(This article is also appearing in Political Cortex, The Smirking Chimp and My Left Wing.)
Barack Obama's mantra of “fundamental change” has a tinny tone to progressives who oppose to bigotry and reject the narrow minded view of Bush-Cheney Republicanism. The tin becomes lead with strong doses of exclusionary messianic Christian evangelicalism.
Obama’s selection of Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation should do more than send waves of revulsion through the hearts and minds of progressives; it should send shock waves reeling through anyone who thinks period!
Just because he has a breezy tone and smiles a lot, at bottom Rick Warren is what separation of church and state advocate Rob Boston said in an interview with Keith Olbermann:
“Rick Warren is Jerry Falwell in a Hawaiian shirt.”
Warren was a leading advocate of the infamous Proposition 8 that recently passed in California. His support contained a fallacious argument that if Proposition 8 were not passed those who disagree with gay marriage would be prosecuted for committing hate crimes.
In a recent interview, rather than fulminating and emitting steam, a laid back Warren declared that gay marriage is equatable with pedophilia, incest and polygamy, not necessarily in that order.
In typical Warren fashion, he explained in the same interview that he had nothing personal against the homosexual community, noting that, when some of their representatives visited him recently, he served them coffee and donuts.
The soon to be inaugural main personage has set his sights on the atheist community as well. According to Warren you cannot be an atheist and a good citizen at the same time. If you happen to be an atheist then that belief should, in and by itself, bar you from being elected to public office.
The right reverend shares one among many traits in common with televangelist Pat Robertson, who openly advocated the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Never abandoning his cool and breezy manner, Warren in an interview with Sean Hannity stated that it would be fitting and proper to assassinate Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
No, President-elect Obama, selecting Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inaugural ceremony is not an effort at inclusion.
It is an insult to thinking Americans who are appalled by what this frightfully narrow-minded clergyman represents.