In his first press conference after his re-election in 2004, President Bush memorably declared, “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.” We all know how that turned out.

Barack Obama has little in common with George W. Bush, thank God, his obsessive workouts and message control notwithstanding. At a time when very few Americans feel very good about very much, Obama is generating huge hopes even before he takes office. So much so that his name and face, affixed to any product, may be the last commodity left in the marketplace that can still move Americans to shop.

I share these high hopes. But for the first time a faint tinge of Bush crept into my Obama reveries this month.

As we saw during primary season, our president-elect is not free of his own brand of hubris and arrogance, and sometimes it comes before a fall: “You’re likable enough, Hillary” was the prelude to his defeat in New Hampshire. He has hit this same note again by assigning the invocation at his inauguration to the Rev. Rick Warren, the Orange County, Calif., megachurch preacher who has likened committed gay relationships to incest, polygamy and “an older guy marrying a child.” Bestowing this honor on Warren was a conscious — and glib — decision by Obama to spend political capital. It was made with the certitude that a leader with a mandate can do no wrong.

In this case, the capital spent is small change. Most Americans who have an opinion about Warren like him and his best-selling self-help tome, “The Purpose Driven Life.” His good deeds are plentiful on issues like human suffering in Africa, poverty and climate change. He is opposed to same-sex marriage, but so is almost every top-tier national politician, including Obama. Unlike such family-values ayatollahs as James Dobson and Tony Perkins, Warren is not obsessed with homosexuality and abortion. He was vociferously attacked by the Phyllis Schlafly gang when he invited Obama to speak about AIDS at his Saddleback Church two years ago.

There’s no reason why Obama shouldn’t return the favor by inviting him to Washington. But there’s a difference between including Warren among the cacophony of voices weighing in on policy and anointing him as the inaugural’s de facto pope. You can’t blame V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop and an early Obama booster, for feeling as if he’d been slapped in the face. “I’m all for Rick Warren being at the table,” he told The Times, but “we’re talking about putting someone up front and center at what will be the most-watched inauguration in history, and asking his blessing on the nation. And the God that he’s praying to is not the God that I know.”

Warren, whose ego is no less than Obama’s, likes to advertise his “commitment to model civility in America.” But as Rachel Maddow of MSNBC reminded her audience, “comparing gay relationships to child abuse” is a “strange model of civility.” Less strange but equally hard to take is Warren’s defensive insistence that some of his best friends are the gays: His boasts of having “eaten dinner in gay homes” and loving Melissa Etheridge records will not protect any gay families’ civil rights.

Equally lame is the argument mounted by an Obama spokeswoman, Linda Douglass, who talks of how Warren has fought for “people who have H.I.V./AIDS.” Shouldn’t that be the default position of any religious leader? Fighting AIDS is not a get-out-of-homophobia-free card. That Bush finally joined Bono in doing the right thing about AIDS in Africa does not mitigate the gay-baiting of his 2004 campaign, let alone his silence and utter inaction when the epidemic was killing Texans by the thousands, many of them gay men, during his term as governor.

Read the full text here: Op-Ed Columnist – You’re Likable Enough, Gay People – NYTimes.com.

By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Not that he was planning to attend, but Barack Obama should know that my sister’s inauguration night party — the one for which she was preparing Obama Punch — has been canceled. The notice went out over the weekend, by e-mail and word of mouth, that Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation had simply ruined the party. Warren is anti-gay, and my sister, not to put too fine a point on it, is not. She’s gay.

Read full article at the Washington Post >>

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 — The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force denounces the selection of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the Jan. 20 inauguration. Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in California, is an outspoken opponent of marriage equality, reproductive choice and stem-cell research. Warren has gone so far as to equate marriage between same-sex couples with incest and pedophilia.

Statement by Rea Carey, Executive Director
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

“President-elect Obama campaigned on a theme of inclusivity, yet the selection of Rick Warren to give the invocation is a direct affront to that very principle. This was a divisive choice, and clearly not one that will help our country come together and heal. We urge President-elect Obama to withdraw his invitation to Rick Warren and instead select a faith leader who embraces fairness, equality and the ideals the president-elect himself has called the nation to uphold.”

Statement by the Rev. Rebecca Voelkel
National Religious Leadership Roundtable

“As a Christian pastor and a lesbian, I am deeply troubled by President-elect Obama’s choice of Pastor Rick Warren to pray at his inauguration. Pastor Warren was one of the leaders in smearing the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in the recent Proposition 8 campaign in California. His words and actions have solidified the impression that Christian equals bigot when it comes to the LGBT community. And his leadership was one of the factors in Prop. 8’s passage.

“But Pastor Warren and the Saddleback Church, whose membership counts in the 20,000 mark, have also taken a leadership role in the fight against HIV/AIDS. And through this work they are coming to know many LGBT persons and our real lives — as opposed to the lies they have painted us with.

“My prayer is that Pastor Warren allow himself to repent of his hatred and harm to the LGBT community. If he is going to purport to acknowledge God’s presence at the inauguration, he must recognize the power and blessing in all our lives — especially LGBT people.”

Even as we endured the passage of Prop 8 and three other anti-gay measures on November 4, we took comfort in the near end of the most treacherous administration in recent history and the historic election of a man who seemed to live and breathe a genuine commitment to equality, fair play, and political integrity. Many of us believed that the election of the first African-American President, in a nation with such a shameful and entrenched history of white supremacy and racism, signaled a greater commitment to, and appreciation of, the unmatched diversity and pluralism of this country. This hope cushioned the blow—we hurt, but we had reason to believe things would get better.

Now, six short weeks later, we have reason for worry. The invitation of Reverend Rick Warren, pastor of the Saddleback Church in California, and a major proponent of Prop 8, to give the invocation at the inauguration of President-Elect Barack Obama is a dispiriting early signal that our new President may not fully understand LGBT people’s tenuous place in American life. Objections to the selection of Warren are being dismissed as a desire to shut out diverse voices and alternate points of view. But this is not an issue of simple disagreement. In the past weeks, Warren has said that legal recognition of same-sex couples is as serious a threat to family life as incest and pedophilia.

Warren’s views represent the most extreme outer margin of religious views on LGBT issues. He denies the existence of lesbian, gay, and bisexual orientation and his public statements demean our relationships and our humanity. While there may indeed be a reasoned discourse on civil unions v. marriage, for Warren there is no debate. He rejects any recognition for our relationships and is a prime figure in the wholly discredited “ex-gay” ministry. One of the most powerful letters I have read on this subject comes from a former NCLR law clerk (pdf). To have Warren elevated to a national stage to offer a welcoming prayer for and with Obama, a man with perhaps more current moral authority than virtually any other living human being, is an event of enormous cultural and political significance.

It is impossible to imagine the President-elect giving a likewise endorsement to a leader of faith who espoused such dangerous, extremist views about any other minority group. But here we are. Before our new President, who embodies the hopes and aspirations for a new day, has even taken the oath of office, it seems the marginalization of the LGBT community begins.

We are now on notice: as brilliant and visionary as Obama is, it certainly seems he does not get gay people or our issues. So, now we must hold him accountable to the promises he has made. Eight years of brutal intolerance may be over, but the real work of a fully inclusive America begins anew.