Embrace What You Have In Common With Rick Warrenby Lee Stranahan on the Huffington Post
We want to cram Obama into our old, divisive, two toned ideological and political frame and if he doesn't fit, we'll attack him too. Attacking is what we're used to doing.
Apparently, Barack Obama meant what he said about our politics being too small for our problems.
With job layoffs and new miserable financial statistics being announced every day, how else can we explain the press and some Republicans being endlessly fascinated with the non-connection between between Obama and Blagojevich? How else does one explain the thrashing about of some progressives over the idea of Pastor Rick Warren saying a few minutes of prayer at Obama's inauguration?
The answer is simple; we currently practice a mighty small politics in the United States.
You might not like the idea of Prop 8 supporter Rick Warren anywhere near Washington on January 20th. None of my friends do. This isn't hype; the people who are so bent out of shape about Warren are literally all my friends or people I admire.
Like my comrades, I think Warren is dead wrong on same sex marriage. But the reality is that at the end of 2008, a majority of voters in California agreed with him. A majority of Americans agree with Warren about same sex marriage and many more states have made marriage equality unconstitutional than have ratified it.
Read the rest on the Huffington Post.
I would like to advocate a simple, quite, peaceful, and non-confrontational protest against Rick Warren's participation in the inauguration. If at the start of his talk, those opposed to what he stands for would simply and quietly turn their backs on the podium, a very strong message will be given.
ReplyDeleteWe turn our backs on discrimination.
We turn our backs on the intolerance and fear mongering espoused by the Rev. Warren.
We turn our backs on violence and noisy disruption as methods of protest and instead rely upon our personal rejection of the message.
In the early 1990s', I witnessed the citizens of the Norwegian town of Lillehammar (of Winter Olympic fame) come together in the town square where a racist idiot was giving a speech trying to recruit neo-Nazis. Picture, if you will, 300 to 400 hundred people walking up to the stage and quietly turning their backs on the speaker. No screaming protests, no violent fights with skin heads. Just utter rejection of the message of hate that was being promulgated. It drove the neo- Nazis crazy.
Several weeks later, thousands of people in Oslo (the capitol city) repeated the action when the same person tried another rally in that city. End result of these two actions- the party that the speaker represented lost not gained membership.
Symbolically, more effective than a thrown shoe, don't you think?