President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration.

Eboo Patel
On Faith at washingtonpost.com

For Rick Warren, the dream of being chosen to give the invocation at a presidential inauguration quickly turned into a nightmare of being fired at by the left and the right. Many on the left are furious because of Warren’s opposition to gay rights, some on the right are angry because Warren accepted the invitation of a man who supports gay rights.

The heat on such issues has been turned up since a majority of Californians voted No on gay marriage on Nov 4.

On one level, this is an either/or issue - that’s certainly what it looks like at the ballot box. Either you vote for gay marriage or you vote against it. But there is another way to look at this - which is how the two sides are choosing to frame the issue, and what that means for a diverse society.

Read More…

Roland S. Martin
AC360° Contributor

You must be a bad man to have the political left and the political right mad at you at the same time.

That’s where Pastor Rick Warren finds himself today as gays and lesbians come out in full force today after President-elect Barack Obama chose him to give the invocation at his January 20th inauguration. He also chose civil rights stalwart, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, to give the benediction.

What has gays and lesbians angry is that Warren is a staunch believer that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. An ardent opponent of homosexuality, he is also a strong pro-lifer. But that is secondary to the anger regarding his views of homosexuality, and that has led to a plethora of gay and lesbian leaders decrying his selection as a slap in the face, or as Huffington Post political editor Hilary Rosen to say on CNN’s AC360 last night, a “kick in the stomach.”

Keep reading

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

President elect Barack Obama almost certainly knew that he’d take some heavy flack from gay rights and abortion rights groups for picking mega preacher Rick Warren to give his inaugural invocation. Warren backed the anti gay marriage Prop 8 in California to the hilt and rails against abortion. But Obama picked Warren for shrewd political and apparently heartfelt personal reasons. A tip of that came back in mid-August when he traipsed to Warren’s Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California to talk to his evangelical flock.

At the time Warren reportedly had to arm twist some of his more recalcitrant members into accepting Obama’s appearance. But accept they did. Or at least they didn’t publicly grouse about it. But Obama also did his part to make the sell. He flatly said that he’d do more than any other presumed liberal Democrat had done in recent times to get an ear from evangelicals even if that meant breaking bread with preachers who were hardnosed opponents of gay rights and abortion.

Read More…

Steven Waldman
Beliefnet.com

In the course of a fascinating conversation last week with Beliefnet and our partner The Wall Street Journal Warren was stunningly candid about having doubts, even “dark nights of the soul.”
…He also dove headlong into some of the most controversial culture war issues, in ways likely to surprise and perhaps enrage some on the left and right.

Most Likely to Infuriate Liberals:

• Gay marriage is morally equivalent to allowing brothers and sisters to marry.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Andrew Sullivan
TheAtlantic.com

Rick Warren will give the invocation at Obama’s inauguration. Warren is a man who believes my marriage removes his freedom of speech…Shrewd politics, but if anyone is under any illusion that Obama is interested in advancing gay equality, they should probably sober up now.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Arne Duncan listens Tuesday as President-elect Obama announces him as his choice for education secretary.

David Brody
CBN News

Obama’s new pick for Education secretary is Arne Duncan, head of Chicago Public Schools. He’s been pushing for Chicago to start their first gay high school. Not kidding.

Obama is going to get a lot of flack over this pick from social conservative groups and it wouldn’t surprise me if Republican Senators raise a fuss about this during his confirmation hearing. Mark my words. Read below from The Chicago Tribune:

The Chicago Public Schools’ first high school designed for gay, lesbian and transgender teens is among 20 new schools recommended to the school board today by CPS Chief Arne Duncan.

The proposed schools range from technology-focused high schools to the School for Social Justice Pride Campus, which officials said would cater to but not focus exclusively on gay youth.

Backers said they envision a small high school offering a college-preparatory curriculum in which students would take four years each of English and math, three years each of foreign languages and science, as well as fine arts and physical education. It would be a performance school, meaning it would have the same staffing and oversight requirements as other district schools.

The announcement of the schools, which are expected to open in the fall of 2009 and 2010, took place at the Chicago International Charter School’s Ralph Ellison Campus, 1817 W. 80th St. Public hearings on the proposed schools are expected before the Board of Education votes on them Oct. 22.

“If you look at national studies, you see gay and lesbian students with high dropout rates…Studies show they are disproportionately homeless,” Duncan said. “I think there is a niche there we need to fill.”

Supporters have said the Pride Campus would help students find a safe school environment because studies have shown that gay youth are at a greater risk of dropping out of school and abusing drugs and alcohol, and are two to three times more likely to attempt suicide. A 2003 district survey shows that gay and lesbian youths are three times more likely to miss school because they don’t feel safe.

Opponents have called the move a misuse of public funds. At a recent public hearing on the proposal, some gay rights advocates have said the move would segregate these students and said the district should work more on fostering acceptance by mainstream students, teachers and other school officials.

Read More…

James McGreevey with Dina Matos during better days

Editor’s Note: You can read more Jami Floyd blogs on “In Session”

Jami Floyd
AC360° Contributor
In Session Anchor

This year we’ve done lots of important stories on gay marriage: in California, Massachusetts, Connecticut and elsewhere. That debate rages on in the public interest.

But we’ve also done some other stories about marriage and gay people that are motivated by a different interest, our prurient interest. Think about it. Jim McGreevy and his wife got a divorce earlier this year. So do lots of other couples. But we were stuck on the McGreevy’s mostly because he is gay. That is what kept his story alive. How much have you heard about the Spitzers after his notorious infidelity. Visiting a prostitute is illegal but that story pretty much died on the vine.

While an affair with a staffer is also a problem, if Mr. McGreevy had not had his affair with a staffer of the same sex, his story would have died too. Instead it lived on for better than three years. Larry Craig’s toe tapping, same deal. And Mark Foley with his illicit emails.

What interests us more, their dereliction of duty or their secret gay lifestyle? I’m betting the latter. So too in the Rios case going down in Missouri this week. Yes he’s a former police officer. Yes he is charged with murder. But the big headlines are all abut his gay love affair with the victim. And that’s the straight scoop on why we care about these cases.

Gay rights activists have been protesting outside Mormon temples since the passage of Proposition 8.

Nicholas Riccardi
Los Angeles Times

In June, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made a fateful decision. They called on California Mormons to donate their time and money to the campaign for Proposition 8, which would overturn a state Supreme Court ruling that permitted gay marriage.

That push helped the initiative win narrow passage on election day. And it has made the Mormon Church, which for years has striven to be seen as part of the American mainstream, a political target.

Keep reading…

Anderson talks with his panel in a heated discussion over same-sex marriage in light of the passage of Proposition 8.

Editor’s Note: Andrew Solomon is the author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, which won the 2001 National Book Award, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and has been published in 24 languages. He is a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, and writes for The New Yorker and The New York Times. He is also the author of the novel A Stone Boat and of The Irony Tower: Soviet Artists in a Time of Glasnost.

Andrew Solomon
Author, The Noonday Demon

My partner John and I tied the knot on June 30th last year. John had wanted to get married for some time, and we could have done so in Massachusetts, but gay marriage has no federal recognition there, and thus offers none of the myriad legal protections that heterosexual marriage entails, so I felt that it would be something of a sham. Then Great Britain passed a law giving civil partnership legally identical status to marriage.

Because I am a dual national, it made sense for us to get hitched over there: if we ever decided to give up our US citizenship, we would be treated as each other’s next of kin, and would not be taxed on each other’s estates. The name may be less than in Massachusetts, but the rights are more.

Even after our well-attended celebration of union, I was shy of calling our relationship a marriage, and social reserve made me leery of using the word husband in referring to John; it seemed unmasculine and almost kitsch. Over time, though, I found myself increasingly incensed by the opposition to gay marriage and I recognized the use of that term as a tool in the battle for civil rights. My hesitancy owed to a society that had always made me feel that I could assume my real identity only at a cost.

Gradually, however, I’ve become convinced that words and rights are ultimately inseparable, and that it is pusillanimous for me to call John anything other than my husband. Linguistic apartheid gives license to those who would treat us as lesser citizens, and our love as an inferior love. It exacts a price, compromising our feeling of participation in the great history of love that our parents’ marriages reflected. Philip Larkin’s poem about a tomb in which the remains of a husband and wife were placed together, ends, “What will remain of us is love.” Marriage is the institution by which that love is sanctified, for better or worse—the mechanism of that remaining.

Since our wedding, I’ve gone from mild advocate to passionate supporter of gay marriage, of unions but especially of marriage itself. In the grand scheme of things, I’d rather have an election that brought in Obama and failed on marriage than the other way around, and I am almost embarrassingly excited about our new president. But it has been a bitter pill to hear the throngs shouting for joy about this election, while so many gay men and lesbians are being hit with a sense of how regressive society is about our rights and priorities.

Activists have consoled us that gay marriage will end up winning, but I don’t want to be the equivalent of the 106-year-old woman Obama lionized in his victory speech, winding down old age with the satisfying experience of seeing prejudice finally fall. I may have to wait that long to vote for a gay candidate for the presidency, but I will not wait so long for permission to refer to John as my husband not as an affectation but as a matter of national legal record, affirming the same rights and the same status between us that our heterosexual married friends and family enjoy.

Keep reading