I understand that this is silly at some point. Ultimately it is meaningless. BUT! Or should I say, BUTT…it is NOT about agreeing with each other all the time, as both Obama and Warren have defended themselves by saying. Please. That is not it at all.
It’s that Warren compared legitimizing/legalizing gay marriage to legitimizing incest, child abuse, and polygamy. That goes beyond a difference of opinion; that’s ignorance–dumb, bigoted ignorance–and I would not reward it with an invitation to what will be–should be–one of the unifying historical events of our time.
In the end Obama will win, because it’s smart for him to do: invite people who think differently to bring them in the fold, and possibly gain an even wider acceptance from people who wouldn’t normally be inclined to. So I know why he’s doing it. And I know that it is this quality about him that makes him everything that Bush was not. And it’s even a reason that I voted for him–a true uniter, not a divider.
BUT…we’ve got to draw the line somewhere, and I draw it at megachurch pastors being elevated from cult status bigotry to Inaugural Speaker Guy. From the looks of the storm that has erupted over this choice, I think that this point has been made. So we’ll see what happens next.
UPDATE:
Just saw this from Christopher Hitchens:
As Barack Obama is gradually learning, his job is to be the president of all Americans at all times. If he likes, he can oppose the idea of marriage for Americans who are homosexual. That’s a policy question on which people may and will disagree. However, the man he has chosen to deliver his inaugural invocation is a relentless clerical businessman who raises money on the proposition that certain Americans—non-Christians, the wrong kind of Christians, homosexuals, nonbelievers—are of less worth and littler virtue than his own lovely flock of redeemed and salvaged and paid-up donors.
A president may by all means use his office to gain re-election, to shore up his existing base, or to attract a new one. But the day of his inauguration is not one of the days on which he should be doing that.
But if we must have an officiating priest, let it be some dignified old hypocrite with no factional allegiance and not a tree-shaking huckster and publicity seeker who believes that millions of his fellow citizens are hellbound because they do not meet his own low and vulgar standards.