Platform for intolerance

Alfred Doblin’s column in The Record on Friday — ‘Blazing Saddles’ to Saddleback to ‘Brokeback’ — takes the convenient lie that too many supporters of Barack Obama have been telling themselves lately to convince themselves that the president-elect’s selection of the Rev. Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inaugural doesn’t matter.

It does — and for one very good reason:

Obama is giving a platform to someone who worked to strip a civil right — marriage from same-sex couples in California. Warren was not stating a theological difference from the pulpit; he supported changing a California law so that some Californians would be less equal than others. There is nothing more anti-American than taking away an existing civil liberty.

The decision, he says, does not cast the president-elect in a good light:

Obama is not an enemy of gay people, but that does not make him a friend.

Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet