Pondering bridge building…

A bitch is recovering from my holiday feastitude and hopes y’all are too!

Let’s jump right in, shall we?

I caught the weekend political chats and something David Axelrod said on one of them made a bitch’s Afro hurt.

He was defending the choice of Rick Warren speaking at the Inauguration and said that the incoming administration looked forward to working with him and his on those things they do agree on even as they acknowledged the many things they don’t agree on.

The things they do agree on include fighting poverty in general and disease in Africa in particular.

Blink.

Now, a bitch has little patience with the way folks present the challenges facing the world as if poverty falls under one column and reproductive justice falls under another and never the two shall meet…or as if the battle over comprehensive sex education is on one side of the policy world and the fight against HIV/AIDS is on the other and those two don’t belong in the same conversation.

Lawd, have mercy.

But it occurs to me that this may be a teachable moment…for the incoming administration and for those who support bridge building with Rick Warren for the sake of bridge building with Rick Warren.

Pause…sip exceptional cup of coffee (yum!)…continue.

Here’s the thing…the Rick Warrens of the world aren’t using the same raw materials as we are.

I can just imagine this project.

We’re hammering and connecting shit.

They’re hammering and connecting shit.

But we’re using solid and proven materials like comprehensive sex education, condoms and family planning.

They’re using the structurally unstable and known to fall apart materials of abstinence-only education held together with a mixture made up of one half ‘condoms are bad’ and one half ‘family planning isn’t sanctified’.

Oh, we can build away on our bridge and eventually we’ll meet in the middle…but then what?

How far do we take this shit?

Do we walk across from our side even though we know we’re doomed to tumble once we put some weight on their structurally unstable side of things?

I’m curious as a motherfucker about what the plan is here, because you know and I know that you know and I know that bridge building dialogue for the sake of bridge building dialogue is the very definition of bullshit.

So, are we supposed to build this bridge to prove some point…to educate someone and walk them toward the bright light of reality?

Or is this project the intellectually lazy dialogue version of the bridge to nowhere?

‘Cause if it is, this bitch would just as soon take a pass and jump right to fighting poverty and disease with tools that fucking work.

Shit.

Crossposted from the wise and wonderful Angry Black Bitch.

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