and rich, religious, sexually confused/celibate, misogynist opponents to our core values need to fall "outside the tent" subject to the elements or in the "other tent". What exactly did he have on the Democratic Party/Convention Committee again?

I was personally offended and mortified, yea outraged.

I'm only concerned with the organized church's official positions regarding civil rights. I find those to be medieval and offensive, and cannot support the official church's participation in Democratic politics. Individual Catholics have their own consciences, and I have nothing against any of them. The church hierarchy, on the other hand has nothing but my contempt. I find nothing of the spirit of the scriptural man/god they claim to worship in it.

was prepared to die to help the poor, the sick, the homeless and the lost. Since they couldn't find Jesus, they should have asked a nun. They had a bus full.

The big tent is too full of diversity for bigots. It was a bad call.

I think it may have been a move to neutralize his influence, or something.......

unequal marriage and an end to women's reproductive choice. How does that help anything or neutralize anything. What it did was to dilute the strength of all of those who spoke in favor of marriage equality and women's right to choose.

The very best thing for the Democratic Party to do is to simply ignore the organized RCC, embrace individual Catholics, and get on with the campaign. Don't ask Catholic leaders to have any role in the campaign and refuse their requests to join the campaign. They will only poison it. That is their plan. Just stay away from Bishops and higher completely. Let them find their own platform from which to speak. Don't give them one.

behind that choicet is. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense.

equalize themselves with the Republicans in the minds of Catholics. It did not achieve that goal. What it did was give a platform to an organization that opposes some very important parts of what Democrats propose, and at their very own nominating convention. A terrible mistake, really.

Even if, for example, LGBT organizations are not condemning this decision, individuals are. Even if women's organizations are not condemning this action, individual women are, and it is individuals who help bring Democrats to the polls. I can find no argument that makes discouraging supporters a good thing.

For the most part, the Democratic Convention was a spectacular success. I can only hope that nobody was paying much attention during Dolan's offensive prayer. Since I'm an atheist, I'm sure there were no deities listening, though. It's all politics.

have the potential to be hugely active in the campaign. Their help is needed. I hope this isn't seen as a slap in the face that causes some to withdraw their help.

This election has the potential to be a close one, and we need every erg of energy out there getting out the vote. Losing is not even thinkable.

We lose more votes by being anti-religion than we gain by being anti-religion. Even the majority of Democrats are Christian, so it would be an abysmally wrong decision to be so cocky to just ignore that part of the electorate even if not everyone agrees with it.

we had prayer to close the convention every night and we had Sr. Simone Campbell as a featured speaker. People of faith are a significant part of the Democratic Party. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are both former candidates and ordained ministers. Ted Strickland (former Governor of Ohio) is also a minister. So we shouldn't shy away from the subject. But that doesn't mean that we should be inviting the equivalent of Pat Robertson into our midst either. Next time should be a polite, "Thanks but no thanks."

it would be much more meaningful to have a well known Democrat, whether they are a religious leader or not, give the prayer than just some guy with a fancy title who doesn't hold more of our beliefs. Heck, I would have been happy if Michelle Obama would have said the prayer one of the evenings. That's what religion is all about, not some idiot in a fancy hat, looking dumb, and having alterier (sp?) motives

There are many religious leaders who support the goals of the Democratic Party. Many spoke at the convention. Dolan was an outlier. On some issues he supports the exact opposite of Democratic positions. It would have been simple to have found a Christian leader of some kind to give a prayer at that point in the program. Choosing Dolan was a mistake.

Catholics who strongly oppose marriage equality and women's right to choose are not likely to vote for Obama in the first place. Why do we care about them? Let's make sure we don't lose votes by having a speaker who opposes those civil rights, too. Dolan was the wrong choice. The Party can have religion represented with no objections. But it should have opposing viewpoints represented from the podium of the convention.

More like "Anti-bigot."

The anti-abortion/no-sex-before-marriage/no-meat-on-Fridays crazies will never vote for Obama anyway.

He should have been given 5 minutes and she selected to do the Closing Prayer.

I could swear I remember a thread on this topic.

Is that a problem for you for some reason? I posted this a while ago, now.

I'm sure he had some great stuff to say about women and their rights too - I don't have to read the transcript I know what these evil fucks think of women, and gays and all kinds of etc.,.

Yet I just cannot get myself to jump up and down and get angry at the DNC for having invited him (or rather letting him horn in in his slippery way he did). If he had been denied the spot there would have been so much 'war on religion' crap on the tvs - and we all know that. It would have been as saturated as the Rev. Wright non story.

Why am I wrong? Why am I not enraged?

I saw it as a tone-deaf sort of thing for the DNC to do. I didn't see it, either. I was doing something else.