Gay rights advocates upset with Obama
People are acting like they didn’t see this coming or something:
Gay rights advocates are criticizing U.S. president-elect Barack Obama’s choice of a popular evangelical minister to deliver the invocation at his inauguration.
…Pastor Rick Warren, a best-selling author and leader of a Southern [tag]California[/tag megachurch, stresses the need for action on social issues such as reducing poverty and protecting the environment, alongside traditional theological themes.
But the Human Rights Campaign], the country’s largest gay rights organization, says Warren’s opposition to gay marriage is a sign of intolerance.
Obama’s selection of Warren is seen as a signal to religious conservatives that the president-elect will listen to their views.
I call bollocks on that last point — Barack Obama will offer religious conservatives the same overall respect that George W. Bush did during his time in office. Which is to say: he might say the occasional appealing thing, and throw the occasional small bone out there to be chewed on…but at the end of the day, it’ll just be a means of buying votes from a community whose views he couldn’t care less about.
For Obama, this kind of bait-and-switch is nothing new. During his campaign, his rhetoric seemed very…progressive, and certainly won him the support of gay rights groups above and beyond what Hillary Clinton was able to command.
This despite his having attended Jeremiah Wright’s church for a good 20 years — Wright being no supporter of gay marriage either.
Which begs an interesting question, I suppose: would these gay rights groups be as up in arms, or up in arms at all, if Wright was the one giving the inaugural invocation?
Steynian 299 « Free Canuckistan! (December 20, 2008, 2:09 pm).
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Steynian 299 (December 20, 2008, 2:14 pm).
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