The nice thing about Twitter is concision. Forcing people to say what they have to say in 140 characters or less makes them consider their words more carefully. You don’t need thousands of words to get to the heart of why the Rick Warren issue is making people so angry, you can neatly sum it up in 140 characters, and even add a hopeful note. From @gruber:
I’ll bet when we elect our first gay president, he doesn’t invite an avowed racist to deliver the invocation.
And yes, yes, I use Twitter, and I don’t care if Rom Sims and Metro do, too. Other than finding no way to write the headline above without using the word “tweet”, I’m a big fan.
Who did Lincoln’s invocation? He might have been a racist.
2.67 Million hits when you google Rick Warren, his own websites at the top of the heap. Google trends showing a massive spike in attention and search volume.
Ka-ching!
Ah, the Grube did you let him know he’s been Slogged?
It’ll be nice when we’ve made as much progress away from homophobia as we have with racism. Sadly, homophobes still outnumber non-homophobes. And somebody needs to keep them under control.
After the two-year, historical election cycle where the First Gay President has to shrug off a constant stream of thinly-veiled homophobic attacks and crytpo-fascist gay-baiting, he can expect to have his every action, including engaging in the standard political paybacks and favor-trading, inspected under a microscope for any tell-tale signs of bias. Any mis-step will result in his rickety coalition of left-wing special interest groups splintering into a factious, screaming mob. Pundits on all sides will fall immediately into conversations about how Gay People “are just like that. They don’t care about _____ people.”
@4: Racism is still alive and well, and it does cause many a problem in this country.
@5 FTW.
@6 – No doubt, racism is alive and well and a real problem. But we’ve made major progress in our history. More progress, I’d wager, than we have with gay rights. When we get to the point in our electorate where a gay president is viable, I’d expect racism to be even less of a problem than it is today. Still not gone, but less of a problem.
Speaking of presidents, if we had elected Sarah Palin instead of that socialist Obama, maybe our roads would be clear right now. SHe has experience with snow, she lives in Alaska. Obama is some terrorist sympather from corrupt Chicago.
Every time I hear about the wining about the snow, I laugh because they probably voted for Obama. I voted for Palin–with her in office right now we’d be driving on bare pavement.
@8
Brilliant troll or complete idiot
Is there more homophobia in the black community than there is racism in the gay community? Watching the Prop 8 and Rick Warren debates from the straight white sidelines it seems to me there’s plenty of community warfare on each side.
Frankly I’m just pissed that there’s a prayer of any kind (straight/gay/black/white/fat/thin) at the inauguration in the first place.
@8 – you couldn’t have voted for palin, and she wouldn’t have been in office right now.
just sayin’
I actually vote for using “Twit” instead of “tweet.”
@10- I’m not happy about the prayer either, but don’t confuse symptoms with the disease. We’re going to have the traditional prayer until our society is secular enough that we decide we don’t need it anymore. Same thing with homophobes: we get to ignore or marginalize them when they’re truly marginal, and not a minute before.
So be patient and keep working. Change is coming, it just isn’t here yet.
Sweet Jebuz! Move on people.
Who gave the invocation in 2004? In 2000? Don’t know do ya?
How about for Clinton in 1992? Or 96?
Or for Bush Sr. in `88? Or for Reagan in `80 or `84?
What’s that… you say you don’t know/remember/care? Know why that is? CUZ IT DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER!!!
It’s a pointless vacuous role and has NOTHING to do with running the country or with the positions of the administration. Get a grip! We’ve got bigger fish to fry than this already.
Wait, Obama invited an avowed homophobe to do the invocation? So he got rid of Rick Warren after all?
James Buchanan was our first gay president. Not openly gay, but read his biography. He was gay.
@7: The reason the racial equality movement has made more advancement than the gay equality movement is so strikingly simple it may escape you: Guess what? It’s because they’ve been at it longer! (duh!)
The Gay Rights movement didn’t get rolling as anything even close to an “organized political entity” really until after the Stonewall riots of 1969. So, after less than 40 years of existence, Gay Rights are actually trucking along pretty damn well, thank you anyway. That isn’t to say it’s over, or that you should stop (or even slow down), or that there isn’t plenty of work still to be done. But you do need to recognize that this movement is way ahead of the curve, as political actions go. When you put it in an historic perspective, gays have got their rights handed to them on a silver platter, by comparision.
God knows there were plenty of blacks and women from early this century that would have LOVED to have made the same progress in their campaigns for civil rights as gays have in their first 40 years.
@14: This is much easier than doing anything, just like blaming black people is easier than opening dialogues, blaming mormons is easier than ponying up cash next time something like this comes around– and so on and so forth. It’s the “California Method”: blame loud enough and you don’t have to do anything.
So we’ve actually had consecutive gay presidents … Buchanan and Lincoln?
@17 – That’s definitely the case. I think gay rights have been so successful for a number of reasons, but one of those reasons is that they did come so late (mostly, after the 1960s), and so all this left-wing civil rights infrastructure was already in place, and people like Ghandi and MLK had already laid out grand visions of equality for humanity. So it’s been a natural consequence of the women’s/black civil rights movements, that gay rights has been able to make inroads as quickly as it has. Which I think is what you’re saying.
@18 they ARE doing something you twit. Have you not been paying ANY attention to all the moves to have the Supreme Court nullify Prop 8 on a host of legal reasons that have nothing to do with class warfare or this supposed “whining about black people”? Get a clue.
COMMENT DELETED: Threatening
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