Openly Gay Episcopal Bishop to Deliver Invocation at Lincoln Memorial | NY Times
President-elect Barack Obama has asked Bishop Gene Robinson, the openly gay Episcopal bishop who helped advise him on gay rights issues during the campaign, to deliver the invocation at a kickoff inaugural event on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, two days before the inauguration itself.
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Ezra Klein says it well (http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=01&year=2009&base_name=openly_gay_bishop_to_deliver_i)
“This is, incidentally, why it’s useful for progressives to criticize the president. Politicians respond to incentives. To noise. To anger. Warren, on some level, was a response to the loud protestations of evangelicals who believed the Democratic Party had no place for them. It’s hard to see Robinson is anything but a response to progressive activists who sense that Obama was more willing to risk cross those who supported him than those who opposed him. Erase the anger from either side and it’s not worth Obama — or any president — taking the risk to placate them. But this is a step in the right direction. This is genuinely inclusive. If it was the plan all along, the Obama administration sure did a good job keeping the secret. And if it wasn’t, then equality activists have something to be proud of this morning. They changed the incentives.”
http://www.americablog.com/2009/01/gay-man-picked-to-head-opm.html
Another accommodation to LGBTs.
Oh, IRE, don’t hate… appreciate! It’s an exchange of symbolic speaking roles. As an Episcopalian, I’m very have to have Gene+ participate in this way 🙂
cry moar
And I repeat, other than giving a speech which is heavily moderated (and probably written) by Obama’s office, what’s this do?
Save your fire.
And note these are not offhand comments by Warren, these are his central beliefs he preaches and promotes constantly.
A guy who compared MLK’s social gospel to Marxism and homosexuals to pedophiles and other criminals doing the invocation for the first minority President is a pretty big deal, maybe not to white rednecks but to some people it is.
Good to know the LGBT community needs so little to anger them and so little to placate.
“I suppose we’ll never know whether Robinson was seriously considered before the Warren pick or whether he was just casually mentioned.”
Yeah, but due to the controversy around Warren, the Obama team has done a lot to comfort the concerns of the LGBT community, which I think is great.
From the article:
Bishop Robinson said in a telephone interview on Monday that he believed that his inclusion in inaugural events had been under consideration before the controversy over Mr. Warren, but that Mr. Obama and his team were also seeking to heal the pain that Mr. Warren’s selection had caused among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocates.
I suppose we’ll never know whether Robinson was seriously considered before the Warren pick or whether he was just casually mentioned.
This will be recorded in the annals of history as one of the most significant setbacks, and moments of progress, in the eternal and elusive search for equality.
I can rest easy now, knowing that symbolic, meaningless addresses are determining the footing of Americans.
Hey, maybe now HRC can claim to have done something other than raise money and endorse the other HRC.
I read that this was chosen before Warren, but I wouldn’t be surprised if all the uproar over bigot giving the invocation didn’t force their hand to do more for LGBT people, which is exactly why we weren’t wrong for protesting it.
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