The long-term significance of the Rick Warren flap

[starroute]

At this point, I don't know if Obama is thinking three chess moves ahead of the rest of us, or if he overreached in his community-organizer instinct to try to bring together warring groups. I certainly don't believe he intends to throw anyone under the bus.

But leaving Obama out of it for the moment, what I do see is that for the first time gay marriage has become *the* overriding issue here at DU -- and is becoming an increasingly pivotal issue even in the country at large.

Have any of you stopped to think what that means?

I'm old enough to remember the period in the early 1960's when civil rights stopped being just one more thing that was going on and became the defining issue of the era. When segregation was no longer something that people could disagree about politely, when you were defined not only by which side you were on but by the nuances of your exact position.

I'd date that change in consciousness to around 1963 -- the year of the March on Washington, and also the year when Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" asked the nation, "How many years can some people exist before they're allowed to be free, and how many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see?"

It's been clear for a good while that gay rights are the equivalent now of civil rights back then -- that gay activists are more radical, more willing to get in people's faces and shake up the established order, than anybody else. And also that gay rights ultimately aren't just about gay people -- that like civil rights in the 60's, they will open the way for people to demand a whole lot of other fundamental human rights that we aren't even thinking about yet.

On the other hand, right now we're still at a point that looks less like the 60's than like the late 50's, when civil rights was an issue for blacks and a matter for sympathy by white liberals, but nothing larger. I think that's in the course of changing though -- and I think this Rick Warren flap is a major catalyst for the change.

Essentially, I believe gay rights is going to stop being a gay issue and become a defining issue. It's going to become something that everybody has to take a position on -- and accept being defined in the eyes of that world by that position. It's going to be something that straights can no longer waffle on -- not because of political pressure but because it will be universally seen as tying in with every other important issue of the moment, from the need for everyone to work together to repair our economy and our planet, to the central role played by creative people in a new economic order that runs on ideas and not on making things.

And right now is exactly when all that is beginning.

So keep your cool and try to enjoy it. This is history.

[EFerrari]

1. Obama and Warren are both benefiting from framing this as a "gay" issue

and not as something else -- especially, as a controversy about choice which it clearly is as well.

While you might be right that in the longer run, equal rights will benefit, at the moment, because the controversy is being framed as a "gay" issue, it's simply easier to marginalize.

[The Doctor.]

2. It will be nice to see the hateful and the bigoted relegated to the same dustbin

as the racists.

There will be holdouts for a long time, but soon, as you say, expressing such things in polite conversation will be unheard of.

[Tigress DEM]

3. Rights are Rights and each minority should be protected from a majority vote on theirs.

Prop 8 was a travesty and a mis-carriage of justice to the extreme.

However, that said, I sometime believe in the tactic of giving up the word and simply demanding the rights.

Getting it on the law book as a federal ammendment specifically disallowing ANY discrimination based on sexual preference - who said anyone gets to know about that anyway? Not that I want gays in the closet, just the public's nosey laws out of their bedroom.

People are People. Rights are Rights.
You can't "humanize" gays by portraying them a certain way in a movie* (ala O'Reilly) because they already ARE human and a lot of them a hell of a lot better people than that blowhard O'Reilly.
(No pun intended, but it works. Nobody to blow but himself, and still it hasn't stopped him. Sigh.)

[eShirl]

6. we almost passed the Equal Rights Amendment back in the 70s

there was a lot of opposition from people who claimed it would apply to (all) homosexuals, not just equal rights for women

maybe it's time to revive the ERA and make sure it applies to all

[RC]

7. What ? Revive the ERA and allow women to go in the men's restrooms?

:sarcasm:

[IndianaGreen]

4. Obama overreached!

And he has a history of failing to take a stand on controversial religious figures, be they Warren, Wright, or Farrakhan.

[tbyg52]

5. Hope you're right. nt