Personally, I'm glad to have a better excuse than "too crowded" and "too cold" to skip the damn thing
Salon has a short round-up of concerns about Rick Warren's invocation at Obama's inauguration ceremony, concerns that go to reasons well beyond Warren's enthusiastic opposition to gay rights.
Meanwhile, MSNBC's ironically-named First Read blog weighs in with this blindingly stupid remark: "Where was this outrage when Obama appeared at Warren’s Saddleback forum back in August? The difference may be that the forum came before Proposition 8 passed in California."
Um, yeah. Or the difference may be between acknowledging that the representative of a large group of people has legitimate questions that you are willing to address head-on in a civil manner and giving that person a place of honor as part of the official launch of your administration.
Never trust highly-paid network political analysts to do the job of bloggers.
In a related matter, Sullivan dismantles the paranoid free-speech argument against gay marriage, and, at the end, picks up on his antagonist's claim that he's all for civil unions, just not "redefining marriage." This has become boilerplate make-nice talk for virtually all marriage-equality opponents. Even the Mormons tried it. and Sullivan asks the question that should be asked of every one of them: Really?
A few weeks ago Richard Cizik, the infamously "moderate" president of the National Association of Evangelicals, got a little too caught up in the NPR spirit in an interview with Terry Gross and played the "I believe in civil unions but not marriage card." Result: He was forced to resign the next day.
Update: Politico frames this as a story about "a gay rights movement that – in the wake of a gay marriage ban in California – is looking for a fight."
Sorry, but the people who got the proposal on the ballot and then spent a fortune on deceptive ads in order to jam it into the constitution are the ones who went looking for a fight. What's happening now is called finding one.
So what would be the most effective way for at least half of those 3 million people on the mall to protest when Warren gets up to do his thing? I have one idea, but it's probably gonna be too cold to walk home with no shoes on.
Comments
I think it's a thumb in the eye of the homophobes, bible thumpers and other hatemongers. Kind says "He's our bitch now!" If Warren had any integrity (which if course he doesn't) he would decline the invite because of the President-elect's embrace of the Gay community, recreational drugs, abortion rights, commmon sense...
Although, am I the only one who would pay to see Rev. Jeremiah Wright begin the invocation by thundering: "Not God Bless George W. Bush! God damn George W. Bush!"
Posted by: al in la | December 18, 2008 2:44 PM
Which huckster interpreter of Great Invisible Cloud Father will bless the next eight years of perpetual genocidal war as it shifts completely to Afghanistan under the "leadership" of Articulate Young Charismatic Man of Color? Stay tuned!
Posted by: J.D. | December 18, 2008 5:45 PM
They can do what those protesting Fred Phelps do when he shows up to disrupt funerals -- drown him out with hymns. Can you imagine a better time for 3 million voices to sing "We Shall Overcome"?
Posted by: Ernest | December 21, 2008 8:45 PM