Ok, I’ll probably lose both my gay and liberal credentials with this post, but I just don’t understand the outrage over Rick Warren’s selection to give the invocation at the inauguration. I mean, I’m not happy about it, but it’s not really upsetting me either. He’s being asked to say one prayer folks, it’s not like it’s a cabinet position. And I don’t feel like I’m just shilling for Obama either; in fact, it may well be because I’ve never really looked at Obama as all that much different than any other politician as the reason this didn’t really catch me off guard as it seems to have for some.
Of course, it shouldn’t have caught anybody off guard, I don’t think. Isn’t this precisely the thing Obama promised to do; reach across the aisle, acknowledge all Americans, etc? While I absolutely understand, and consider valid, the argument that we risk legitimizing abhorrent views when we honor those who hold them, I’m not convinced the risk is that great here. Were Obama to pick James Dobson, I’d absolutely be singing a different tune. Dobson is KNOWN for his hate. He’s based his entire career on it. Warren has some hateful views and has said some hateful things, but hate is not so inextricably linked to him that one cannot acknowledge positive attributes about him without validating the hate.
I don’t see having Warren come give a non-controversial prayer (if he injects socially conservative issues into it, it’s a different story altogether) as a acceptance, promotion, or even tolerance of his objectionable views. Rather, it’s offering a role in working together on what we can agree on, and I can’t find much wrong with that. As I said, it’s a prayer, not a cabinet position. There’s no power to the role. I don’t want Rick Warren making policy, but if there are parts of an Obama presidency that he can agree with, I for one don’t mind letting him have a part.
Well, besides the fact that Warren is who he is and says what he says, there is the feeling that Obama tried to game his own inauguration by trying to pick up some theocrat brownie points via the pick (at the expense of gays), rather than to strive to find the least offensive preacher possible for what is supposed to be an historic and unifying national event.
Compare: Billy Graham may have been no champion of gay marriage, but he reached the heights he reached precisely because of his non-divisive, milquetoast approach to faith in the public square.
Warren is about as far from that as is Louis Farakhan.
P.S. I’m still not convinced that the blame doesn’t belong more to Feinstein and Pelosi than to Obama. We just don’t know how the choice was actually made.
I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying, the whole thing is just, to me anyways, not worthy of the outrage it’s generating.
Oh, and it may have been Feinstein and Pelosi’s choice, but I do suspect that if Obama had been dead-set against it, it would not have moved forward.