Obama and Warren, Together At Least

It’s disheartening, isn’t it.

Especially after Prop 8. If only Prop 8 had been struck down, and soundly, we could all maybe take a deep breath about Rick Warren—God, he’s smug, isn’t he? Just like Falwell; it’s like he thinks we’re too stupid to see through all that roly-poly affability—and say: Okay, maybe Barack is throwing the fundies an inclusion bone. We could’ve chalked it up to Obama’s wanting to reassure the religious right that his embrace of LGBT Americans does not equal a complete rejection of them, that he considers us all, every one of us, The American Family, even if some of the siblings never get along. The problem of course is that, so far, it’s us to whom he’s tossed the bone. Barack Obama has yet to truly embrace us, and after the searing insult of Prop 8—and his silence about Prop 8—the choice of Rick Me? Homophobic? Me? Warren for his Inaugural invocation really is a tone-deaf kick in the teeth.

You were expecting better? Well, I wasn’t. I wasn’t expecting anything from Obama as regards LGBT issues, exactly, though I allowed myself to hope. I am still hopeful, guardedly.

Here’s the thing. In my experience, straight black men do not handle the “gay thing” well. They really don’t. If they’re not openly, flagrantly hostile, then they’re at least terrifically discomfited, making with all manner of nervous little jokes, and pious observations that it’s not their place to judge, we’re all sinners, and anyway let he who is without sin, etc. etc. Some even feel compelled (particularly in the presence of other black males) to make obnoxious, hurtful moves just to prove their hetero bona fides. For black men in America, many of whom struggle with fatherlessness and issues with women, it’s all about masculinity, especially as it intersects with race, and the fear of being perceived as a “punk.”

In defending his opposition to gay marriage, Obama said something or other to his interviewer about the way he was raised, and I sighed, feeling tired all over. The way he was raised, yada yada yada; plus, he’s a Christian, blah, blah, blah. I thought, yeeeeeaah, ya know, maybe we need to take a step back from this guy and reassess. True, he is brainy and charismatic and attractive, the very first African-American elected to the highest political office in the land—but more than all that he’s new, relatively. Just a few years ago, most Americans had never heard of Barack Obama. Maybe that’s key. Maybe that above all is why expectations of him run so high and why so many, including so many of us queers, are inclined to see so much in him. It’s easy to idealize someone you don’t really know, easy to lose sight of—let’s be nice and say “the probability” rather than “the fact”—that at the end of the day what we have in Barack Hussein Obama is not only just another calculating politician, but also just another straight black guy who is really uncomfortable with the whole gay thing, and is even prepared to do obnoxious, hurtful things to prove his hetero, Christian bona fides.