How dare the Inaugeral Committee infer that Warren is an advocate for "social justice" !

[saracat]

How the hell can one be an advocate for "social justice" while one advocates the denial of civil rights to both women and the GBTL Community? I guess both those groupd don't count as citizens and are therefore "marginal" at best.



"• The President-elect disagrees with Pastor Warren on issues that affect the LGBT community. They disagree on other issues as well. But what's important is that they agree on many issues vital to the pursuit of social justice, including poverty relief and moving toward a sustainable planet; and they share a commitment to renewing America's promise by expanding opportunity at home and restoring our moral leadership abroad."

[Captain Hilts]

1. Does the PE disagree on evolution, science, the choice issue and Jews/Catholics going to hell?

[mrreowwr_kittty]

2. Supposedly he's done a bunch of charitable work for the poor and on HIV/AIDS

Which is nice and all but charity is only one factor in bringing about social justice. There needs to be sustained effort by the government as well but people like Warren tend to downplay that and focus on private philanthropy.

[Cleita]

6. Exactly, and he probably only got on the HIV/AIDS bandwagon when

it spread from the gay population to the hetero one. When we as a nation first became aware of aids, many people didn't care because it was thought that it was a gay disease. The only people outside the gay community who were concerned and became activists were those who had family or friends who had contracted the disease. Elizabeth Taylor was one of those people and she was openly criticized for doing so.

[PerpetuallyDazed]

19. Regardless of his intentions...

I wonder how many lives he saved in Africa or other third-world countries on his "crusade"?

[cboy4]

8. You know, this whole thing about his work with HIV/AIDS is

a joke.

It's like someone doing work with the disabled, and then working against their rights to have ramps in public buildings, and disabled stalls in the bathroom, etc.

How does one cheer that?

Oh I know, I'll get hammered for having the nerve to compare gay rights to disabled rights, but Warren's purported work is completely inconsistent with his hateful meme.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

11. That, and

Supporting anti-choice policies leads to the very conditions that cause HIV/AIDS to spread. Really, it's like being for banning seatbelts and airbags in cars but then touting how much you do to help the people crippled in car accidents.

[cboy4]

14. Absolutely. His anti-choice policies are certainly

detrimental in that regard.

And a good analogy with the seatbelts/airbags.

[ecstatic]

3. Are we missing anyone?

:shrug:

[Cleita]

4. Well, to put it into perspective, the Catholic Church has had a long

history of advocating for social justice, by backing unions and other organizations that champion the worker and the poor. However, their record on women's and gay rights is abysmal. What bothers me about this is that Obama seems to be backing faith based charities by this action instead of pulling away from blurring that line that is separation of church and state.

[saracat]

9. Well, he IS expanding the office of Faith Based Iniatives to make it bigger than Bush's.

[Cleita]

13. I find this not cool. I see we need to define separation of church and state

much better in the future. Let's roll up our sleeves and don't let it happen.

[nichomachus]

20. And the Mormons do a lot to alleviate hunger and help out in disasters

But I'd be pissed as hell if he invited the Mormon president to give an invocation.

[gcomeau]

5. English. try it some time.

You ask how they can say something... then quote exactly what they said which happened to make perfect sense.

Is Poverty AN issue vital to the pursuit of social justice? Yes or no please.

Is HIV/AIDS AN issue vital to the pursuit of social justice? Yes or no please.

etc...

Do they agree on those issues (if not necessarily ALL social justice issues)? Yes.

So... do they agree on "many issues vital to the pursuit of social justice"? Think it over as long as you like.

[saracat]

7. The point is, there can be no "social justice" without the support of civil rights for all.

There is no "half a loaf is better than none here".

[gcomeau]

16. In point of fact...

...there most certainly IS a "half a loaf is better than none" here.

And I thin you meant to say there cannot be full social justice without civil rights for all... since what you said is rather self evidently wrong. I'm a fairly literal minded person, so I tend to think "some" is not the same thing as "none".

Let's get a few points straight.

1. Obama is not giving Warren any say in policy as relates to gays. At all. Zero. Hasn't even suggested it.
2. Gay rights is a big nasty problem for this country... but HIV/AIDS and Poverty are big, nasty problems too. Care to disagree?
3. Getting someone to help cooperatively fix those last two problems IS better than not. Argue the opposing point if you'd like to give it a shot.

Does that excuse Warren's gay rights stance? Of course it fucking doesn't. But what an awful lot of people around here seem to be arguing is "only people who agree with us on EVERYTHING are allowed to help us fix ANYTHING. All others are unclean and cannot be employed in any capacity." And that is stupidity of epic levels. So Warren is a bigoted shit. Nobody is saying we're not allowed to call him out on it. Nobody is saying we have to let his bigotry have any influence on the administration. But given the choice between getting SOME good out of the jerk and getting NO good out of the jerk some good is in fact better than no good in my books. Do your books use different math?

[saracat]

17. This is a straw argument at best. First of all HIV'AIDS and global poverty

aren't "civil rights " issues that go to the heart of our Democracy.They are "social issues" but I certainly wouldn't affiliate them with "justice"

And I have yet to see( though they may have) anyone saying that Obama is allowing Warren to author policy. However, he is giving him his imprimatur by allowing him to play a prominent role in his inauguration. He is signaling he :respects" his opinion. Warren's opinion is not worthy of respect.

We do not , nor should we, as a nation, have to respect those who support human rights violations, and Obama is showing respect for a person who endorses human rights violations.

And if you think endorsing the destruction of families and the eradication of woman's reproductive rights isn't a human rights violation, I can't explain it any better.

[gcomeau]

18. Not a strawman

It is if I assign to you an argument you never made, for the purposes of then attacking that argument and creating the impression I has defeated your points without ever actually addresing what you were saying.

How, exactly, did I do the above? To be clear, I at no time claimed you were personally saying Obama was claiming Obama was giving Warren a say in policy related to Gay issues, but others here sure as hell HAVE been and I wanted that point on the table as part of my overall explanation of how this was in fact a "better than nothing" situation we were dealing with. I am rather confident that in the course of that explanation I directly addressed exactly what you said. You can argue against how effectively I did so, but that does not a strawman make.

As for the rest, you have solid grounds to make the argument. However, you may want to consider that there are two ways to approach loking at it. Focusing on people who advocate for the contemptible, or focusing on the advocating itself. I am personally reasonably confident that Obama has decided that if we decide to take the former approach we're going to very quickly screw ourselves. We can't work with THAT group of people on ANYTHING... because they have this belief we take serious exception with. And we can't work with THAT group of people with anything because they have this other belief we take serious exception with. And pretty soon you're left with a goddamn small workforce to get anything done, and a whole lot of people you've gone out of your way to make sure will line up in opposition because you threw them out of the damn tent.

OR... you can just say "look, I can do this based on issues first." EVERYONE who agrees we need to fix this issue we put to work on it, and we actually freaking get it fixed. And we make clear that just because we agree on getting that done that does NOT mean we're saying this other thing is ok... and we are NOT saying that we're going to compromise on that oter issue... just that we all knew, whatever our other disagreements and HOWEVER serious those disagreements are, this first thing needed doing. Right now. So we did it. We'll deal with that other thing seperately.

Now I know which of those two approcahes is going to get more accomplished. It's ridiculously obvious from where I'm standing. But if you think the alternative route has more potential to actually accomplish what we need to accomplish I'm all ears for how that is.

[BostonMa]

10. Very rude

[BeyondGeography]

12. You again

Rick Warren is now officially the "Leave No Obama Hater Behind" thread launcher.

[Occam Bandage]

15. You mean "imply."

[HERVEPA]

21. I tried that correction once myself. Got called on it.

Looked it up and it seems as if "infer" is OK in this usage. I still don't like it though.