Team Obama: No Regrets for Choosing Warren

That crunching noise you hear is our bones being crushed after being thrown under the bus. Yesterday Janis wrote about anti-gay, anti-choice blowhard Reverend Rick Warren being selected to deliver the invocation at our president-elect's inauguration ceremony. At the end of her piece I added a few comments about Team Obama's unconscionable decision to give this hateful publicity hound an international bully pulpit from which to preen and gloat. After a good night's sleep and in the cold gray light of dawn, I find that I'm still monumentally pissed about this. 

Pam's House Blend has posted Team O's "official" justification for asking Warren to share the spotlight - and it's pretty much what you'd expect it to be: defensive, self-congratulatory, and lean on logic.  Obama spokeswoman Linda Douglas primly insists: "This is going to be the most inclusive, open, accessible inauguration in American history." and "The president-elect certainly disagrees with him on LGBT issues. But it has always been his goal to find common ground with people with whom you may disagree on some issues."  Fine. You want to be inclusive and accessible?  Invite the man to the party, don't give him a microphone.  Don't legitimize his Dobson-esque religious views on the world stage.  And please explain to me exactly how you expect to find "common ground" with a man whose views on gay rights and women's reproductive rights are, in his own words, non-negotiable?  Here's another talking point from the memo: "And for the very first time, there will be a group representing the interests of LGBT Americans participating in the Inaugural Parade!"  (How charming.  Warren gets a microphone, gays get the boys in the band.) 

During Obama's much-ballyhooed appearance at Warren's Saddleback Church presidential forum, he said, "I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman.  Now, for me as a Christian, it's also a sacred union. God's in the mix."  That jarring statement implied that, in Obama's considered opinion, the long-term committed relationships of millions of LGBT Americans are spiritually insignificant.  Just a bunch of those silly gays and lesbians playing house - which is better, I suppose, than Warren's view that loving gay unions are equivalent to child rape and incest. 

From Good As You:  For us this choice highlights how lacking in understanding even our supposed Democratic allies are when it comes to the personal nature of anti-gay actions and rhetoric. For so many of our would-be, could-be, should-be supporters, gay matters are just political issues that they can think about, debate on, campaign with, and then put out of their minds when such is more expedient to their lives or careers.  Andrew Sullivan writes:  Shrewd politics, but if anyone is under any illusion that Obama is interested in advancing gay equality, they should probably sober up now.

Color me sobered.

Comments

[Tessa]

This man makes me sick. And you're right, the wingnuts are gonna be gloating.

[Garry]

I'm extremely disappointed by Obama's decision to ask Rev. Warren to participate at the inauguration. I took vacation time to work for Obama, damn it!! I still support Obama. He asked Warren to deliver the invocation, McCain/Palin may have given Warren a Cabinet post. But I'm sure Obama could have been inclusive, and found a better choice.

www.missinformationnews.blogspot.com

[Rodonn]

The Rev Robert M Price or Bishop Spong would have been far better choices.

Warren is, and always has been, a bottom feeder

[Joseph L.]

I'm gay and non-Christian and I don't have a problem with Rick Warren saying a prayer that I wasn't going to participate in anyhow. If having this douchebag say a prayer is going to win Obama favor with the right, then it sounds like a great idea to me. We can't just ignore people that we disagree with. That's the Bush status quo framework of thinking that I voted against. If people on the left aren't willing to let someone say a freakin' prayer, in what way will you let them be involved in the political process? Or is it really that we don't want Americans to come together? Was it all just propaganda?

[sumac3]

Actually, I HAVE given Obama a pass on everything else he's done so far. But of all the Evangelicals in the world, he had to pick... Rick Warren? The pastor who LIED about McCain being in that "cone of silence? for the debate at his church? The pastor who clearly has no self-control, as evidence by his obesity? Who thinks gays should exercise eternal self-control? The mentally and physically repulsive Rick Warren who believes it's in his nature to want to sleep with every beautiful woman on earth?

In the stunned silence after Pastor Rick announced this on TV, myself and a million heretofor straight women were thinking, if Rick Warren were the last man on earth, then "I'm pretty sure I'm a lesbian. Make that definately." Followed by a million gay men thinking, "You know, the Pastor's right. I haven't tried NEARLY hard enough to control my attraction to men. It just seem so much easier now."

So this is what Obama wants to make peace with? Good Luck with that!