Seen in isolation, President-elect Barack Obama’s controversial decision to invite conservative evangelical leader Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation would seem a sideshow, a kerfuffle on the way to history.<\/p>\n
The truth is more complicated — and more significant.<\/p>\n
Gays and lesbians make up a significant faction within the Democratic Party. They are a significant voting block, but they’re also key fundraisers and activists.<\/p>\n
What’s more, many progressives see gay rights as the moral equivalent of civil rights. <\/p>\n
But other mainline Democratic factions are deeply uncomfortable with the GLBT movement.<\/p>\n
Exhibit A: The black community’s staunch support helped pass Proposition 8. That’s the ballot measure that recently stripped California gays of equal marriage rights.<\/p>\n
Exhibit B: New York state Senator Ruben Diaz’s decision to road-block a Democratic majority in Albany, largely because he opposes same-sex marriage and other gay rights.<\/p>\n
“The Democratic Party should not be a party of only two issues: Abortion and homosexual marriage,” Diaz wrote, in a statement issued over the weekend. <\/p>\n
Obama’s invitation extended to Rick Warren — a man who compared same-sex marriage to incest and pedophilia — looks a whole lot like Exhibit C.<\/p>\n
It seems to me that Democrats are at a crossroads. They can choose to oppose further gay rights, formally and frankly closing the door on things like gays in the military and marriage rights. <\/p>\n
Or they can embrace they idea that people in same-sex relationships are, well, human and therefore (to quote one of our founding documents) “created equal.”<\/p>\n
But the time when party leaders can have it both ways is ending. <\/p>\n
“Obama also said today that he is a ‘fierce advocate for equality’ for gays,” wrote columnist John Cloud last week in Time magazine, “which is \u2014 given his opposition to equal marriage rights \u2014 simply a lie.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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