Gay rights advocate to give inaugural benediction

[madeline_con]

Obama's Pick for Benediction Overshadowed by Warren

While Barack Obama's choice of conservative California pastor Rick Warren to give his inauguration's opening prayer has received widespread criticism from progressives, his selection of civil rights icon Reverend Joseph Lowery to offer the closing prayer has been rather overshadowed.

The 87-year-old Methodist minister cofounded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and was the organization's third president, after Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy.

"I'm overwhelmed. I'm very grateful. I'm humbled and honored," Lowery told the Associated Press on Friday. "When we worked on the Voting Rights Act in the '60s, we hoped and felt that one day there would be an African-American president. I honestly can say I didn't think I'd live long enough to see it."


More:

http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid69037.asp

[Bolo Boffin]

1. He supports civil unions, not marriage rights.

In other words, Rosa shouldn't have been made to move from her seat, but she shouldn't expect to ever sit in the Whites Only section.

[madeline_con]

4. ...

This is such a mess. I'm still learning, forgive me. :(

[Bolo Boffin]

6. Lowery is so much better than Warren, it's not even funny.

But even he has a way to go on this issue. We are all human.

[kevinbgoode]

5. Yep. Which means that Obama really wasn't interested in REAL

inclusion - not a single minister supporting our EQUAL right to marriage. So much for the whole "representation of different points of view" crap - OUR point of view doesn't exist in this inaugeration.

I continue to be embarrassed that I supported a president whose legacy in the gay community will be as a marriage segregationist and a proponent of some bullsh*t separate-but-equal agenda.

I will never again support another candidate who views my American citizenship as subservient to his manufactured and selected heterosupremacist "religious" beliefs.

[Hydra]

7. Oh, just wait

I don't think we've heard the end of this, by a long shot, and not just on this issue.

Here, have some of this:

:popcorn:

The true Democrats are being told by Biden to STFU and "Don't worry" about Obama's commitment to gay rights. Right now I have to wonder if he values any of our rights...Warren's supporters would be happy to string me up for being an agnostic and unmarried, yet he is given a place at our table? That's not right, not at all.

[Hydra]

2. It's like when Bush molested Merkel

It spoils the whole event.

[xchrom]

3. he's an ok gay rights advocate -- but his history on racial

civil rights makes him a lion.

[mitchtv]

8. Didn't he pick a white ;gay; minister to a supporting role

with McClurkin?

[laconicsax]

9. Yep.

[David__77]

10. The point in "partnering" with ideological opponents should always be to neutralize them.

We'll see how this plays out. But I really hope that Obama recognizes an ideological enemy when he sees one. These are not partners strategically. They can be used tactically for this or that purpose only. We can have spokespeople say whatever sweet words about "reaching across the aisle" or "unity," but the fact is that what these people represent must be destroyed, uprooted, and eradicated fully, as the evil it is. Warren and his ilk can only hope to be reformed, and is presently utterly worthless.