With Barack Obama having used his opportunity to explain, unconvincingly, why it’s okay to invite to Inauguration Day bigot pastor Rick Warren (who also rationalized the decision), it’s now Joe Biden‘s turn. And no surprise here: Biden is in lock step with the boss.
From a Larry King Live interview that will air tonight on CNN at 9pm EST:
[John] King: There has been much controversy over the selection of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the inaugural.
He’s been a guest on this show an awful lot, and he supported California’s Proposition 8, a measure that outlaws gay marriage. He is also very opposed to abortion. I know the gay community in America appears to be up in arms. What do you make of this?
Biden: Well, I’d make of it [as] Barack Obama keeping his commitment.
Barack Obama said you’ve got to reach out. You’ve got to reach a hand of friendship across the aisle and across philosophies in this country.
We can’t continue to be a red and blue country. We can’t be divided like we have been. And he’s made good on his promise.
And I would say to the gay and lesbian community, they have nothing to worry about. Barack Obama, every aspect of his life, every aspect of his public life, and every commitment he’s made relating to equality for all people, will be things that he will stick with and that they should view this in the spirit in which he offered the opportunity to — to Mr. Warren.
Rami
Biden is a dummy! Big oportunity for Warren?!! So He can raise more many to stop gay rights! DISGUSTING! It is time for Biden to check in senior house.
Michael W.
Joe Biden is a bigot!
RichardR
I just wish either PE Obama or VPE Biden could have the PR sense to say something like “I do understand how this is upsetting to the gay community. They deserve full citizenship, many of them are our supporters, and we disagree with Pastor Warren on this, but we want … [and then the ‘inclusive’ babble.]”
If they or somebody on that team could just acknowledge that, you know, maybe there’s a problem here!
ChicagoJimmy
If Obama and Biden basically agree with Warren about gay marriage, then how is his selection a reach across the aisle? I’m still waiting for a flaming queer who fully supports gay marriage (thereby disagreeing with our President-elect) to be invited to take part in the ceremonies. Wouldn’t that be gathering people around that disagree?
Bill Perdue
Biden voted for DOMA. He opposses same sex marraige and GLBT equality. He and Obama are bigots.
Biden is the Senator form BoA who wrote the bankruptcy bill that allows credit cardsharks to take bigger bites from working people and consumers, many of whom pay medical bills with their plastic becasue Biden and Obama, like McCain and the Clintons oppose socialized medicine.
People who voted Democrat expecting real change got punked just as much as if they’d vote for McCAin. Now all we have to do is organize when the hope turns to rage as it inevitably will.
mark
While I was pretty realistic in expecting tepid support from Obama for LGBTs, risking nothing more than REASONABLE nominations as judges and justices, who aren’t fire breathing bigots.
I never dreamed DAY ONE a fat f*cktard would be allowed to SPIT ON US publicly.
TURN YOUR BACK on Warren, and kiss who you choose through the entire Invocation.
Swaping spit for SPIT!
Michael W.
@ChicagoJimmy: It’s a reach across the aisle because “the aisle” consists of a lot more than whether or not you support gay marriage. When it comes to abortion rights, stem cell research, gays serving openly in the military, diplomacy with Iran, Supreme Court justices, mandatory sentencing and a slew of other issues, Rick Warren and Barack Obama are on the opposite sides of the spectrum. The number of things they have in common such as their love of Christ are what allow them to sit comfortably at the same table.
Rick Warren probably voted for John McCain and personally despises many of Obama’s views. Obama’s just not interested in throwing hissy fits, calling names and other childish, overreactive antics when it comes to problem solving. That’s why I voted for him.
Alexa
It’s not a matter of throwing hissy fits and calling names, and I have no problem at all with the idea of “reaching across the aisle” and trying to pull the country together. It’s a good idea. But that doesn’t include bestowing an honor on a bigot, no matter how many good ideas he may have in other areas. Would Obama reach across the aisle to a man who opposes interracial marriage and who compared a black man loving a white woman to incest? Would Biden tell his fellow Catholics not to worry if Warren compared their love to pedophilia? Of course not. Then why are we supposed to sit back quietly and take yet another kick to the guts?
Mark
Warren is not being given a cabinet position.
Warren is not being used as a ‘spiritual advisor’.
Warren is ONLY giving an invocation.
No on will be talking about the invocation on Jan 21.
On Jan 21 people will ONLY be talking about Obama’s speech.
Give it up. Obama made a mistake, which he said he would make. He made it. He won’t make one like this again. Guaranteed. If he does, you can bet he will be out of DC in 2012.
Nick
@RichardR:
Excellent point – it’s bad enough it’s going to happen and all we get is “just shut up and you’ll get yours when I’m good and ready”.
This country needs a lot less GOD and a lot more good government.
Nick
@Mark:
I’ll remember Rick Warren as the gesture that finally made me give up on the Democratic party. I hope I am wrong but I really think this will be the tone of the next four years and I betcha DADT will still be in place come next election.
Mmmmmm I wonder if he will reach across the aisle when appointing a supreme court judge, now wouldn’t that just be brilliant!
McCain lite here we come.
Pak Tam
NO Rick Warren at the Inauguration! Help our voice to be heard! Please kindly circulate this!
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/107914679
http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?id=538567008&ref=profile&pub=2915120374#/group.php?gid=40933512660
http://www.eqca.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=kuLRJ9MRKrH&b=4025663&aid=11543
https://secure.pfaw.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=Warren_Inauguration&autologin=true&JServSessionIdr006=b3zrfzfmv2.app304b
Bill Perdue
@Mark: No Mark, you give it up. And learn to count.
Give it up. Obama made a mistake, which he said he would make. He made it. He won’t make one like this again. Guaranteed.
This is not his first ‘mistake’. Let’s count, shall we. He didn’t lift a finger when Barney Frank gutted ENDA as a favor to the Chamber of Commerce bigots who make big bucks underpaying us. His lips were zippered when Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi quietly dropped the hate crimes bill after it’d passed both Houses of Congress. (They did it so no one could accuse the Democrats of being soft on child molesters, as Warren describes us, as if we all wore roman collars.)
He began his campaign in the bible belt with a series of revival meetings featuring anti-GLBT scum like MaryMary and ex-gay bigot KcKulkin. Obama pandered from the get go and never let up because he wanted to chip away at the Rovian strategy that had captured the bigot vote for Bush. He succeeded, especially in getting an intro into the southern baptist milieu from Warren. When he spoke at Warrens cult center in California shortly before the election he empowered the bigots by telling them that he was a bigot too and giving them the go ahead to vote their bigotry.
His success insured our failure because the bigots he empowered wiped us out with Prop 8 and 102 and 2 in Arizona and Florida.
Then he excluded us from any major government appointments and all Cabinet positions.
Then, likely as not as the result of some deal, Obama invited Warren to speak at the inaugural.
I counted a lot of mistakes there, and I didn’t even include appointing a cabinet so right wing it’d make Reagan blush, or his multitrillion giveaways to the rich or his commitment to continue the murder of GIs and muslims by enlarging the oil war. So much for your ‘guarantee’.
Michael W.
@Mark: Obama didn’t make a mistake. He has no regrets about the decision.
tofer david
sadly obama is nothing more than he was when he ran and for anyone to expect any different did not pay attention well enough when he ran.
you reap what you sow my friends.
Doug
Obama’s not going to stab us in the back! Some people act like Drama Queens whenever someone does something they don’t agree with and they overreact. I believe Obama will do what it takes to bring us together and he needs to be given a chance… Lets not forget that this is just one part of the battle for civil rights… There’s always gonna be bumps in the road and boulders tooo. Just think about it, we had to suffer through 8 years of Bushco, DISASTER!!! Give Obama a chance…
Mark in Indiana
so fellow Mark, you say:
Warren is not being given a cabinet position.
Warren is not being used as a ‘spiritual advisor’.
Warren is ONLY giving an invocation.
No on will be talking about the invocation on Jan 21.
On Jan 21 people will ONLY be talking about Obama’s speech
point 1, I believe is true, we agree
point 2, how do you know that? Did Obama tell you?
point 3, again, how do you know that?
point 4, although I don’t plan to watch it, I probably will
point 5, not necessarily
See, all during the election I heard all about how Obama isn’t this or that, or just wait until Obama’s elected and then he’ll do A, B or C. I heard how he really secretly loved gay people but to get elected, he had to say he opposed gay marriage–you know, wink, wink, nod, nod, just to assuage the straights. I heard that we ask too much and expect too much and want too much and we’re really way too pushy and assumptive and it’s better if we just wait, because–you know–people just don’t like us.
In order, to the above–I don’t believe it, I know that’s not true, he really doesn’t support equal marriage rights, that’s ridiculous, that’s internalized homophobia at about a level ten, and that’s never been proved.
Please stop giving your government the benefit of the doubt. It’s not helping you.
Christian
“Biden: Well, I’d make of it [as] Barack Obama keeping his commitment.
Barack Obama said you’ve got to reach out. You’ve got to reach a hand of friendship across the aisle and across philosophies in this country.
We can’t continue to be a red and blue country. We can’t be divided like we have been. And he’s made good on his promise.
And I would say to the gay and lesbian community, they have nothing to worry about. Barack Obama, every aspect of his life, every aspect of his public life, and every commitment he’s made relating to equality for all people, will be things that he will stick with and that they should view this in the spirit in which he offered the opportunity to — to Mr. Warren.”
Biden’s comments here sicken me. I appreciate the dialogue here & of course also appreciate opposing viewpoints; as a parallel to the choice of Warren as a speaker at the Inauguaration, whereby many are defending this choice as a characteristic of Obama’s push for ‘untiy’ and ‘dialogue’, the bottom line is, this was a bad choice, period. And not only was it bad, it is dangerous. The Inauguration is not a debate or roundtable forum, people. It is an international event, and giving someone who proudly espouses hate speech a spotlight at the event IS sending a message to millions of people that Rick Warren, and those like him, are to be celebrated as well. Rachel Maddow has Pat Buchanan, another hate monger, as a guest on her show all of the time- because her show really IS about dialogue, and because it also is point-counterpoint, viewers get to actually hear opposing sides & draw their own logical (e.g., pro-gay) conclusions (unlike the style of many right-wing shows by the way). Would she encourage the HRC to have Buchanan speak at their annual gala, however?
Biden thinks we have nothing to worry about? How about the gay kid who gets beaten up every day in school by bullies who think that being gay is ‘unnatural’? How about the lesbian who is gang raped by men who think that what she needs is ‘just to know what a real man is like’? His patronizing tone & easy dismissal of our genuine hurt, anger & disappointment are disturbing.
I did support Obama, cried at his acceptance, & still hope that he will learn from his dangerous & irresponsible error here. But I, too, have lost a great deal of faith in not only Obama & Biden with this choice (knowing that they were far from the progressive leaders this country needs), but in politics in general. The political system, from the local level to the global, is so entrenched with the quest for power, that most politicians will stop at nothing- ‘uniting’ with perpetrators; destroying the natural environment for profit & greed; promoting western domination over global goodwill & diplomacy, the list goes on & on. I will keep voting, but after this I will work to put more energy into working with the people, for the people. We need to tear down the corrupt political system & re-build it from the ground up.
GayGOP
Once again, listening to the drivel coming out of the mouths of the Democrat Party makes me glad I’m a Republican. If I have to be stabbed on gay rights, let’s have that stabbing be from the front, which the Republican Party does, rather than the back, like the Democrat Party does.
JJJJ
I’m not a Republican, but I always hated the way gays called gay Republicans “Uncle Toms.” At least now, GOP, you can turn the tables on them. The Dems sure sound like they’re straining to excuse Obama’s choice of Warren (like a bunch of Toms).
osocubano
It’s only an invocation, for crying out loud!
Who remembers those?
I think it weakens Rick Warren’s position more than it does Obamas.