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Drew Schwetschenau
Worcester, MA
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Drew commented on the article |Gah, how have decades of movement towards acceptance of GLBT individuals somehow been tossed out the window by one man coming to speak at an inaugeration?
You would think someone was beheading a puppy in the name of killing all gay people at the inaugeration from the way everyone is talking.
Get some perspective on this, you place in the tent has not been taken - there is more involvement from this community in this government than ever! Reverand Lowry is going to give the official benediction. How are you excluded? Just because another group was included?
It all seems so narrow-minded and petty. It makes me so sad, I'm close to tears right now. People who claim to be open-minded and progressive can't even conceive of listening to someone who has said a few things that have made them angry. And we wonder why its been so hard to convince people that GLBT people are good people parents and citizens. No one is willing to come together and listen to each other - it has to be all one group or all the other.
This isn't triangulation - it's a fulfillment of an election promise of renewing this country's unity. He made it over and over again. We are one people, we are one nation. Stop being so shocked. -
Drew commented on the article |
Focusing on these narrow things and generalizations is how we lose sight of the big picture and how we become so divided in our minds. How we start to hate people even the slightest bit different from us. Which is what we are all here to fight against right?
There are corporatists that get things done and that have things to offer to our government in terms of policy. I don't like that corporatists they often forget individuals in their narrow focus on the bottom line or the primacy of renewing economic momentum
I don't like those comments that Rick Warren has made. But listen to the man sometime, and not just the quoted and often drastically twisted into overstatement 'hate lines' that circulate in your communities. Don't get me wrong, I find him somewhat obnoxious and misguided certainly on lgbt issues. You are getting all your view of the man from people that hate him, just as he got his view of you from people that hate gays. That doesn’t mean that everyone that people think about him is true. Just like Gays don't engage in bestiality, incest and pedophilia - that's just what people thought for a long time.
YOU are making broad generalizations of that EXACT sort that have made the road to LGBT equality so incredibly hard. Obama is still an idealist because he believes we can take the best of what works in our country and its ideologies and then combine it and make it understand itself. It's something we lose hope in far too often, the hope for understanding. The hope for united purpose. And its what he promised from the beginning. He hasn't changed. You just weren't listening.
My hope is stronger than ever. I only wish this communities' hope was. Sorry, I know I am seeming especially harsh. I completely understand how you could feel the way you do - it has been a long hard fought battle and we feel like we are so close, so setbacks are that much more painful.
But seriously... listen openly to what Warren has to say on inauguration day, think about all the people that normally might not watch the things that go on and that have been feeling disenfranchised with the new government, just as you have felt disenfranchised. And wonder, maybe this was the right thing, at the right time. Maybe we do all need to be united, even though some believe different things. Obama is one of the staunchest supporters of pro-choice rights - Somehow Rick Warren didn't say, 'no-way baby killer, I'm not helping to inaugurate you.' He sought to come together. And that is all I hope for. -
Drew commented on the article |
I find your total abandonment of hope for Obama over him being inclusive to be completely despicable and hypocrital. You want to be listened to and included, but when someone who has a very different opinion than you is listened to and included you completely freak out?
I've donated money and been a big part of promoting GLBT issues for years, but now that I see how close minded the community can be it makes me feel like I wasted a lot of time. You can't engage others and bring them around to understanding by spitting in their face and not listening to them. If you can't see that Obama is trying to bring people together and let yourself be driven apart by things like this, I have little hope for you.
You can be hurt by the setbacks of Prop 8, and the difficulties presented to you across the country. But don't redirect all that anger towards a man that mostly agrees with and respects you. Unless you want to drive a wedge between yourself and the rest of us who mostly agree with and respect you. And the last thing we need in this whole situation is less understanding and listening.
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