This article dissappointed me. I am a supporter of Obama, and I have been for several months. I am also white and gay; I attend a church in Dallas that has a congregation of primarily LGBT people, and its primary outreach is to those individuals. I propose that my church is then similar to Obama's. Does that make whatever I do or the leadership of my church do decidedly slanted toward a 'homosexual agenda'? If I were to run for president, I would certainly run as a homosexual (just as Obama is running as a black man) but that would not be all that I would be running as (neither is Obama). What Hitchens fails to grasp here is that there is a fundamental difference between embracing one's heritage and certain group of oppressed people (which can be liberating) and completely losing categories, groups, and differences.

I agree with you - this article disappointed me. After reading it, I have no idea what Hitchens beef is (he sounds racist and atheistic, if you ask me). Although I am not a supporter of Obama, I don't think it's correct for Hitchens to suggest that Obama is playing a race card because he goes to a "black" church. I also agree with you that just because Obama's church reaches out to blacks doesn't make him onesided as far as race is concerned. However, I do not agree with the notion that homosexuals and African Americans share the same degree of oppressions. As an African American woman, I know that there is nothing I can do to hide my descent. I had nothing to do with it and all of the negatives that come along with being African American in America cannot be dodged. No one has to know that you are homosexual if you chose to conceal it. I did not choose my nationality and cannot do anything to change it. As a Christian, I know God did not create race (Acts 17:26) so church outreach programs ought to be open to anyone who wants to know Christ and receive Him as Savior, and be delivered from the sin nature - not just to reach out to people who look and live similarly. It's about helping people embrace spiritual Truth and not to promote any agenda. I see Obama's plan for America as one that several Americans can benefit from and I think Hitchens accusations are from the insecure matters of his own heart.

As everyone seems to do, in forums, assume what they think the author (Hitchens in this case) was thinking, I will only state HOW I took this article, and state why I think most people are lost in translation.

I'm have been an Obama supporter since before he official announced his presidential running. How I took this article, is that, in our media, we all concentrate on the funny tid-bits of someone - like color, sexual preference, etc. Hitchens asks, why we should care more that Obama is a black man, when his mother is white, and hypothetically asks what we would think - or more likely - call Obama if his parents were Jewish. I think Obama does the same thing. We connect our opinions to titles of things - neocon, fascist, atheist, christian, etc. We then associate where these things come from - like the church someone attends. And when doing so, we find things that are agreeable or not. The point is, why should we care so much that Obama calls himself a black man, or that someone would run as a gay man as well as many other things. We would all be, all sorts of things put together. How I took this article is that we are obsessed with singular things and not "all the things" we are, or they are, or whomever we are looking at.

Another commenter wrote on logic and reason as ways not to respond to the presidential candidate - instead we use "faith" in someone. Without getting into the misinterpretation of "faith" connected to religion, I think that is absolutely ridiculous not to use reason and logic - which is, how I took Hitchen's arguments in what we are doing wrong. In other words, we aren't using much reason and logic here. We simply take on the "feeling" of how the first black president would make us feel, or the JFK playboy. By only seeing the constant references to race or simple universal laws (things people can't do a damn thing to change) we miss what this election is about. I'm not saying we can even define such a thing here - in a forum post or short blog article. What I mean is that we all must look past sexual preference, race, religion, etc to make a better decision. In looking at the religion of someone by itself makes things too black and white, as well as any other criteria we feel the need to single out - though it's always important to look into that "thing", but don't make it your sole focal point.

They are ALL important whether you think them wrong or right, for or against your own opinions.

Acrooswimmer was correct, 'What Hitchens fails to grasp here is that there is a fundamental difference between embracing one's heritage and certain group of oppressed people (which can be liberating) and completely losing categories, groups, and differences."

But, in such a short article, I don't think someone as intelligent as Hitchens can explain everything going into the formation of his opinion. So I don't assume to know what Hitchen's missed or not. Maybe he just didn't write it, cause posts can only be so many words - who knows. My point is, and how I took Hitchens argument was that embracing a heritage especially of an oppressed people, is not something we need to use as marketing tool. I don't mean people to think I believe everyone is selling something when they speak about themselves. But the foundation of the argument stresses that we never needed to single out anything to make a decision of a presidential race. To keep doing so, means we don't progress into a world where we don't concentrate on such things, because we realize, finally, that we are all human, we all have skeletons, we all believe differently, and these issues, problems, faults, idiosyncrasies are universal - I nor you are any different on the topic.

acrooswimmer:

Hope you see this months after your posting. Within the context of Hitchens POV is Hitchens admonishment of anything church or religiously predicated. It is exactly because of its nature to so tightly define itself within the framework of its message, in the case or Wright's church, unashamedly black and apologetically christian, that Hitchen's finds issue with. Hitchens is an idealist who hopes someday people will choose their elected officials not based on race or other miniscule partisanships but on intelligent, logical thinking. All the crap that people align themselves with is secondary to the interests of the general populace. LGBT types, that is all well and good, but to pick a candidate based solely or with great weight because of the nature of your association is limiting and in the end, more harmful to you. You can please some of the people some of the time...so goes the expression and with that in mind, we need to work to acheive gains on more denominate ground. If Jews were really convinced that Obama was against the best interest of Israel's right to peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians and so voted him from gaining the coveted Presidency at the expense of dozens of other clearly beneficial gains to be made by the vast majority of the worlds population, what then have we all lost? Maybe this is not the best example, but sacrifice is needed and sacrifice is what it will take, PERIOD.