Rick Warren is a sellout! By giving the invocation to Obama's inauguration, Rick Warren is spitting in the face of every pro-life, evangelical Christian who opposes gay marriage! How dare he appear on stage with Obama, a man who is for abortion and supports gay rights!!

This is outrageous! I hope Warren is kicked out of Saddleback for this. The Christian right/evangelical community made him who he is, a best-selling author and multi-millionaire and now he has the gall to dismiss everything we stand for by praying for a guy who supports everything they stand for.

I can't believe he would do this. How vile!

Someone needs to start a petition and get some signatures with some demands. Have Rick Warren come out and denounce his campaigning against Prop 8 and admit it was wrong to impose his religious beliefs on people via rules of law.

Does anyone know how to do this? I think it would be a good start and would be the least he could do. If and only then, should he be allowed and given the privilege to share the stage at the opening ceremony on the 20th.

Love the snark. I am amazed at the reaction of some who probably, when they think about it seriously, ought to be pissed that there is an invocation at the event in the first place rather than care who gives it. At least the organic lefties who are pissed about the Ag appointment are being internally consistent. Both are showing to me the depth of their own intolerance.

ahh crud. Sorry bout that. I didn't see the first posting. My postings have been pretty laggy the last couple days.

I think there is a flaw in the stated downside: that Warren would use the legitimacy bestowed by Obama to attack Obama's social agenda. In other words, one should respect Obama's judgment when it comes to choosing who should do the invocation (a minor role, at least until people started making a big deal about it), but you shouldn't respect his judgment on social policy.

There is a turn around on this. If Warren accepts to give the invocation, then he is bestowing his implicit approval for Obama and his social policies.

Why does there have to be such a Machiavellian motive behind this pick? Why does Obama always have to painted by the MSM as wanting to piss off the left?

I don't agree with this choice at all, but perhaps Obama chose Warren for the simple reason that that's who he wanted.

What people are missing here is that on Prop 8 Obama and Warren are on the same page. Neither wants gay marriage legally sanctioned. Obama may be for civil unions, but that is the net result after Prop 8 anyway.

Obama is a *DOWN PAYMENT* on restoring sanity to American politics. He is Nixon to Clinton's Eisenhower. We have a long ways to go to get to FDR or LBJ.

Small steps.

Why is constantly baiting the left at every turn supposed to be a brilliant move at the very moment when the country has just turned sharply to the Left????

I'm not saying that Warren was picked to do that, but this 'strategy' is obviously in the mind of powerful Democrats, including Obama's chief of Staff.

There will be blowback if this continues...

Next up: Dennis Miller, Secretary of Hilarious!

"What about the question of whether it was, you know, the right thing to do?"

In TraditionalMediaLand, pissing off the left is by its very definition "the right thing to do."

I went to a conservative site last night to get their view on the Rick Warren fiasco. One person told me Rick is a fat ass that wants attention and this would probably help him sell books. So, there you go.

i personally find rick warren's political stances very offensive, but i don't think that obama deliberately picked warren solely to upset the left end of the political spectrum- that's ridiculous.

i am aware that it is possible in deciding who will be a part of the invocation proceedings, he was made aware that warren's controversial nature will upset people, but, perhaps his selection was used to "distract" the media rather than upset the left. perhaps his selection was used to ride out the rest of the week talking about inauguration rather than why the obama transition team "won't release info about their discussions with blagojevich's office" or "rahm emanuel's alleged discussions on the senate seat with gov blagojevich".

why is every move made by obama seen as some sort of hostile gesture to the left? the media has this deep fascination to make obama seem more conservative than i truly think he is. i am under no notion that he's a bernie sanders or a kucinich, but he's definitely a democrat- i'd venture to say left of the "new democrats" (if only slightly). i really think it's part of the larger meme that the united states is a "center-right" nation and any president elected has a center-right political philosophy. this, to me, explains why the media will continue to try to make it seem like obama is deliberately trying to move away from his left, unions and women. just you wait and see.

So if Obama was Catholic and the pope was willing to give the invocation, then Obama shouldn't permit it because the pope has spoken out against abortion and other causes that Obama supports? Come on, it's an invocation not a cabinet post. I don't think there should have to be a litmus test for the religious figure giving the invocation. Even in war the opposing sides put down their arms on holidays. I think the day of inauguration we should all put away our differences and then restart the fight the day after when Obama is officially our country's president.

i get why people are upset about this decision but i can't say i'm at all surprised by it. i figure that not everyone participating in the inauguration will agree with obama on all issues, instead each of them represents obama's views on a variety of different issues; like it or not warren & obama are friendly and agree on fighting poverty & AIDS, but there are others included in the program whose views on gay & lesbian issues more closely reflect obama's who he probably also disagrees with on some other issues. plus these two guys pray together on a regular basis; so it's clear obama personally doesn't view him as scum the way other people do & thus he didn't have reservations about picking him to participate at the inauguration.

Obama hasn't "tarnished his brand" by picking Rick Warren. That's because Obama's brand is: "I can speak respectfully to people with whom I strongly disagree and can find areas of common ground with anyone."

The Christian Right, however, has a brand of using 100% purity tests for abortion and gay-hate to influence elections. The reason they have been an effective electoral force is that they have conveyed, successfully, "if one politician is pro-choice and one is pro-life it doesn't matter what else they believe or do," you MUST vote for the pro-life one. Rick Warren is tarnishing THAT brand and has, to his credit, said things like "I'm pro-life but that isn't the only thing that I care about."

This is a wedge that Obama has been nurturing all along. Not to try to make evangelicals suddenly turn pro-choice or pro-gay but to get some of them to compromise on that issue to pursue other agenda like helping the poor. If the Christian Right loses its rigid 100% purity hold on its parishoners, then it loses its enormous influence in electoral politics.

The MSNBC pundits love the choice because it fits into their framing of Obama as a cynical political manipulator, rather than a real voice of change. The truth is he's a little bit of both, but they value the former over the latter.

I'm disgusted by this choice - Obama picked a man who compared my sister and her wife (they were married this summer in SF) to pedophiles. How is this in any way unifying? There are plenty of places to debate policy where Warren or anyone else would be welcome; but the inaugural benediction should be for everyone.

His views are radically out of step with Obama's?

I don't know about all of Warren's views, but Obama disagrees with redefining "traditional" marriage with respect to policy. He said this many times during the campaign. So why are we arguing over this at the end of the year? Did people think he changed his mind?

In case some have not noticed, this country at home and abroad is going to hell in a hand basket

It is ALL hands on deck time

I am so sick of 40 year old identity politics I could hurl

And I walked precincts for NO on 8..I was THERE at the White Night Riots in SF

Prophylaxis against the inevitable "you're a self-loathing faggot" charge

Although if Eric would marry me I might change my tune

Obama will benefit more than you think. He will look like the grown-up while the wingers have a tantrum. In the eyes of the average, uninterested, I-got-bills-to-pay voter, poor Obama is trying to keep the peace and make things better for America and some angry protestors are trying to stop it.