No doubt Barack Obama wants the world to forget about his anti-gay gospel gaffe. Superstar Reverend Irene Monroe, however, keeps the scandal piping hot with a scathing criticism of the presidential candidate:
Although the Obama campaign says it “decided to go with someone local,” the real deal is that Obama hid his fear of addressing the black LGBTQ community by selecting a white minister to speak to a predominately black anti-gay audience. That’s because it is easier to maintain the myth many of these black evangelical voters hold – that queerness is a “white” thing – than to address the reality that his “big tent” message cannot presently accommodate anti-gay black ministers, gospels singers, and the black LGBTQ community.
Wait, there are black gay people? Who knew?!
Rt. Rev. Dr. RES
Maybe Senator Obama was unaware and uninformed about the reality of my sister in Christ, Irene Monroe?
Yes, that’s the answer. Senator Obama would have asked Oprah Winfrey, the alpha Obama candidacy supporter, for the name of a lesbian black Christian minister had he known of her existence?
My bad!
Matt
This is in all seriousness. I thought it was just LBGT. When did “Q” get added on to the end. I know that it means queer. How is Queer different than gay or lesbian or bisexual?
rock
Rev. Monroe has spoken truth to power from day one on this issue and was roundly criticized and attacked. I have tremendous respect for her integrity and it is sad that she has been attacked for speakign truth to power. Even sadder that what she has said about Sen. Obama has turned out to be very true and shocking considering he is using very old methods to divide and conquer while portraying himself as a New Age leader in the so called “Politics of Hope”.
EdWoody
I thought Q was for “questioning.”
Ash
Q does stand for questioning, which I think is weird. Queer makes more sense but I guess it’s nice that they’re reaching out to peole struggling with their sexuality. As much as an acronym can reach out, that is.
Ash
“How is Queer different than gay or lesbian or bisexual?”
Queer is a controversial word, literally meaning unusual, but used for people whose sexual orientation and/or gender identity differ from the norm: a unifying umbrella term for people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, transsexual, and/or intersex. In this usage, it is usually a synonym of such terms as LGBT or lesbigay.
More people identify as gay or lesbian than as queer. Queer is a much more political term and is often used by those who are politically active; by those who strongly reject traditional gender identities; by those who reject sexual identities such as gay, lesbian, bisexual and straight; by those who see themselves as oppressed by the heteronormativity of the larger culture; and/or by heterosexuals whose sexual preferences make them a minority (for example, BDSM practitioners). Another term used in similar ways is PoMosexual.
(from here: http://arr-the-kraken.com/straight/gay-or-queer.php)
Qjersey
the phrase Queer actually goes back to early 20th century UK and US slang used among what we now call gay people.
Queers were “average” or if you will “masculine” men who often played the “top” role, while fairies were the effeminate men who played the bottom role. Sort of a male version of butch/femme.
Watch (or read) Quentin Crisp’s autobiography of his life in the early 20th century, “The naked civil servant.”
You’ll also get a bit of exposure to “Polari” (queer slang) in the book/movie too
Leland Frances
Yes, Matt, it gets harder and harder to understand the swirling alphabet soup the Linguistic Chic keep serving. It seems the frequency with which they change the recipe increases with each passing year. LGBT, of course,[or GLBT, of course], LGBTQ, LGBTQQ, GLBTQ2, LGBU, LGBTI, LGBTT, LGBTA, LGBTTTIQQA…. Long before all this, Carol Burnett did a song I’m often reminded of: “whose little ism is ooo?”
Of course, we’re certainly unlikely to ever see the NAACP change the “N” to that other “N-word,” nor the gay National Black Justice Coalition replace “Black” with it nor even become the National Black, Brown, Beige, High Yellow Justice Coalition, but maybe that’s the wisdom that comes with a longer history of fighting for your rights—the understanding that only the youngest children are encouraged to play with alphabet blocks because adults understand that simplicity in language is essential to communication which is essential to progress.
From another thread touching upon the same issues:
One of the wisest of many wise things that Mark Twain said is that, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.â€
Until we are even half as good as the Repugs at mastering the power of carefully chosen words we will continue advancing at a snail’s pace, slowed or stopped by having to constantly cut through thickets of rhetorical thorns planted and repeatedly fertilized by our enemies.
Their professional researchers taught them to say “climate change” rather than “global warming” and “right to life” over “anti-abortion,” and came up with buzzwords like “the homosexual agenda,” “family values,” and “activist judges.†Like magic incantations they have mesmerized the electorate, including many of our own loved ones, into forgetting that gays come from and create families and were it not for activist judges on the Supreme Court [after Nader Nuts and Repug operatives through the election into a standoff] George Bush fils would not be in the White House.
While “gay marriage,” unlike “queer marriage” can serve purposes of clarity on rare occasion, we should all form a pact to primarily, religiously use the term “marriage equality.” It has the “double” power that the brilliant if dishonest and demagogic “right to life” does. That message subtly equates being pro abortion rights with being “pro death.”
In a more positive way, we would be equating being anti “marriage equality” for LGBTs with being anti-equality period, thereby putting the burden of proof on our opponents who like to wrap themselves in red, white, and blue flags of “liberty and justice for ALL.”
“Gay marriage” at once suggests, however erroneously, that gay love and relationships are somehow intrinsically different in value than straight love and relationships, and, at the same time, sets off the false alarm they’ve already been successfully programmed to freak out over—that gays want “special rights” nongays don’t have.
I don’t know whether it was a friend or enemy who first started using the term “sexual preference,†but I do know it had permeated thought processes by the time we realized that it gave misleading credence to the belief that being gay is a choice. That is, gay men COULD have sex/relationships with women but they PREFER other men. In addition, too often the colloquial “sex†is used [“sexual orientation,†“same-sex marriage/relationship/householdâ€] when “gender†is more semantically accurate and less counterproductive in a society that is both homophobic AND erotiphobic. And I am repeatedly shocked when I hear anyone gay still use the term “lifestyle.â€
And if the alleged “reappropriation” of “queer” is so radical, so positive, why not just call our male selves, “Cocksucker Nation”?
hisurfer
Irene Monroe hit on one of the issues that’s been bothering me about Obama’s campaign recently. His “big tent” philosophy seems to be that religious-based bigotry will be tolerated, and people who disagree will be asked to hold their tongues in the name of “unity.”
All we get from Obama himself are tepid statements that gays are people too, and a defense of his (mostly positive) voting record. And all the while the hate is flowing from his supporters.
His campaign is based on the fact that Obama is somehow different. If he continues to play both ends against the middle, or pander to the right, then he loses this appeal. He becomes just another Junior Senator without much experience.
Bill Perdue
Matt, I think it’s “questioning’. I’ve seen that used a lot by GLSEN and GSA groups and by college GLBT goups, probably as a way to invite those thinking about coming out and to defuse their fears. I’m too old to remeber the first time I went to an openly gay meeting or dance but I’m sure I was nervous as hell.
underbear1
Straight Obama Posters like to trash previous Obama supporters who are gay, so to payback these Bigots I am spreading my anti-Obama all over the queer websires.
here’s one of the threads they attack me (Qbear)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/10/31/shots-fired_n_70547.html
my images
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2006-8/1210139/homobigots.jpg
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2006-8/1210139/obama-keyesSAME.jpg