Dec 26, 2008  |  By: KEVIN NAFF  | COMMENTS     

UNLESS YOU CHECKED out really early for the holidays, you’ve no doubt heard that Rick Warren, conservative author of “The Purpose Driven Life” books and pastor at the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., will deliver the invocation at Barack Obama’s inauguration next month.

The angry reaction to this insult has been heartening. Obama, with this overture to anti-gay evangelicals who didn’t support him in 2008 and won’t vote for him in 2012, succeeding in bringing about the unity he often speaks about: everyone from Andrew Sullivan to the Human Rights Campaign criticized him.

Sullivan, an early and ardent Obama supporter, wrote, “If anyone is under any illusion that Obama is interested in advancing gay equality, they should probably sober up now. He won’t be as bad as the Clintons (who, among leading Democrats, could?), but pandering to Christianists at his inauguration is a depressing omen.”

HRC’s reaction was more startling, given the group’s reticence to criticize Democrats, let alone a Democratic president-elect. And HRC President Joe Solmonese’s anger extends beyond the Warren flap to Obama’s failure to name an openly gay Cabinet member, something that transition team members had heavily hinted would happen in closed door meetings with gay rights leaders.

“We’ve seen appointment after appointment of talented Americans who come from constituencies that are part of this country and that helped gain his election,” Solmonese wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. “Well, we’re one of those constituencies who actually worked and voted for Obama, unlike Warren and probably most of his 21,000 parishioners. Yet, we’re the ones left waiting for some real evidence of inclusion.”

Gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) joined the disappointed gay chorus.

“Religious leaders obviously have every right to speak out in opposition to anti-discrimination measures, even in the degrading terms that Rev. Warren has used with regard to same-sex marriage,” Frank said in a statement. “But that does not confer upon them the right to a place of honor in the inauguration ceremony of a president whose stated commitment to LGBT rights won him the strong support of the great majority of those who support that cause.”

FROM BLOGGERS TO activists to politicians, gay voices demonstrated in a unified and loud way that the Democratic Party’s old way of doing business — namely accepting monopolistic levels of gay money and support then delivering zilch for it — is over. The anger unleashed by Proposition 8’s passage is real and isn’t going away anytime soon.

Warren, an outspoken proponent of Prop 8, is James Dobson masquerading as a moderate. A writer for The Nation observed the following after a 2005 interview with Warren: “Lamenting the ‘tyranny of activist judges,’ who obstruct the will of the majority, he evinces no understanding of minority rights or the judiciary’s role in enforcing them. Explaining his views about homosexuality and gay rights, he notes, ‘I don’t think that homosexuality is the worst sin,’ and, ‘By the way, my wife and I had dinner at a gay couple’s home two weeks ago. So I’m not [a] homophobic guy, okay?’”

In an interview posted to BeliefNet, Warren extolled the virtues of ancient traditional views of marriage, conveniently forgetting that women were considered property and men could take as many wives as they wanted. “I’m opposed to the redefinition of a 5,000-year definition of marriage,” Warren said. “I’m opposed to having a brother and sister be together and call that marriage. I’m opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that a marriage. I’m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.”

So, in Warren’s view, same-sex marriage is akin to polygamy, child molestation and incest. And, in a 2005 interview with CNN’s Larry King, Warren went one step further, blaming gay AIDS patients for contracting the disease. “The question isn’t how did you get it,” he said. “It’s what do you do now? I mean if I’m driving down the street one day on the freeway and I see somebody laying on the side of the road bleeding to death and I go over to them, my first question is, was this your fault? No, I just help the guy.”

Why did Obama choose such a person to deliver the invocation? Where are all the influential gay officials on his team who should be advising him about such matters? Warren’s presence on the inauguration stand is a slap in the faces of the millions of GLBT voters who so enthusiastically supported him. There are plenty of affirming religious figures in this country who could ...