TAKE YOUR BREAD CRUMBS AND SHOVE THEM

The most significant difference between gays and other minorities is that the gay community is more often than not obsequiously grateful for bread crumbs from massa's table.  Other minorities fight and defend their rights, we politely ask and accept one compromise after another; and then we throw a party.  We also have more excuses for our failures and our fate than Bush has for his "so what?" administration.

Personally, I'm growing more disgusted with my own community than I am with Republicans or Evangelicals.  On some days, I'm tempted to throw shoes in our face.

Last Monday I posted a commentary on Obama's reliable silence on matters of critical and life-changing import to the gay community.   You can shove your heads up your asses or bury them in the sand but the fact that Obama has completely ignored the hundreds of eminently qualified openly gay candidates as he packs his Cabinet with other minority representative is outrageous--but the comments come in, including from readers of this blog commending Obama for appointing gays to secondary and tertiary positions.  I'm also told that we shouldn't expect him to promote someone to a Cabinet post simply because they're gay.   That second statement is the most outrageously self-loathing nonsense imaginable.

First of all, those of you who believe all Cabinet appointments are based solely on professional qualifications must be smoking Whitney's drug of choice.  Cabinet appointments do go to very qualified men and women but those qualifications also include how well they represent the people, their various constituencies, various political agenda, as well as the voice they bring to the table.  The President's inner circle must represent all the voices and faces of America, those of us who put him in office. And to Obama's credit, he's mixing it up; just not including his loyal gays in the mix.

Yesterday, we were provided with yet another horrific example of why.  Obama's choice of one of the leading champions of American bigotry, Rick Warren, as this nation's Minister in Chief on Inauguration Day, sends a clear and very straightforward message.  Obama believes that we are sinners, we are second class citizens and worst of all, Obama believes that bigotry and hate-mongering is a legitimate point-of-view as long as it is cushioned in religion--although I seriously doubt that Obama would have selected an openly white supremacist racist clergyman to speak at his inauguration.

Secondly, if you really believe that there are no gay men and women in this nation who are the best qualified candidates for any one of the many Cabinet posts, they you need to take a long hard look at your complete lack of self-esteem as a gay person.

Spend some time reviewing the Out 100, the long list of prominent gay men and women in education, government, health care, science and labor and you'll find dozens of stunningly qualified Cabinet candidates

My fellow gay bloggers--most of whom seem to have the intellectual capacity of parrots--are singing the praises of one of Obama's latest Cabinet appointment, Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education because  Mr. Duncan is "gay friendly" and "a friend of the gays".

This is because Mr. Duncan, the head of the Chicago School System advocated--unsuccessfully--for a gay high school in our new President's home town.  The idea failed because gay-friendly Mr. Duncan wasn't friendly enough and caved in to opposition from the legions of the gay-unfriendly.

But we're all excited because we have a Cabinet appointment who is gay friendly.

Fuck gay-friendly, give me a gay voice.  I don't care if massa is gay unfriendly or gay-friendly, he's still massa.  We can speak for ourselves.  We are actually adults, grown ups who can bring wisdom and even genius to the conversation.  Bad massa like Dobson likes to whip us, good massa like Obama allows us his leftovers, but neither massa gives us a place at the table and at the end of the day, we're still second class citizens.

One very popular gay blogger wrote:  "Maybe with Duncan in this education post, then we'll see more gay high schools popping up across the country."

Maybe with a gay man in the education post, we'd see a real effort to provide a nurturing and safe environment in every school in this nation, a school system where in which gay bashing is as taboo as racism, sexism and antisemitism.

Maybe with gay voices in the Oval Office, especially when the doors are closed, the LGBT community in this nation will actually see equality.  But that, my fellow queers, is going to take some serious outrage. That, my fellow queers means we need to burn down the plantation house and stop settling for massa's bread crumbs.  I speak metaphorically, of course.

Comments

[Alan down in Florida]

"Secondly, if you really believe that there are no gay men and women in this nation who are the best qualified candidates for any one of the many Cabinet posts, they you need to take a long hard look at your complete lack of self-esteem as a gay person."

Though I agree with most of this post I take issue on the above statement. I don't think it reflects a lack of self-esteem at all. I think it is reflective of the massive disconnect between the (often) self-professed leadership of the alphabet soup that is our community and the community itself.

Whereas our wonderful diverse multi-cultural, gender diverse community is busy working for a living at all economic levels and professionally successful at all levels and all professions, our "leadership" are professional gays, earning their livings out of the pockets of those of us who support their organizations with our hard-earned dollars.

These professional gays are disproportionately upper class, male and white which enables them to be full time activists (and I do use the term loosely) free to attend cocktail parties, award shows, premieres and assorted other rubber chicken fundraisers while the rest of us have to stay home and care for families, do homework, keep our businesses afloat and all the other daily minutiae that take precedence in our existence over the fact that we are alternatively oriented or gendered.

In most ways our "leadership" is guilty of what many (especially Republicans) also accuse labor unions and that is that they exist specifically to justify their existence.

So if we really believe that there are no gay men and women in this nation who are the best qualified candidates for any one of the many Cabinet posts, maybe it's because these everyday heroes/positive role models are too busy leading admirable lives to go out and self-promote and the rest of us are too busy to google to find out who they are.

[Alan down in Florida]

OMG I just read Denny's comment and he told Messrs. Sullivan and Solmonese to shut the fuck up.

Could this be the same person who excoriated me for telling him to keep his proselytizing to himself? I am stunned. This must surely be a sign of the approach of the apocalypse.

[Billy]

Is that the second shoe I hear falling.

[Dray]

We knew Obama was against gay marriage from the start...why the surprise?

He is just so much better then McSame for almost everything else.

RR: YOUR COMMENT SADDENS ME. NO ONE IS SURPRISED, BUT TRY TO REACH INTO YOUR HEART AND FIND THE OUTRAGE THAT SHOULD BE IN THERE, SOMEWHERE. HOW SAD THAT YOU THINK THAT THIS IS ABOUT MARRIAGE.