Barack Obama selected Saddleback preacher Rick Warren to perform the Invocation at his Inauguration this January, upsetting many in the gay community and on the pro choice side of the aisle due to Warrens anti-gay marriage, and 'pro life' stance. Well as someone who both strongly supports gay rights, and believes in a woman's right to choose, I'd like to take the time to discuss this issue, and explain why I'm NOT up in arms.
- While Rick Warren falls on the wrong side of the tracks on these two issues, he is hardly a stereotypical, one-note conservative pastor. He has worked tirelessly to combat world hunger and poverty, and to advocate peace and human rights throughout the world. It's unfortunate he doesn't recognize the next logical step of his fight for human rights is gay rights, and their ability to do anything we straight folks can do, or to allow women to make the most intimate choices to do with their body, but does ANYONE get it completely right 100% of the time?
- Rick Warren is a personal friend of Obama's - he treated both Obama and John McCain with great respect at the Saddleback debates earlier in the US Presidential campaign, and asked some of the most impressive questions I've seen tossed to presidential candidates. He will not, I presume, use the dais of the Inauguration as a bully pulpit to push forward his own particular agenda, but to wish Barack Obama well and to pray for the Lord to guide him in the upcoming, and no doubt trying and difficult, next four years. Those are sentiments we can all get behind.
- I can't help but feel Barack Obama is kind of in a "can't win" here. He was blasted early in the presidential campaign for his association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a radically liberal preacher who in the past has wished eternal damnation on the United States, the very country Barack Obama feels called to serve. So he tries to take a more moderate approach, reaching out to those who are perhaps more conservative than he, and he gets blasted for that. He portrayed himself as a post-partisan moderate, people, we knew this; if you didn't want that, John Edwards or Dennis Kucinich would have been stronger candidates.
- The left should be better than this. After 8 years of non-cooperation and divisiveness from those petty, can't-see-past-the-ends-of-their-noses neocons, the country finally sees what we have all along, and elected someone basically in line with the change we want to see. Does it become us when we get there to become that which we hate? Petty sore losers who feel the need to rub it in and 'get back at' those who've been in charge the last 8 years by not reaching across the aisle in a spirit of cooperation? Reaching out to, including and embracing people of all different stripes is a grownup and mature thing to do. And it isn't like Obama is asking Pastor Warren to develop policy; he's asking him to say a prayer. I mean, really.
And really, if we lefties - or anyone, for that matter - want to raise a concern, bottom line is it's that. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Christian and a very strong believer, and if I were elected President or Prime Minister of anything I'd definitely want divine guidance on that path. So in that sense it pains me to say this BUT - with the separation of church and state being a principle that the United States was founded upon, should any one person be saying a prayer at the new president's inauguration?
A prayer should either be a private event with the Obamas and those in the cabinet who wish to join them, and a preacher of their choice in private, outside of official inauguration duties, or else several preachers of several religions should be involved to include the entire tapestry of the country Barack Obama will be leading for the next 4 years. THAT, if ANYTHING, moreso than a moderate Republican pastor being asked to lead a few-moments-long prayer, should be the issue.
Or then again - novel idea - we could just sit back, enjoy this moment in history, stop trying to create issues where there ARE NONE, realize that Obama's official presidency, as anyone's would, will bring plenty to parse and critique in the years ahead, and stop trying to jump on non-stories early. Just a thought.
