INEXCUSABLE and WRONG: Bishop Gene Robinson Stiffed by Obama Campaign
Jan 19th, 2009 by admin
I didn’t blog about Bishop Gene Robinson being asked to give the invocation at the kickoff of the inauguration festivities today. I did think it was a good gesture in light of the really bad move of inviting Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration itself. Robinson is the first openly gay, partnered bishop in the Anglican/Episcopal Church and has been at the cutting edge of pro-lesbian, pro-gay activism in the Christian community. He’s a good man in the center of a vicious maelstrom; hundreds of congregations have left the Episcopal Church to form a new, less gentle, more lesbophobic denomination because he was appointed bishop. At his consecration, both he and his partner had to wear bullet-proof vests.
So what should happen but he gets EXCLUDED from the television broadcast. Not only that, the sound equipment didn’t work and most of the 500,000 people assembled didn’t even hear his prayer. HBO says the omission of the invocation was not their decision, but the Obama campaign’s decision.
I’m just sitting here sobbing away like that is ever going to help anything. I wish I could get angry and stay angry, it’s a lot less painful.
This was his amazing, beautiful invocation. Read it and weep:
By The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire
Opening Inaugural Event
Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC
January 18, 2009Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God’s blessing upon our nation and our next president.
O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…
Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.
Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.
Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.
Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.
Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.
Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.
And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.
Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.
Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.
Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.
Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.
Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.
Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.
And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.
AMEN.
I guess the world needs to be protected from the likes of these words.
I don’t really care what Obama and his campaign people do to try to fix this inexcusable chain of events, if, indeed, they try to do anything at all. This cannot be fixed. The lesbian and gay communities clearly are of no concern to the new President and Administration. What clearer message could they possibly send?
I feel so heartbroken.
Heart
[Comments are open, but please keep them stateswomanlike. I'm not up for rehashes of campaign debacles, accusations, recriminations, women blaming and attacking women. ]
greetings.
the sadness also hit my heart–and like you i could not get mad. and honestly i dont’ want to get mad. if ‘I’ do, i am helping evil steal and kill my Joy! I’ve got enough faith to make it into the changes ahead!
I pray this for all people that want to do the same.
there is too much going on that is giving Glory to God in the name of Jesus!
I don tsee no Giants!
Only The Glory of God Ahead!
when they realize that only freeing their bodies still leaves their minds in slavery–when they free their minds, the rest will follow!
Always Seeking To Encourage with Feet of Peace!
WTm
http://wisdomteachesme.blogspot.com/
This comes as no big surprise to me. I don’t trust most straight people, I think their institutions are horendously lesbophobic at worst and just plain cruel and clueless at best. But I’m glad I had a chance to read his prayer at many different blogs, and a friend who was actually in the front row of the event, read it to me over the phone. That was kind of special.
I’ve personally met Bishop Robinson, and he’s a cool kind of guy. Bishop Robinson told a very touching story about going to a women’s prison, and during his meeting with women there, they asked if they could see his bishop’s ring. He passed it around the table, and reported that he even got it back! The room howled with laughter at that story, a big gay and lesbian friendly Episcopal church in Pasadena, CA of all places. He’s not a lesbian hero, he’s still a man and he’s still is sexist, but he sure as heck as a BISHOP doesn’t deserve to be treated like the way he was in Washington by the Obama campaign. I guess Rick Warren is just too damn important, and his church, which probably gave NO money to Obama and certainly didn’t vote for Obama gets dissed once again.
It’s the kind of disrespect lesbians and gays experience all the time, nothing new there. But hey, I never had much affinity for Obama, he’s just another clueless man in my book.
I’ve always liked Gene Robinson. I saw him in a documentary regarding Christian gay and lesbians, and he was the only one to bring up patriarchy (his term) as a reason for discrimination.
That is so beautiful, and inclusive. Of everyone not just Christians, and not just men. It was a prayer crafted to foster peace and draw people together.
I’m not surprised at all by this
I think a number of people are in for a surprise, though. Obama’s political beliefs are much further to right than most progressives realize.
All male leaders are to the right of anything I can imagine. There is no left wing for men, because it is about the worship of male power. Leftist men sugar coat their woman erasing tactics, rightist men claim to “protect” (read enslave) women.
[...] Via. [...]
Remember, and never forget this… what little outrage that was expressed over the treatment of Gene Robinson was about male supremacy getting dissed. If a lesbian minister had been dissed like this, you can bet no one would have cared. It’s the crack in male supremacy that is the agenda of the leftist men.
This is yet another Gavin Newsom moment in a string of disappointments regarding the LGBT community and Obama. I’m no longer surprised by his callousness, only saddened that so many people were unwittingly used.
No many of us didn’t drink the cool aid SadStateOfAffairs (love your name by the way). Obama seemed like a garden variety straight man with the wife and kids, nothing that special from a radical lesbian feminist point of view. I did not vote for him, support him, give money to him or believe one word he said. I left that up to the GLBT gang, you know, the gullible people in our community who seem to think that straight people are ever telling us the truth about anything. I actually don’t think the straight world ever really gets who we are to begin with. We are outside their heteronormative wife controlling systems, what can I say. And Lesbians, well I don’t think Obama, like most straight men have any lesbian friends at all. We’re in our own world and we don’t trust men ever.