The Gaytheist Agenda

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An Obama Supporter Illustrates Why Obama Supporters Scare Us. A Lot. Really.

A post on a mydd.com blog was re-posted on another message board (which, because I genuinely like the board admin and don’t want to embarrass him any more than he’s already been by the mere presence of said post, shall remain nameless), under the subject line:

“This is what the Obama ‘movement’ is all about…”

Here’s the original post:

THE BAM”… PASS IT ON AT THE NEXT OBAMA RALLY!

Having caught “Obama fever” like so many others rallying in support of Barack, I experienced something at a Barack Obama Rally on Thursday, January 10 at the College of Charleston here in Charleston, South Carolina, which I felt was both inspirational and spontaneous!

As Barack worked the line following the close of his speech, there was a surge of people moving forward hoping to get close enough to shake Barack’s hand. Since I was standing about 20 feet back from center stage in the crowd, I felt the crowd down front tighten as many of us stood on our toes, stretched our bodies forward while reaching out to Barack. I noticed that a six foot tall guy who was standing in front of me had stretched far enough above the crowd and shook hands with Barack. As the guy drew back his hand I asked him, “You shook his hand didn’t you?” Happily the guy said “Yes.” I then said, “give me some of that” and the guy shook my hand with the same hand he had just clasped with Barack’s. A woman friend of mine who was standing next to me saw me shake hands with the guy. I turned to her and said “He [the guy] just shook hands with Barack,” to which she responded…”Hey, give it up.” We then shook hands. She then turned to the person next to her and shook hands. This chain of hand shakes went on for about five or six more persons.

I did not know the tall guy in front of me; he is white, I am black. But at the moment we shook hands, I felt some solidarity with this stranger, consummated by a handshake and signifying some unspoken agreement presumably about Barack Obama and his core message of UNITY!

I call this hand-shake scenario the “BAM” because, descriptively, it takes a bit of Obama’s name and it’s the sound of a collision, of People Coming Together!

My reaction:

If that’s “what the Obama ‘movement’ is all about” — the blind frenzy of a mob clamoring to touch the hem of his garment — then the Obama camp is scaring the absolute crap out of me.

What next? Obama raises the dead? Where does the line start to worship a fragment of The One’s sandal?

“Give me some of that”? Jesus Christ, people, GET A GRIP! Obama is NOT GOD!

“You don’t get it! Why do you hate hope? Why do you hate change? Let Obama change your life…!

Holy crap. Ho. Lee. Crap.

Oh, yes, I “get it” — which is precisely why it scares me. The writer sounds like every “est” convert I ever knew in the 1970s. And I remember People’s Temple, and Heaven’s Gate, and Waco, much too well not to be shaken to the bone by this blind madness over Obama.

This is beyond 1960s-era teenyboppers spending a precious five dollars on a one-inch square of bedsheet that one of the Beatles supposedly slept on. This is the guy in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert wearing a vial containing the holy relic of an ABBA turd. Neither Anni-Frid nor Agnetha — nor Obama — is the Second Coming of Christ!

To the writer, and especially to the rest of the adoring throngs blinded into a froth:

How do you expect the rest of us “non-believers” to take you — or your candidate — even half-seriously when all you can offer is this kind of cult worship I thought died out with the 1970s?

And people think Kucinich is nuts for admitting to seeing a UFO? This craziness dwarfs any UFO talk — by light years.

And: Do you have any clue whatsoever as to the fodder you’re providing far-right sites that exist solely for the opportunity to point out how wacko Democrats are? Do you even care how embarrassing posts like that are? I don’t know if such lunacy makes me more ashamed to be associated with the message board to which the message was cross-posted, or with the entire party.

Thank God I’m as dissociated from Obama and his apostles as I ever can be!

I have to agree. I don’t get the whole Obama phenomenon. But then being an atheist perhaps I have a special immunity to whatever it is people are falling prey to. And for that I am thankful.

Considering most of us have presidential primaries coming up:

Courtesy of First Freedom 1st

Stephen Baldwin, the far-less talented brother of Alec Baldwin , is memorable for movies like Bio-Dome and Threesome. Or maybe not.

In recent years Baldwin became a Born-Again-Christian. He apparently was inspired to do so following the conversion of his wife, Kennya.
 

After Baldwin and his wife moved back to New York, Kennya started attending a charismatic church, praying and reading the Bible twice a day. He noticed a change in her that he found inspiring.

“She became more gentle, she became less judgmental, she just changed,” he said.

Now I’ve read about this before. People say they decide to follow in the path of others who have become Christians because they see how becoming Christian “changed” the other person by makng them calmer, happier, nicer, etc. So why is it that after they convert they are something akin to Jake Busey in Contact?

Needless to say, Stephen has become quite a different person. Where he once acted in movies that contained nudity and sex scenes, he has reportedly begun crusading against them. Most recently he announced his endorsement of Mike Huckabee for president and disapproval of same-sex marriage.

I don’t believe that gay marriage is in line with God’s Word, which is found in the Bible. So, what I think doesn’t matter; what I believe is what’s in the Bible and the Bible says that gay marriage is not acceptable.

Says Bill Browning of The Bilerico Project:

So again, it’s okay to show nudity in his own movies, but he has to protest movies with nudity that have more of a plot than “Bio-Dome”. (Remember that one? With Pauly Shore? You know it’s good if Pauly Shore is your co-star!) It’s okay to rub another man’s hand all over your naked ass as long as you don’t, you know, want to marry him.

Then again, he converted after 9/11. Seriously. I’m surprised he’s not backing Guilliani since that candidate’s stump speech consists of a noun, a verb, and “9/11.” So maybe it used to be okay to mess with guys and girls and let your ass hang out for all to see, but if you do it now, the terrorists win.

I’ve had it with these nitwits who sow their wild oats, find Jebus, then become the Morality Police for the rest of America (“Dr. Laura” Schlessinger, anybody?). Religion should be a guide for one’s personal path, not a weapon to wield over others. But the “Christian Nation” types can’t seem to distinguish the difference.

The results are official.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton powered to victory in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary Tuesday night in a startling upset, defeating Sen. Barack Obama and resurrecting her bid for the White House. Sen. John McCain defeated his Republican rivals to move back into contention for the GOP nomination.

…..

Her victory, after Obama won last week’s Iowa caucuses, raised the possibility of a prolonged battle for the party nomination between the most viable black candidate in history and the former first lady, seeking to become the first woman to occupy the Oval Office.

Exit polls results help explain some of the differences between the two states, and some speculation is offered:

Against predictions of a second straight defeat to Obama, Clinton won because:

• Women rallied to her side. She won the female vote by more than 10 percentage points, according to exit polls, after losing among women in Iowa.

• The youth vote did not lift Obama as it did in Iowa. He won 51 percent of votes cast by people under 30, compared with 57 percent in Iowa.

…..

First, New Hampshire has a history of putting the brakes on surging candidacies, and the Clintons spoke to that sense of prudence by suggesting that Obama was not ready for the White House.

…..

Second, the Clintons went negative on Obama’s record to say he has not been consistent on a host of issues, including the Iraq war. Obama constantly trumpets his early opposition to the war without informing voters that, like Clinton, he later voted to pay for it.

…..

Third, aides had urged her to show more passion and emotion, and, coincidentally or not, she did so by nearly breaking down during a restaurant appearance. Eyes welling up and voice quavering, she declared the campaign “is very personal for me. It’s not just political.”

There’s another potential factor that hasn’t been mentioned thus far. New Hampshire (and New England in general) simply doesn’t go for the Bible Banging in the same way that Iowa does. Hence the way Huckabee went down in flames, having won Iowa with 34.3% but receiving only 11% of the vote in NH.

Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister, rates a ten (out of a possible ten) on BeliefNet’s God-o-meter. Their observations:

When God-o-Meter went to the Parker’s Maple Barn in Mason, New Hampshire yesterday, it observed that everyone present was an evangelical or a frequent churchgoer, raising doubts that Huckabee is breaking out of his Christian Right base after winning Iowa last week almost solely on the backs of evangelicals. And tonight’s results and exit polls out of New Hampshire confirm those doubts. Even among those who attend church multiple times each week, Huckabee took just third of the vote, with Mitt Romney and John McCain doing almost as well. And among the much bigger chunk of weekly churchgoers–nearly a quarter of the vote in New Hampshire– Huckabee came in third, bested by McCain and Romney. …..

Granted, John McCain scores just one point below Huckabee on the God-o-Meter at eight. However evidence suggests his God-talk is more a facade than genuine. He was, remember, the person who denounced the Religious Right as agents of intolerance some seven years ago.

As to Barack Obama, who once promised his supporters a Kingdom right here on Earth, he rates a nine on the God-o-Meter.Obama has certainly done enough pandering to evangelicals and infused his campaign speeches with plenty of religious rhetoric. Then of course there’s the Embrace the Homophobia Change gospel concert tour. That was the grand finale to his 40-Days-of-Faith-and-Family , a massive effort to woo religious voters in SC away from Hillary Clinton . But when Obama lost to Huckabee in Iowa he decided to go for broke preaching–for Hope and Change.

…..

Stopping by a packed Barack Obama rally last night in Rochester, New Hampshire, God-o-Meter noticed that fans standing behind the candidate on stage waved homemade poster board signs proclaiming “In Obama We Trust” and “Believe.” The local activist who introduced Obama said, “What I really like is his ability to uplift people.” And Obama opened his stump speech this way: “Over the next 20 minutes or so, you’re going to see a light shine down the from the ceiling… you’re going to have an epiphany.”

…..

Indeed, God-o-Meter would go so far to say that Obama, peddling his message that hope matters more than experience, has become the Democrats’ secular preacher, his party’s rough equivalent to Huckabee, who’s been criticized for campaigning to be “pastor-in-chief.”

There are blatant religious overtones to Obama’s campaign. Jim Wallis calls him “virtually a public theologian… articulating the relationship between faith and politics.” During last night’s rally in Rochester, Obama opened his speech with an anecdote about his stint organizing churches in Chicago to respond to the closing of steel mills there.

…..

The Obama faithful don’t seem to mind. When God-o-Meter asked a dozen attendees at last night’s rally why they supported Obama, none mentioned a specific issue—or even a general one. At a Huckabee event earlier that morning, by contrast, supporters mentioned the former Arkansas governor’s pro-life views or his promise to help the middle class as secondary reasons for supporting him, even while acknowledging Huckabee’s “Christian values” as the prime reason.

On her way out of last night’s event, 41-year-old Sandy Becker said she backs Obama because “he gives us something to hope for.” Asked if there were any specific issues undergirding her support, the Montessori school owner said that “Obama can cut across all issues.”

Obama himself wouldn’t disagree. “Let me talk about hope,” he said near the end of last night’s speech. “I’ve been talking about hope so much I’ve been derided for it. Lately some folks have said Obama is so idealist, so naïve—he’s a hopemonger.”

Hopemonger. Isn’t that just another name for minister?

…..

Ironically that’s the same problem I’ve had when confronting Obama supporters elsewhere. Hope for what? What sort of change? Nobody has the answers. Essentially Obama is an empty suit hidden behind fluffy feel-good slogans–similar to many religions.

Hillary Clinton, by stark contrast, rates a six on the God-o-Meter (though she previously stood at seven). A recent campaign insisting that she is more Pro-choice than Obama is apparently the reason for the drop in score. She had scored six previously when she joined the War on Christmas by saying “Happy Holidays” in her holiday campaign advertisement.

It will be most interesting to see how the upcoming primaries in NV, MI, SC and FL shape the face of the election.