Queen
of daytime talk, Oprah Winfrey, is omnipresent and omnipotent.
Her monthly oracle — O,
The Oprah Magazine — pontificates the principles of self-help,
self-love, and self-giving. Her image floods newsstands. Bookstores
stockpile their inventory with her choice for the book of the
month. And presidential hopefuls genuflect before her to win
voters.
In exhorting America to
rise to its higher moral ground, Oprah has not only altered
the content of TV talk, but also has drastically changed the
venue in which spirituality is normally discussed.
Now
for the first time, the media magnate is involved in politics.
And Oprah’s partisan
big bucks threw a star-studded fundraiser for her presidential
pick, Barack Obama. And with 1,500 guests at her sold-out private
soiree at $2,300 apiece, Oprah’s endorsement of Obama might
very well buy him the election.
But
her “chosen one” is
a candidate who would unquestionably deny lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender and queer Americans their full and equal civil
rights, especially when it comes to same-sex marriage.
“I am somebody who has
not embraced gay marriage. I’ve said that it’s not something
that I think the society is necessarily ready for. And it strikes
me that in a lot of ways for a lot a people, it may intrude
in how they understand marriage,” Obama stated on CNN's “Larry
King Live” in late 2006.
But nearly a year later,
and after being given much more information and education about
the essential need to afford LGBTQ Americans their full and
equal marriage rights, his position is unchanged.
And
as the beneficiary of the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that declared anti-miscegenation
laws unconstitutional in the case of Loving v. Virginia — a
decision that allowed Obama’s parents to legally marry — he
doesn’t see civil unions as reminiscent of this nation’s
shameful era of “separate but equal.”
"As I proposed [civil
unions], it wouldn't be a lesser thing [than marriage] from
my perspective," Barack said during the much-ballyhooed
HRC-Logo debate last month.
While it is true that none
of the Democratic presidential frontrunners support same-sex
marriage, Oprah must be asked: Would she endorse a presidential
candidate who would give African-Americans and women what Obama
is proposing for LGBTQ Americans?
And
as she tries to take America down an enlightened path in
this presidential campaign,
is Oprah’s endorsement of Obama more about being an instrument
of racial equality in this country, by finally getting a black
man elected to the highest office in this nation, than it is
about the annoying and politically divisive issue of marriage
equality for LGBTQ people? Is Oprah choosing, like many African-American
ministers have done, which issue is more important for our
black communities?
Ironically, LGBTQ people
of African descent is a segment of the American population
that has the most to gain from marriage equality.
But,
you ask, is Oprah really homophobic? Clearly she’s neither
a stranger to advocating for queer civil rights nor avoiding
queer accusations.
In
the April 1997 coming-out episode of Ellen Degeneres’ sitcom, Oprah played Ellen’s supportive
therapist. And when Rosie O’Donnell on “The View” stated that
Oprah’s longtime gal-pal Gayle and Oprah were like a married
lesbian couple, Oprah said to her magazine readers, “If we
were gay, we would tell you.”
But would Oprah abandon
her LGBTQ African-American brothers and sisters to elect a
black man as president?
Unfortunately, civil rights
struggles in this country have primarily been understood, reported
on and advocated within the context of African-American struggles
against both individual and systemic racism. Consequently,
civil rights struggles of women, LGBTQ people, Native Americans
and other minorities in this country have been eclipsed, ignored
and even trivialized at the expense of educating the American
public to other forms of existing oppressions.
At
the height of the second wave of the women’s movement in the 1970s, for example, women’s
civil rights were pitted against African-American civil rights,
often forcing African-American women to choose which was a
greater oppression for them — being black or being female.
And it was black women who had the most to lose from this forced
dichotomy.
Today,
a similar debate is brewing between African-American and
LGBTQ communities,
which once again leaves out a population of people who have
the most to lose — LGBTQ people of African descent.
The
present-day debate between the two communities, concerning
what constitutes a
legitimate civil rights issue — and what oppressed group owns
the right to use the term — is both fueled and ignored by systemic
efforts by our government and black ministers. They deliberately
pit both groups against each other by blurring the lines of
church and state, rather than upholding the 13th and 14th Amendments
to the U.S. Constitution, affording each of these marginal
groups their inalienable rights.
With
mostly African-American marquee celebs in attendance at Oprah’s Obama bash — like Stevie
Wonder Sidney Poitier, Forest Whitaker, Chris Rock, Dennis
Haysbert, Will Smith, Jamie Foxx and Halle Berry — Oprah is
hoping for the black elite to put Obama in office. But that’s
at the expense of not including the entire black community — its
poor and LGBTQ members — let alone the rest of America.
“Four decades later, there
are now two black Americas. The fat, rich, and comfortable
black America of Oprah Winfrey, Robert Johnson, Bill Cosby,
Condoleezza Rice, Denzel Washington and the legions of millionaire
black athletes and entertainers, businesspersons and professionals.
They have grabbed a big slice of America's pie,” wrote Earl
Ofari Hutchinson, a political analyst and social issues commentator,
on the Huffington Post, back in January.
But
the elites are the folks Obama goes after, albeit he calls
himself a grassroots
organizer and the voice for the poor and marginalized. David
Mendell, an Obama biographer, told CNN.com: "Obama is
very adept at selling himself to people of the black elite.
And so, in the last year or so, he has sat down with [Oprah]
and they have struck up this relationship."
Oprah
talked to United Press International about why she held the
fundraiser at her
home. “I call my home the Promised Land because I get to live
Dr. King’s Dream. I haven’t been actively engaged before because
there hasn’t been anything to be actively engaged in. But I
am engaged now to make Barack Obama the next president of the
United States.”
Oprah
has good intentions as she tries to lead America down the
high road. However, that
reminds me of the old adage, "The road to hell is paved
with good intentions." For LGBTQ people not included on
the Obama road to the White House, it is hell nonetheless.
BlackCommentator.com columnist,
the Rev. Irene Monroe is a religion columnist, theologian,
and public speaker. She is a Ford Fellow and doctoral candidate
at Harvard Divinity School. As an African American feminist
theologian, she speaks for a sector of society that is frequently
invisible. Her website is www.irenemonroe.com. Click
here to contact the Rev. Monroe.