Rick rolling

Thursday, my Facebook status line was "[bzzzzgrrrl] wishes the bloom was still on the rose."
I followed that up with a couple of brief comments, there and in Google Reader, because my upsetness was so big I couldn't wrap my brain around how to blog it, how to do more than sound bites.
Yesterday, I watched For the Bible Tells Me So, a lovely documentary about Christian families and their gay or lesbian children (including Gene Robinson, who is an old family friend and my bishop).
This afternoon, I had a nice long IM chat with a friend. It was the third chat I've had in the last few days on the subject of Rick Warren.
And now I am ready to write that blog post.
Here's your fair warning: It will be long, and largely copied and pasted from those chats and comments. And more than that, it will be sad, and angry. It's not seasons-greetings-type stuff.
I give you permission not to read it.
But if you want to, it's after the jump.

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The easiest, best sound bite I have heard on the subject is that Obama would never have chosen an outspoken antisemite, particularly one who advocated to deny some Jews rights they already have. It would be unthinkable.
Rick Warren's not an antisemite, as far as I know. He is a bigot, and whatever he says about all his gay friends, he has compared us (and therefore them) to pedophiles. But, as my friend Mike pointed out, "He's not just a bigot. He's an idiot. And a liar — he said without Prop 8, pastors talking about the 'immorality' of gay marriage could be jailed for hate speech."
Right you are, Mike.
And even still, that's just the tip of the iceberg. It's a big, big tip, but it's not the whole shebang.

I'll get back to the queer stuff in a minute, but I'd also like to interject on what his selection says to the nation and the world about Christianity, and the place it will play in Obama's administration.
His selection offends my religious Christian self almost as much as it offends my progressive self or my queer self. Because we religious Christian types already do daily battle with people who should be our allies thinking any person of faith is a nut job and a bigot.
As Mike also said, "Oh, and he doesn't believe in evolution, either.
"So much for the idea he represents the future of evangelical thought."
Of course, Warren can believe as he chooses. He can lead his flock as he and they choose. But, um, Mr. President-Elect?
Really, that's the face you want to put on faith? And your reaching out to the right is not by way of their politicians, but by way of their pastors?

OK, now, to get back to the queer stuff, which is the stuff I have had the hardest time putting into words.
But here's what it's been like.
I, like many LGBT people all across this country, wanted so badly to rejoice on election night, and the morning after. So many of us worked so hard to get Obama elected.
And we did rejoice, kind of.
But we also felt a little like progressives who were not in our community left us behind, a little, without even thinking about it, or without thinking about it much.
There was celebrating, and we were happy, sincerely happy.
But every antiqueer initiative in every state that had one on the ballot passed.
Even in California.
And that was a sign to us that our friends and neighbors are all for bringing us into the fold when it can get the good guy elected, but it doesn't change the fact that more than 50 percent of people, even where the movie stars and homos live, even where this alleged liberal media is, will choose to deprive us basic rights when they can. That people we walk by every day, buy groceries from, worship with, whatever, do not think we deserve the same rights they have.
So that was hard, at the time. We had a little time to sit with that. In my case, a little time for some friends to express their sorrow while I felt guilty for feeling like that wasn't good enough. Also in my case, a little time for a few of the people who love me most to essentially tell me to suck it up and deal, and then to be surprised when that made me cry.
This Rick Warren thing?
Is that. Is the undoing of all the calming down I tried to do. It is that, louder, in fact, because the day after election day, we could pretend people just didn't know, didn't get it somehow.
But we've been talking about it for six weeks now.
And so the selection of Rick Warren as the man who will unite a separation-of-church-and-state nation in prayer (which, don't even get me started) feels like the Obama administration has already stopped listening. For some reason, Obama is comfortable defending Rick Warren as a right choice.
This is how he is choosing to kick things off with us.

I am all for reconciliation.
But what the right lost was the presidency, which they have had (stolen, whatever) for eight years. What the queers of California lost were their own rights, and what many LGBT folks all over this country lost was any sureness that our friends would do right by us when the time came.
There are conservatives who think the government should stay out of our business, and there are conservative Christians who successfully preach that Jesus is love and that we must judge not, lest we be judged. There are plenty of people who disagree with Obama or me or both politically who did not do as much lying to the people of California, did not pour money into hatred and try to justify it as love. They may not be as prominent as Rick Warren, but it's about damn time that changed.
It just feels too too soon to decide that conciliatory gestures towards bigots are more important than conciliatory gestures towards people who actually lost some rights -- and who elected you.
I have been trying really hard to be really excited. I even decided to go to D.C. for the inauguration, before this Warren business was announced.
But now I'm not so sure. Seems like that time could be better spent with people who want me at their literal or figurative table, and who would not invite the folks who do not.
I am just entirely heartbroken.
I really hoped we'd have a little more time before our wonderful and super-exciting new president started reaching out to conservatives by seemingly deliberately alienating, well, me.