Obama picks Rick Warren for inaugural invocation, gay leaders furious

[Stranger in a strange land]

Barack Obama’s choice of a prominent evangelical minister to perform the invocation at his inauguration is a conciliatory gesture toward social conservatives who opposed him in November, but it is drawing fierce challenges from a gay rights movement that – in the wake of a gay marriage ban in California – is looking for a fight.

Rick Warren, the senior pastor of Saddleback Church in southern California, opposes abortion rights but has taken more liberal stances on the government role in fighting poverty, and backed away from other evangelicals’ staunch support for economic conservatism. But it’s his support for the California constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage that drew the most heated criticism from Democrats Wednesday.

“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.”

The rapid, angry reaction from a range of gay activists comes as the gay rights movement looks for an opportunity to flex its political muscle. Last summer gay groups complained, but were rebuffed by Obama, when an “ex-gay” singer led Obama’s rallies in South Carolina. And many were shocked last month when voters approved the California ban.

“There is a lot of energy and there’s a lot of anger and I think people are wanting to direct it somewhere,” Solomonese told Politico.

The selection of Warren to preside at the inauguration is not a surprise move, but it is a mirror image of President Bill Clinton’s early struggles with issues of gay rights. Obama has worked, and at times succeeded, to bridge the gap between Democrats and evangelical Christians, who form a solid section of the Republican base.

Obama opposes same-sex marriage, but also opposed the California constitutional amendment Warren backed. In selecting Warren, he is choosing to reach out to conservatives on a hot-button social issue, at the cost of antagonizing gay voters who overwhelmingly supported him.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16693.html

Did people honestly expect him to be a social liberal, when the first half of his campaign consisted of not even running on issues and the second half of the campaign consisted entirely of casting himself as this combination of FDR, JFK and the magical easter bunny, with not a hyde or hair talk of any divisive cultural issue. He didn't win the election by catering to social liberals and he won't win a second term doing it either, and this guy seems to me like the kind of guy who wants a 49 state landslide in 2012. (I won't say 50 because Utah is just out of reach)

Utah was only the 3rd most Republican state in the country this time around

[Stranger in a strange land]

Even though I disagree with Rick Warren on many issues, I'm actually glad that Obama invited him to give the invocation at his inauguration, as it symbolizes the hope that we can all find common ground and work together despite our differences. In this way it represents a break with the rancor, bitterness, and polarization of the Clinton-Bush years.