Gay people aren't the only ones upset by the choice of Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation. Check out David Brody's email in-tray. I have to say this makes me more comfortable with the choice. Obama is trying to take us past the culture war to an actual dialogue. Obama is a liberal Christianist - and that has long been obvious. His timing could be better, of course. With the raw memory of Rick Warren's active push for Proposition 8, it's understandable that the pick is a little much for many. I get it. It's hard having worked for twenty years for gay inclusion and having supported Obama with so much energy only to watch someone like Rick Warren get the reward. There are, one might add, no openly gay people in the program. Sometimes it seems as if Obama is tone-deaf on the subject.
But this is also the point, no?
If we are going to endure as a single polity, we have to live and have a dialogue with those who oppose us. Rick Warren is not Pat Robertson. He can be engaged. He does good work in many areas. Better to have him in the dialogue than to return to the arid brutality of the culture war. And better for Obama to include Warren in his inaugural, while working to bring greater equality to gay couples and gay people, than to exclude him and preen in purity. We should judge Obama on whether he delivers the goods.
And one day, perhaps even Rick Warren will celebrate gay people's inclusion in America as well. But I won't get my hopes up. I know what he thnks of us, our relationships and our equality. We remain anathema.
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