diverting from our main discussion to Rick Warren

Link first: "It's not Obama I'm mad at; it's way too many of you."

There're a lot of people, including some quite close to me, who don't get why this Rick Warren thing is a big deal. Or they argue that it's about bringing together diverse views, or reaching out to the right, and that it's somehow admirable for this. Here're my two cents:

Bull-fucking-shit. Hem. This isn't just one isolated event; it's yet another in a long line of occasions where the Democratic Party has reached out to the right at the expense of the GLBT community, thrown us under the bus in the name of unity. This isn't about diversity; this is validation of hate speech, a signal that it is somehow acceptable to, as Warren has, compare gay marriage to incest. This isn't outreach; we're not communicating anything to the guy or his supporters except that Obama & co. care about them. And if he'd spoken of another minority -- say, Jews, or Asian-Americans, or African-Americans -- as hatefully as he has of gay people, nobody would consider it an acceptable form of outreach or diversifying.

The thing is, quite simply, that GLBT issues are not abstract. I've said it before; I'll keep saying it. GLBT issues are not abstract. People die because of anti-GLBT discrimination. People are brutally attacked because homophobia is still accepted -- nay, encouraged -- in our society. I could go on -- that's just this last week -- but I shouldn't have to. It should be bleeding obvious that GLBT people need protection and active support and that no, we can't wait. We have waited too long. We can't go on taking scraps from the table of justice, watching as hate speech is accepted and affirmed while we are told to sit down and shut up until the mainstream is "ready" for us, following along like good little sheep after leaders who openly oppose full equality and justify it with religious beliefs that aren't even validated by the holy texts they draw from. As the famous quote/paraphrase whose origins appear to be lost in the mists of time says, "justice too long delayed is justice denied" and we cannot allow ourselves to be denied justice. Neither can any supposed ally allow us to, without admitting that they don't really care about us.

We can't let ourselves be thrown under the bus by the Democratic Party or anyone else. We can't let ourselves be put at the bottom of the priority list, to wait until America is ready for us. We need justice today, and if America is not ready then it must be dragged kicking and screaming into a place of justice, as it has been so many times before in the history of our nation, because the majority's opinion is so wildly unimportant in comparison to the needs of the minority that it should never even register.

Enough is enough is enough, already.