Quote:
Originally Posted by u-dog
Just because Obama is courting these evangelicals does NOT necessarily mean that he is throwing GLBT folks under the bus.
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Yes it does.
Look, I'm not saying Obama will be a bad president. Quite the contrary, I think he'll be the right president at the right time in a lot of ways. I didn't vote for him because I thought he'd put us first on his agenda. I always knew that we weren't, and I was prepared to live with that, especially given the alternative.
But if nothing else, his choice of a homophobic bigot to pray on behalf of the entire nation on his very first day in office should serve as a reminder to all of us that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people are expendable. If Obama has to sacrifice us to get the evangelicals on his side, he'll do it. If he has to sacrifice us to get a Supreme Court Justice nomination through, he'll do it. If he has to sacrifice us to [fill in the blank, anything works, really.] he'll do it.
We are politically expendable. Our lives, our freedoms, our rights, and our needs as human beings are secondary to all else. Our job, or at least mine, is to keep on reminding people of that so we aren't terribly shocked when DOMA isn't repealed because the fundies will get upset or DADT isn't repealed because the Marines will get upset or marriage equality doesn't happen because the straight people will get upset or the Matthew Shepard act isn't enacted because the Republicans will get upset.
Their needs, rights, and freedom [insert any they] are up here [I'm holding my hand way above my head], and ours are down here [touching the carpet].
And if there's one thing we should have learned from the past eight years, it's that
no public figure should get the "benefit of the doubt". That way tyranny lies.