The gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender crowd is complaining about Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. From NPR:
In an open letter to Obama, Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, wrote, “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.”
So what would you prefer? That Obama treat Warren and his evangelicals like they are non-persons, by ignoring their existence, and not inviting their participation in anything? That sure sounds like the way gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people have typically been treated. How would you have felt if George W. Bush had asked a prominent member of your crowd to offer a prayer at a national ceremony? It would have been a breakthrough moment. But the evangelical people would have issued a statement just like Solmonese’s open letter, claiming that our religious foundations were tarnished.
The victory of a Democrat should not mean that all the other players who don’t agree with your agenda should suddenly be excluded from the table, as the Bush administration has excluded people who disagreed with its collective views and ideology. Have you forgotten that watchword of the Obama campaign, change? So long as whoever has the reins of power is just using that power to shunt dissenters to the side, instead of drawing everyone into the national conversation, we will never make progress. The change is to broaden the conversation, not just to swap out who is talking.
Putting Rick Warren up there to give an invocation at the inauguration is not some portent of doom. Obama has said publicly that he disagrees with Warren about a lot of things, but appreciates the “magic” of America, under which people who disagree can still participate in whatever we do.
So get over yourselves, Joe Solomonese, and the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender crowd. Don’t turn into your enemies just because you’ve made some progress toward your goals. The real problem is that there is an invocation at all during an inauguration ceremony. The strong, underlying message remains: If you want to be an American, you have to worship God. All other possibilities are subtly omitted and excluded. So Obama could still do more, yes—for instance, he could invite Sam Harris to offer some words during the same portion of the program when Warren speaks—but asking Rick Warren to give an invocation is not a bad thing.
Even if it’s “not a bad thing,” is it a good thing? Why a purveyor of anti-intellectual pap, instead of a thoughtful Christian? In fact, almost everyone on this list would be a better choice.
But you’re giving examples that prove my point. By choosing someone who is more “intellectual” and therefore less offensive, the strength of the outreach by Obama would be substantially diminished. Obama has stated that he disagrees with many of Warren’s views, but wants to include him in the dialogue anyway. That has the effect of making Obama look particularly inclusive and giving Warren less traction for his radical views. The power of the choice is precisely because he chose one of the more culturally offensive Christians, instead of an intellectual one.
One could also argue, as I would, that putting an anti-intellectual evangelical into that position is more consonant with what Christianity really is. It is not a thoughtful, intellectual thing, despite how its many proponents in the fields of philosophy and theology try to dress it up, but essentially an existential approach. And that harmonizes better with Obama’s own sense of faith, as he has portrayed in his books and speeches, which seems to be a private, personal thing, that does not necessary drive his ideas about policy—in direct contradiction to what we have seen for the last eight years.
I didn’t really see that line of reasoning in the post above; it is probably due to my failure to draw an inference from the last paragraph.
Still, I have a problem with the false dilemma posed near the beginning: that Warren will have no other chance to “dissent” in an Obama administration if he doesn’t speak at the inaugural, and that failure to give him a “bully pulpit” could be construed as treating evangelicals as “non-persons.”
I’m not following your second comment at all. Where do you see a false dilemma?
When you write, “So what would you prefer? That Obama treat Warren and his evangelicals like they are non-persons, by ignoring their existence, and not inviting their participation in anything?”
This implies that if Obama doesn’t invite Warren–or if gay advocates don’t want Warren to speak at the inaugural–that this is Warren’s only chance to present his views.
Surely there would be other opportunities in an Obama administration for Warren to get a hearing. (He hardly *needs* a bully pulpit; as a nationally-recognized speaker, he already has one.)
I’m still not with you. Their problem is that an anti-gay Christian was invited to participate, which means, I can only surmise, based on the trifling nature of the appearance—it’s just an invocation at an inauguration—that they must prefer absolute nonrecognition of Warren and his ilk. In other words, if they don’t even want him to do this, what could they possibly abide? And that attitude is the one I’m calling out as idiotic.
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