Press release from the national office of the Green Party. California Greens have issued a separate press release on the same issue.
Gay rights supporters should protest Obama’s choice of antigay minister Rick Warren to deliver inaugural prayer, say Greens
GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
http://www.gp.orgFor Immediate Release:
Tuesday, December 23, 2008Obama should have the US sign UN statement endorsing universal decriminalization of homosexuality
WASHINGTON, DC —
Green Party activists challenged gay voters and advocates of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender rights to protest President-elect Barack Obama’s invitation to Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation.
“Unless we make our anger known now, Mr. Obama will continue to betray gay people,” said Starlene Rankin, co-chair of the party’s Lavender Green Caucus (http://www.lavendergreens.us). “Barack Obama’s claim to be a ‘fierce advocate for equality’ is not credible when he chooses a pastor notorious for his ill-informed and slanderous opinions about homosexuality and vigorous support for Proposition 8.”
“The invitation signals that Mr. Obama may repeat the Clinton approach to gay rights. President Clinton, taking gay votes for granted, signed the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act into law and authorized the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ military policy. We’ve had generations of gay rights advocates and other progressives insisting that we need to elect Democrats, then we’ll push them towards pro-gay agenda. Instead, gay people have remained second-class citizens in the Democratic Party and told to hush up when they’re politically inconvenient. For those tired of bipartisan retreats from promises of human rights and justice, the Green Party remains the party of real change in America,” added Ms. Rankin.
The Green Party’s national platform asserts that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans deserve all the rights, including marriage and the ability to raise a family, that all other Americans enjoy (http://www.gp.org/platform/2004/socjustice.html#999082). Greens strongly opposed Proposition 8, which outlawed same-sex marriage in California.
Mr. Obama has said he opposed the passage of Propositon 8, but he also opposes full same-sex marriage rights, a position inconsistent with support for full and equal rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.
Pastor Warren’s public statements have revealed profound ignorance and bigotry on sexuality and on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in particular. Promoting passage of Proposition 8 in California, he has said that “in the hierarchy of evil… homosexuality is not the worst sin,” an admission that he believes gay people are evil because they are gay.
He has said that allowing same-sex marriage is like allowing “a brother and sister be together and call that marriage” and added that he is “opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that a marriage,” comparing same-sex marriage and homosexuality to incestuous relationships and pedophilia, which are crimes.
Greens noted that Barack Obama’s choice of Rev. Warren for the inaugural prayer coincides with a declaration introduced by 66 countries in the UN calling for universal decriminalization of homosexuality (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7791063.stm). The US is the only major western nation that has refused to sign on, even though a Supreme Court decision has invalidated US laws against sodomy.
“Will the new Obama Administration maintain Bush policy and decline to have the US sign the declaration against criminalization of gay people?” asked Tim Casebolt, secretary of the Lavender Green Caucus.
“Barack Obama has asked Robert Gates to stay on as Secretary of Defense. Mr. Gates is not only likely to continue the Bush Administration’s military aggression around the world, but also the targeting of gay members of the armed forces for investigation, harassment, and discharge. The Obama Cabinet appointments have disappointed anyone who sincerely hoped for genuine change in 2009,” Mr. Casebolt added.
John, the souls of Trotsky and Bukharin, which have recently transmigrated from purgatory to heaven, have reconciled, and the soul of Trotsky has allowed some Bukharinist ideologies to combine with parallel Catholic theology to become a part of the Catholic Trotskyist message.
I really wonder if there is Anything a Democrat could do that would result in their getting less than 75% of the LGBT vote.
Probably not. That would be up to some other party to figure out how to accomplish. That party will not be the Republicans so long as the religious right has a stranglehold, no matter what the Log Cabin Republicans try/say/do. The Libertarians potentially could – after all, there are any number of pro-free market LGBTs, and we are usually better on peace and civil liberties issues than the Democrats – but we’d have to start becoming more welcoming, and less Republican/Dixiecrat oriented in our appeals.
Any alternative party will have a hard time due to “wasted vote” miscalculations. But the potential for progress certainly exists. In some ways the LP has even more potential than the Greens do in this area, but it would take major surgery to get the party’s head out of its ass first.
I really wonder if there is Anything a Democrat could do that would result in their getting less than 75% of the LGBT vote.
Obama could appear with Dobson himself and the LGBT community would say, how Wonderful! How resplendent he is! And they would endlessly compare each others’ Come to Obama moments.
My predictions:
1. Obama will do Jack for gays; and
2. Obama will get 85% LGBT support anyway in 2012. And
3. Obama (or those who advise him) know that (2) will happen even if (1) happens.
Cattrot,
But as a left Communist, a Trotskist and hero of socialist labor, are you not betraying the aspirations of peace-loving peoples everywhere to speak favorably of a right/left parallel center? This was the error of Bukarin and that dog was shot for it. How are your devotees to understand this apparent inversion?
Paules proves to us, again, that he is a statist. Nothing new here.
It would be nice to see a decent chunk go Green and LP.
If the LP has any sense, it would be more welcoming.
“He did it as a political decision to try and cowtow to the religious right, which he’ll be doing his whole presidency.”
Clearly. The President Elect has far more to gain by winning over social conservatives than he has to lose by angering the gays. I credit Obama for having the political savvy to recognize that. It’s not as though west coast homosexuals are going to defect en mass to the GOP. Some may go Green or even LP, but most will stay with the Dems.
Rick Warren indeed symbolizes the combination of the religious right and left socialism, which makes me very heartened, and glad that I endorsed Obama so heavily on these blogs.
http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2008/11/09/obama-nation-the-futures-so-bright-i-gotta-wear-shades/
People who interpret “change” as pulling out of wars and occupaions will be disappointed. People who interpret “change” as a brighter day for civil equality will be disappointed.
People who interpret “change” as a day for reduced state heavy-handedness will be disappointed.
People who interpret “change” as an increase of left-socialist goverment intrusion into private concerns will be delighted.
Unfortunately, I like not at all this vision of change.
I honestly don’t care much. He did it as a political decision to try and cowtow to the religious right, which he’ll be doing his whole presidency.
““Unless we make our anger known now, Mr. Obama will continue to betray gay people,—
What did you expect? It’s not like he was the Pro-gay candidate. I never got why all these gay activists were happy as a clam when Obama won. Nothing’s gonna change with gay rights, it’s the illusion of gay rights which won Obama votes.