Slap in the Face to Gay Americans: Obama Picks Rick Warren to Lead Inaugural Invocation

Above is an ad recorded by the porcine Rick Warren in support of Prop. 8. As John Aravosis says at AmericaBlog, "If you watch the video, in addition to invoking Obama's name to justify homophobia, Warren talks about how (he claims) gays are only 2% of the population. And how we shouldn't let 2% of the population decide what we do on this issue. Gee, wonder how he feels about Jews, who are also 2% of the population. Watch the video, and prepare for your head to explode.

Update: Have complaints to share? Email Parag Mehta, Obama's LGBT liaison on the transition team, at parag.mehta@ptt.gov. Feel free to share your missive to the team in the comments.
********
Enough. Enough. Enough. I've been silent or muted in my criticism of some of Obama's less than stellar cabinet picks and other appointments -- and there are many to complain about if you're a real Democrat or progressive. I've held back on criticizing Obama's reticence to say anything powerful or real during his transition about Wall Street's wholesale sacking of the U.S. Treasury thats been going full tilt the last few months. It made me angry that it was Blogojevitch who went to Republic Windows in Chicago and stood with the fired workers -- and not Barack. But Obama's lastest bone-headed decision takes the cake, and I find it completely intolerable.

As reported in a Politico article, Obama has picked the awful, money-grubbing, "evangelical," anti-GLBT preacher, Rick Warren, to give the invocation at the presidential inaugural. Could he have made a worse choice? Warren and his multi-media Saddleback Church racket were front and center in enthusiastically supporting California Prop. 8, which negates California's constitutional protections for same-sex marriage. In opposition to a recent California Supreme Court ruling, Prop. 8 returns the state's gay population to second class citizenship, something every single Democrat -- if not every real American -- should be opposing vocally if they wish to maintain a claim to be supportive of equal rights for all.

This isn't a theocracy last time I looked. Yet here's Obama rewarding a preacher who believes the entire population should be forced to live by his personal church's teachings. Warren has compared gay marriage to "legitimizing incest, child abuse, and polygamy." I can't tell you how much this disgusts me.

I wonder how Obama would have felt if Clinton had picked a Ku Klux Klan functionary to give the invocation at one of his inaugurations. You know, to bring people together, racist or not, so we can rise above "partisanship." I also wonder what the results would be if, even today, we allowed California to put African-American rights -- or maybe mixed racial marriages -- to a referendum vote.

Negative Reactions
I have to agree with Joe Solomonese on this one (see full text of his letter at the end of this post):

“Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans,” the president of Human Rights Campaign, Joe Solomonese, wrote Obama Wednesday. “[W]e feel a deep level of disrespect when one of architects and promoters of an anti-gay agenda is given the prominence and the pulpit of your historic nomination."

This isn't the first time Obama has dissed GLBT citizens. Last summer gay groups complained, but were rebuffed by Obama, when an "ex-gay" singer led Obama’s rallies in South Carolina.

The Real Problem: Dem Politicos Have No Spines
Here's the real problem at the root of the issue: Democratic candidates and officeholders refuse to publicly support gay marriage, even though almost all of them support it in private -- or at least when they're raising significant sums of money and getting lots of volunteer hours from GLBT voters. Instead, they fall back on the copout of supporting "civil unions" or "domestic partnerships," which do not -- let me repeat that -- do not give couples the same or even a similar array of civil rights that are bestowed on straight married couples.

Like the other Dem parrots, Obama has said he opposes same-sex marriage, but he also claimed he opposed Prop. 8. Not surprisingly, Prop. 8 supporters used Obama's statements against gay marriage in their radio and TV ad campaigns to bolster their credibility. Heckuva job, Obama. Sorry, the integrity of "separate but equal" treatment of certain classes of citizens went down the tubes long ago, as Obama well knows.

More Reactions
Here's what others have to say about Obama's choice of Warren:

“It’s a huge mistake,” said California gay rights activist Rick Jacobs, who chairs the state’s Courage Campaign. “He’s really the wrong person to lead the president into office.

“Can you imagine if he had a man of God doing the invocation who had deliberately said that Jews are not going to be saved and therefore should be excluded from what’s going on in America? People would be up in arms,” he said.

The editor of the Washington Blade, Kevin Naff, called the choice “Obama’s first big mistake.”

“His presence on the inauguration stand is a slap in the faces of the millions of GLBT voters who so enthusiastically supported him,” Naff wrote, referring to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. “This tone-deafness to our concerns must not be tolerated. We have just endured eight years of endless assaults on our dignity and equality from a president beholden to bigoted conservative Christians. The election was supposed to have ended that era. It appears otherwise.”

People for the American Way also issued a statement critical of Obama's choice of Warren, saying it was a "grave disappointment." Excerpt:

Pastor Warren, while enjoying a reputation as a moderate based on his affable personality and his church's engagement on issues like AIDS in Africa, has said that the real difference between James Dobson and himself is one of tone rather than substance. He has recently compared marriage by loving and committed same-sex couples to incest and pedophilia. He has repeated the Religious Right's big lie that supporters of equality for gay Americans are out to silence pastors. He has called Christians who advance a social gospel Marxists. He is adamantly opposed to women having a legal right to choose an abortion. Rick Warren gets plenty of attention through his books and media appearances. He doesn’t need or deserve this position of honor.

Speak Up Dem Officeholders!
I hope other Democrats and progressives, including our new members of Congress, speak up and encourage Obama to rethink his selection of Warren to lead the inaugural invocation. To do less would be siding with the forces of backwards, narrow thinking and hate-filled bigotry as we move towards the second decade of the 21st century. You can't claim to be a leader in the push for enlightened change and do otherwise, at least in my book.

The complete text of the letter sent to Obama by the Human Rights Campaign:

Let me get right to the point. Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans. Our loss in California over the passage of Proposition 8 which stripped loving, committed same-sex couples of their given legal right to marry is the greatest loss our community has faced in 40 years. And by inviting Rick Warren to your inauguration, you have tarnished the view that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans have a place at your table.

Rick Warren has not sat on the sidelines in the fight for basic equality and fairness. In fact, Rev. Warren spoke out vocally in support of Prop 8 in California saying, “there is no need to change the universal, historical definition of marriage to appease 2 percent of our population ... This is not a political issue -- it is a moral issue that God has spoken clearly about." Furthermore, he continues to misrepresent marriage equality as silencing his religious views. This was a lie during the battle over Proposition 8, and it's a lie today.

Rev. Warren cannot name a single theological issue that he and vehemently, anti-gay theologian James Dobson disagree on. Rev. Warren is not a moderate pastor who is trying to bring all sides together. Instead, Rev. Warren has often played the role of general in the cultural war waged against LGBT Americans, many of whom also share a strong tradition of religion and faith.

We have been moved by your calls to religious leaders to own up to the homophobia and racism that has stood in the way of combating HIV and AIDS in this country. And that you have publicly called on religious leaders to open their hearts to their LGBT family members, neighbors and friends.

But in this case, we feel a deep level of disrespect when one of architects and promoters of an anti-gay agenda is given the prominence and the pulpit of your historic nomination. Only when Rev. Warren and others support basic legislative protections for LGBT Americans can we believe their claim that they are not four-square against our rights and dignity. In that light, we urge you to reconsider this announcement.

Sincerely, Joe Solmonese
President
Human Rights Campaign

Also see my later post on this topic.