{"id":1738,"date":"2007-10-29T20:11:50","date_gmt":"2007-10-29T20:11:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1738"},"modified":"2007-10-29T20:11:50","modified_gmt":"2007-10-29T20:11:50","slug":"for_shame_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1738","title":{"rendered":"For Shame"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Barack Obama first announced his candidacy, my initial reaction was enthusiastic. I believed that he could be an invigorating shot in the arm for the Democratic party. While I never really expected him to pose a serious challenge to Hillary, his passion and eloquence could have stood in stark contrast to Clinton’s sometimes overly-scripted persona. But Obama has demonstrated a troubling tendency to try to be all things to all things to all people. Witness the controversy surrounding the gospel event his campaign sponsored yesterday, featuring a gospel singer who is well-known for his assertions that gays can be “cured”<\/a>. <\/p>\n

I have no doubt that Obama fully supports gay rights, but his willingness to allow a homophobe to stump for him is the hamfisted move of an amateur. The Democratic Party is a big tent and I don’t expect everyone to be of one voice on any issue, but it isn’t acceptable to appease one constituency by metaphorically kicking sand in the eyes of another. I’m a Democrat because I believe in some core principles, including the vision of an equitable society that doesn’t discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Obama should be leading his followers towards that vision, not tacitly reinforcing old prejudices. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Barack Obama first announced his candidacy, my initial reaction was enthusiastic. I believed that he could be an invigorating shot in the arm for the Democratic party. While I never really expected him to pose a serious challenge to Hillary, his passion and eloquence could have stood in stark contrast to Clinton’s sometimes overly-scripted […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-s2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}