The Rick Warren Affair

A quick note:

I agree with Richard Cohen's column in today's Washington Post (12/23/08) that Obama's failure to cancel his invitation to Rick Warren to deliver the benediction at the Inauguration constitutes a moral failure. The reason people don't think it's such a big deal and want gays to "get over it" is that they think anti-gay slurs are more acceptable than anti-Jewish slurs or anti-black slurs or anti-almost anything slurs. Just to be clear, Rick Warren has repeated the age-old canard of comparing gays to pedophiles. If our future president wants to thank Warren for having him at his church, Obama could invite the portly evangelical to visit him for tea and sumptuous spread of doughnuts in the White House or he could visit Warren's church once more as president or better yet send him a note on pretty stationary. But he should not and must not defile the Inauguration ceremony, which as Rachel Maddow noted belongs to all Americans and not Obama personally, by honoring the unchristian pastor in this way.

I'm particularly disturbed by this choice because I am one of many gay Americans who voted with their money, time, voices, and feet for this man we so passionately believed was the correct choice in November (and in my case also during the primary season), only to see that in December Obama has displayed a striking and unfortunate tendency to reward his enemies better than his friends. (To those keeping score, number of Republicans in his cabinet: 2, number of gays: 0). Now I'm starting to wonder, maybe Hillary Clinton was the best choice after all.

To be continued...