On Obama’s Invitation Of Rick Warren

Whoopi Goldberg said, in what I hope will be remembered for many years, that when Obama, a Black man, got elected president she felt like she could finally put her suitcase down and call this country home. I’m still holding on to my suitcase.

[National Op-Ed: On Rick Warren]

As millions of other gay Americans, I had a bittersweet experience when Obama got elected.

At last, after eight lousy years of an incompetent president, the country could move on. To heal. To change.

It was an opportunity to believe that the country had decided to stop thinking in terms of “us vs. them,” and to agree that we could all share in the American dream.

But on that same night, I was confronted with the sobering truth that people still use the Bible to hide behind their ignorance and hate. And that those people vote to make sure that other people, people they don’t approve of, don’t have the very same rights and responsibilities as anyone else.

And this came not just from the “haves,” the people that might say they understood discrimination but had never experienced it. But in large part this also came from the “have nots.”

These are the people that know firsthand that even though America is a land of free people, some of us are more free than others. These are the people that personally experienced discrimination. These are the people that have been told that the Bible says it’s OK to have slaves or to prevent different races from inter-marrying. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that interracial marriage was –finally and rightfully– protected by the Supreme court, in part saying that the choice to marry between two consenting adults resides with the individual and cannot be infringed on by the state.

But I guess if you and yours are protected by the Constitution, you can’t really help anyone else find the same protection. You look at your Bible and suddenly all those verses about making sure that everyone conforms to your way of thinking make sense.

Whoopi Goldberg said, in what I hope will be remembered for many years, that when Obama, a Black man, got elected president she felt like she could finally put her suitcase down and call this country home. I’m still holding on to my suitcase.

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