Dear Friend and Reader,
WHAT A DAY. Aretha Franklin in that great hat singing the best version of “America” I’ve ever heard, Barack Obama’s speech to the nation, watching Bush take off in his helicopter, never to return (hopefully), followed by the frightening and sudden illnesses and recoveries of Senators Byrd and Kennedy at the luncheon.
And, yet, as the parade goes on with those funny-dressed girls from Mobile, Alabama and the Lesbian and Gay Band Association, I’m subdued.
Must be disenfranchised-itis, that feeling you get when someone’s taken your civil rights and traded it like a playing card to step-up to the greater good. It’s the feeling you get when you’re a woman who’s been sexually harassed by a coworker, but he’s such a damn good programmer that the company chooses to promote him, not fire him. It’s also the feeling you get when a fundamentalist Christian who thinks you don’t deserve basic human rights is allowed to perform the invocation at the Presidential inauguration, because there are some things that he and the presidentВ do agree on.
Pastor Rick Warren, the evangelical leader that has spoken out, loudly, against marriage equality and a woman’s right to choose, gave the invocation at Obama’s inauguration this afternoon. And I want to know why.