[...]usually posts some very interesting stuff like this. If you’re new to this site[...]……

” Meanwhile, Barack Obama—unlike John Kerry, in 2004—has been trying to win over white evangelicals. In televised discussions sponsored by religious organizations, he has spoken of his faith, and framed issues such as health care and the war in Iraq in moral terms. In recent weeks, he has met privately with evangelical leaders and started to reach out to values voters. These efforts suggest that he is hoping to do as well as, if not better than, Bill Clinton, who won a third of the white evangelical vote in both 1992 and 1996. Mark DeMoss, a public-relations expert whose firm has worked for Focus on the Family and for Franklin Graham, is among those who think he can.

This view is based in large part on the fact that religious-right activists are no longer the only evangelical leaders speaking out. Since 2004, influential pastors and the heads of many large faith organizations have set a new national-policy agenda, one founded on their understanding of the life of Jesus and his ministry to the poor, the outcast, and the peacemakers. The movement has no single charismatic leader, no institutional center, and no specific goals. It doesn’t even have a name. But it is nonetheless posing the first major challenge to the religious right in a quarter of a century…”

” Meanwhile, Barack Obama—unlike John Kerry, in 2004—has been trying to win over white evangelicals. In televised discussions sponsored by religious organizations, he has spoken of his faith, and framed issues such as health care and the war in Iraq in moral terms. In recent weeks, he has met privately with evangelical leaders and started to reach out to values voters. These efforts suggest that he is hoping to do as well as, if not better than, Bill Clinton, who won a third of the white evangelical vote in both 1992 and 1996. Mark DeMoss, a public-relations expert whose firm has worked for Focus on the Family and for Franklin Graham, is among those who think he can.

This view is based in large part on the fact that religious-right activists are no longer the only evangelical leaders speaking out. Since 2004, influential pastors and the heads of many large faith organizations have set a new national-policy agenda, one founded on their understanding of the life of Jesus and his ministry to the poor, the outcast, and the peacemakers. The movement has no single charismatic leader, no institutional center, and no specific goals. It doesn’t even have a name. But it is nonetheless posing the first major challenge to the religious right in a quarter of a century…”

” Meanwhile, Barack Obama—unlike John Kerry, in 2004—has been trying to win over white evangelicals. In televised discussions sponsored by religious organizations, he has spoken of his faith, and framed issues such as health care and the war in Iraq in moral terms. In recent weeks, he has met privately with evangelical leaders and started to reach out to values voters. These efforts suggest that he is hoping to do as well as, if not better than, Bill Clinton, who won a third of the white evangelical vote in both 1992 and 1996. Mark DeMoss, a public-relations expert whose firm has worked for Focus on the Family and for Franklin Graham, is among those who think he can.

This view is based in large part on the fact that religious-right activists are no longer the only evangelical leaders speaking out. Since 2004, influential pastors and the heads of many large faith organizations have set a new national-policy agenda, one founded on their understanding of the life of Jesus and his ministry to the poor, the outcast, and the peacemakers. The movement has no single charismatic leader, no institutional center, and no specific goals. It doesn’t even have a name. But it is nonetheless posing the first major challenge to the religious right in a quarter of a century…”

I acknowledge that you don't want to answer the question I asked as I asked it. To me, whether you are/identify as straight or not is entirely unrelated to the manner (or the surrounding accuracy/inaccuracy) with which I ask it, but I acknowledge that you don't perceive that as I do.

And myself personally — I don't mind you asking at all.

Just to be clear: Anything and everything I say on this site comes from me and is my responsibility alone. It comes from my gut perception of what is going on. I am here because I myself find the content on this site generally more in line with how I perceive the issues discussed than some other sites (eg daily kos which is almost physically toxic in its feel to me, sometimes).

I am not advocating for African Americans. I am speaking only and specifically from my perception, which is completely specific to how I perceive reality.

So for example, I posted the link to Womanist Musings above because when she posted it here to this site a few days ago, I read it, and I personally experienced what she wrote there as a vivid and accurate naming of important parts of reality (in particular, she named some ways how this rhetorical move is a move of evasion of reality in particular ways, and I have this thing where I can feel dissonance around things like that but the words and cognition to describe what is going on often come later and the translation from gut to words is sometimes pretty hard for me — so I am always deeply grateful to read something like that).

Relatedly, my response to bigassbelle's use of that rhetorical move was from my own gut sense of dissonance related to the evasion of reality that I perceive in it. It's personal for me.

Whiterosebuddy made an important comment a few days ago that I really appreciated. She wrote: Your reality is yours as well Michelle. That is 100% true, both in general and also in the specifics and I appreciated that naming tremendously (my reply is here).

One area of dissonance I perceive lately is straight allies (mostly in place like dkos in what I have seen/had access to) seeming to take the rhetorical lead of people in the LGBT community who claim to be speaking for all of us and promoting what I perceive as a partially dissonant view of what is going on in an indignant manner.

In my perception, the problem with this is layered. The first piece is the practice of some, usually white, GLBT people — actually, it's usually either G or L in my observation) speaking as if they for all of us.

I have not yet been able to fully name the second layer that involves the straight people, but I feel dissonance there as well. Maybe what's happening is that the gay people are giving the straight people permission to do things supposedly in the name of a just cause that are really just harmful (to my perception).

This may be part of it: I've been thinking the last few days that there may be a sort of white solidarity dynamic in whatever is going on. Like maybe those white gay people who position themselves and all other white gay people as only oppressed (and not also privileged) are also implicitly saying to white straight people: “You wouldn't let us be treated as bad as Black people are treated, right?” — implicitly invoking a sort of white race solidarity under the guise of it being about LGBT issues.

And so if that is going on, white straight allies get cover for acting out of implicit white solidarity because it's supposedly not about that, but rather it's about justice for LGBT people. No need for self-critique because it's supposedly (defined as if it is) for justice.

But. I still don't know if I am naming this right at all.

I am so over them and their “nonracist” ways. “It isn't about race” I call that out, it is and you have nailed the idea of we should be grateful.

Sorry, I am a minority and I feel the struggle is shared by nonwhites.

MAJOR CO-SIGN!! :>)

I don't make that statement off-handedly. Ever since HE declared that HE was running for POTUS, he has carefully measured/weighed the decisions that he made. There are a lot of factors that went into all of them. Not the least of which was for him to consider how people will react to them.

HE must have the most accurate “THERMOMETER” and “SPHYGMOMANOMETER” in the world 'cause he has to take the temperature and the “pulse”/”pressure” of “we the people” in order to determine whether his decisions will serve us.

I believe that he gathers ENOUGH DATA in his decision-making in order to make the BEST one(s). Annnnnnnd, HE KNOWS the minds of his detractors. BUT, as he keeps saying, I AM THE VISIONARY and ultimately, I make the decisions.

He admits that “WE WILL MAKE MISTAKES!” And he said that he will admit that when he does. Soooooo, unless and/or until he reverses this decision, I'm believin' that HE had a plan and for now, I am supporting his decisions.

To the question: A PRAYER WILL BE OFFERED TO GOD on behalf of MR. P-E Obama, annnnnd I believe that it will be answered!

God bless the FIRST FAMILY!!

I kept trying to figure out what the word 'progressive' meant and why there was so much emphasis on that word. Those people sounded like they were liberals with most of the same issues liberals had. I finally concluded that these so called 'progrssives' just decided they did not want to be called flaming liberals anymore so they decided to re-name themselves.

Folks at Kos have gone beyond ugly…they are ugly nitwits.