack Obama promised throughout his presidential campaign that, if elected, he would unite Americans and affirm a role for religion in public life. He cemented that vow with an assurance that he would expand President Bush’s “faith-based initiatives.”

The decision today by congressional Democrats to have evangelist Rick Warren give the inaugural invocation is the latest signal that the Democratic Party is friendly to evangelical Christians — even if that means slapping American religious minorities in the face.

First, I want to be clear: I believe that evangelical Christians deserve the same opportunities and freedoms as anyone else. And yet the notion of equal time for conservative Christians does not entitle a celebrity to serve as the sole official prayer-giver for all Americans at a signature federal event.

As Steven Waldman details for BeliefNet:

• Warren is the type of Christian who calls socially responsible Christians closet Marxists.
• Warren is the type of Christian who asserts that Christians cannot be free so long as gay couples are free, and then he rallies throngs of followers to deny to gays the very freedoms that he falsely claims are threatened by the existence of married gay couples. His admission that divorce is a more serious threat to “traditional marriage” is unconvincing — he made no effort and rallied no souls to enact a constitutional ban upon divorce.
• Warren is the type of Christian who claims to oppose abortion — but calls efforts by liberals to help women avoid abortion a “charade.”
• Warren is the type of Christian who worships a god of war and assassination instead of the Prince of Peace.
• Warren is the type of Christian who points to antigay religious activists and ex-gay pundits Tim Wilkins and Chad Thompson as experts on HIV/AIDS
• And Warren is the type of Christian who revises the Bible when it seems convenient to oneself or damaging to one’s supposed enemies. (Worthy of note: Chad Thompson agrees that Warren is a Bible-verse cherry-picker.)

But Warren is not all bad.

Warren says he supports hospital visitation and private insurance-sharing for couples — provided these freedoms are not packaged as civil unions. He condemns torture (though he does little to stop it). And Warren doesn’t damn non-evangelicals to hell.

(Correction, Dec. 21: Warren damns Jews to hell.)

Warren is not as intemperate, sadistic, tyrannical, greedy, or emotionally disturbed as Donnie McClurkin or James Dobson, or a racist like Tony Perkins — but he claims to be different from Dobson only in tone, not substance.

I am troubled by his selection to give a presidential, inaugural invocation. Warren’s frequent use of strawman arguments against rival religious and atheist communities, his willingness to assassinate foreign leaders on the basis of religion, and his smug judgmentalism make him a poor choice to be granted such an honor.

Presentation of the inaugural invocation is a privilege, not a right.

If America has matured enough to elect an African-American as president, then surely it has matured enough to select a Reform rabbi, a Quaker, or a Unitarian to give the invocation:

Someone, in other words, who is:

1. loyal to the central tenets of one’s own religion, and yet
2. fully affirming of American families from other religious or secular backgrounds

Warren, unfortunately, seems to be neither.

In a diatribe against Barack Obama, titled, “Obama’s election heals ‘white guilt’ at the cost of life and family,” Martin Luther King’s niece, Alveda King, said that overturning the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) “would unleash a storm of sexual immorality such as America has never seen.”

Alveda went on to say that, “Obama gives a face to abortion.”

Her commentary is profoundly disturbing and her homophobia is off the charts. I’m sure that the late Coretta Scott King, a gay rights supporter, would not be proud of such anti-gay rhetoric.

Coretta once said that, “Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood.”

I agree with Coretta.

The National Black Justice Coalition is a civil rights organization dedicated to empowering black LGBT Americans.

In a Nov. 19 article for The Advocate, NBJC CEO H. Alexander Robinson offers insights about the black-white divide and how to mend it going forward.

Excerpt:

…We can draw some lessons from an analysis of turnout and its correlation to racial demographics that are obvious on their face. For one, we know that too few resources were dedicated to influencing African-Americans’ perceptions (and votes) on LGBT issues during this election. Of the approximately $40 million raised to fight the propositions, scant resources were directed toward the black vote in California, no attention was paid in any meaningful way in Florida, and we were hardly considered as a group to influence in other states with anti-LGBT propositions.

President-elect Obama was against Proposition 8 because he did not feel that states should put discrimination into their constitutions. Although he has said that he believes marriage should be between a man and a woman, he also believes our families should have all the rights, benefits, and responsibilities afforded to him and his wife. A serious consideration of his nuanced position would have been a good place to start a discussion about full equality in the African-American community.

As we go forward, we need to be mindful that our foes will continue to attempt to use President-elect Obama, the black church, and campaigns of deception and fear to foster their own agenda in manipulative and devious ways. President-elect Obama’s opposition to same-sex marriage is grounded in his view of marriage as a religious institution. We must be steadfast in not allowing public officials to use religion to determine their positions on matters of justice. We know as a community all too well that this reasoning can be harmful to blacks as well as LGBT people.

The Family Research Council — co-founder and longtime supporter of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays — allowed racist merchandise to be sold for two days last week at its Values Voter Summit.

Two vendors from Tennessee sold an “Obama Waffles” parody of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. The product affirmed dated Aunt Jemima stereotypes, and — by placing Obama in an Arab-style headdress — repeated the religious right’s lie that Obama is a Muslim. (Fact: Obama is a Christian in the United Church of Christ, and has been for decades.)

The vendors capped their racist comedy with a back-of-the-box caricature of Obama in a Mexican headdress serving food to presumably despicable illegal aliens.

The parody sold well among Values Voter Summit attendees on Friday and Saturday, according to the New York Times. Buyers of the box included Lou Dobbs.

FRC later claimed ignorance of the parody’s offense. Then again, how would “aspiring Klansmen” — as critic Pam Spaulding puts it — understand Racism 101?

With his career-long trait of unprincipled moral relativism on full display, Focus on the Family chairman James Dobson this week backpedaled on his already-selective moral objections to U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

McCain is distrusted among independent and liberal Americans for his short temper, reckless impulses, adultery, divorce, remarriage to a wealthy benefactor, exaggeration of his Vietnam War heroism, affinity for anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic religious advisers, and waffling on American liberties including the freedom to serve in the Armed Forces and the freedom of religious and sexual minorities to marry.

Few of those broad moral, religious, and political considerations have mattered to Dobson, however — his moral voice in recent years has become so small and self-serving that it now encompasses only two issues: Sex and authoritarianism.

(By declining to offer moral leadership in matters of personal and global finance, charity, community diversity, cooperation, interfaith relations, human rights, and environmental stewardship, Focus on the Family has effectively advocated the very same “anything goes” morality that it falsely attributes to liberals.)

Dobson has objected to McCain — and threatened to lead a national religious-right boycott — for petty reasons: McCain’s lack of photo-op religious zeal, his weak commitment to criminalize women who have abortions, and his weak commitment for government to find new ways to discriminate against, ostracize, and criminalize same-sex-attracted Americans.

But now Dobson — who seems unwilling to offer a single specific objection to Democrat Barack Obama’s pro-family and national-security policies — finds himself on the political sidelines, demonizing Obama with misleading insults in order to buy back lost influence among the GOP:

(Read More)

By Wayne Besen

Left, James Dobson

It is remarkable that Focus on the Family’s James Dobson would accuse anyone of “distortions” considering his ignoble record. But, that is exactly what the right wing ideologue did this week when he said on his daily radio show that democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama distorted the Bible.

“I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology,” Dobson said.” “… He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter.”

Why do people still listen to what this serial liar has to say? In the past two years, at least seven researchers have accused Dobson of manipulating or cherry picking their results to back his anti-gay teachings. Letters and videos documenting the concerns of these respected professors can be viewed at RespectMyResearch.org.

The first researcher to step forward was New York University educational psychologist Carol Gilligan, PhD. On Sept. 14, 2006 Gilligan wrote a letter to Dobson that stated: “I was mortified to learn that you had distorted my work this week in a guest column you wrote in Time Magazine…What you wrote was not truthful and I ask that you refrain from ever quoting me again and that you apologize for twisting my work.” (Read More)

Attack on Barack Obama Hypocritical, Says TWO

NEW YORK – TruthWinsOut.org (TWO) responded today to Focus on the Family leader James Dobson’s attack on Barack Obama. On Dobson’s daily radio show, the right wing leader accused the democratic nominee of ‘distorting’ the Bible. This charge was odd, considering Dobson has been blamed by at least seven top researchers for “ distorting” their scientific findings.

“James Dobson is a serial distorter and has consistently twisted the work of respected scientists to support his political agenda,” said TWO Executive Director Wayne Besen. “It his the height of hypocrisy for him to point fingers and accuse others of distortions. It is clear that Dobson has little credibility and has tremendous difficulty with the truth.”
In the past two years, at least seven researchers have accused Dobson of manipulating or cherry picking their results to back his anti-gay teachings. Letters and videos documenting the concerns of these respected professors can be viewed at TruthWinsOut.org.

The first researcher to step forward was New York University educational psychologist Carol Gilligan, PhD. On Sept. 14, 2006 Gilligan wrote a letter to Dobson that stated: “I was mortified to learn that you had distorted my work this week in a guest column you wrote in Time Magazine…What you wrote was not truthful and I ask that you refrain from ever quoting me again and that you apologize for twisting my work.”

The most recent scientist to claim Dobson distorted his work was University of Minnesota’s Gary Remafedi, M.D., M.P.H. In a letter to Dobson dated April 28, 2008 he wrote, “I want to draw your attention to a gross misrepresentation of our research at the website of ‘Focus on the Family.’”

Other leading researchers who have taken issue with Dobson’s use of their work include: Dr. Kyle Pruett, Professor of child psychiatry, the Yale University School of Medicine; Dr. Robert Spitzer, Professor of Psychiatry, Columbia University; Angela Phillips, Professor, Goldsmiths College in London; Dr. Elizabeth Saewyc, Associate professor, school of nursing, University of British Columbia; and Dr. Judith Stacy, Professor of sociology, New York University

“We urge the media to report the facts and allow America to see the real James Dobson,” said Besen. “He portrays himself as a beacon of morality, but he is really just a tower of half truths.”

Truth Wins OUT is a non-profit organization that counters right wing propaganda, exposes the “ex-gay” myth and educates America about gay life. For more information, visit www.TruthWinsOut.org.
- 30 -