Frank Rich vs. David Axelrod on Rick Warren

There are two schools of thought when it comes to PE Barack Obama's selection of Pastor Rick Warren to lead the invocation on January 20.  The one school of thought was championed hard by Obama's senior-most adviser, David Axelrod, on Meet the Press this morning.  This line of thinking says that Warren's prominence at the Inauguration is a sign of Obama's commitment to inclusiveness.  Axelrod thinks it's in poor taste to attack the choice of Warren, and urged gay rights supporters to stop "shaking our fists at each other."

The other school of thought on the Rick Warren issue was spelled out by Frank Rich in this morning's NY Times, in an op-ed piece, "You're Likable Enough, Gay People." (That's got to be one of the best headlines of the year.  If only Frank Rich could have worked in a line in the column about the issue of marriage equality being above Obama's pay grade.)  Rich points out that while Warren is no James Dobson, inviting someone like Warren to have a leadership position at the inauguration is rewarding unacceptable intolerance.  Rich writes, "When Obama defends Warren’s words by calling them an example of the 'wide range of viewpoints' in a 'diverse and noisy and opinionated' America, he is being too cute by half. He knows full well that a 'viewpoint' defaming any minority group by linking it to sexual crimes like pedophilia is unacceptable."

Ouch.  Take that, David Axelrod.

Rich is right.  When the Obama administration tries to explain their invitation to Warren, they sound "too cute," a little arrogant, and a lot indifferent to the anger LGBT people feel over Warren's active support of Prop 8 and his "unacceptable" comparisons of homosexuality with sex crimes and perversion.  They should stop trying to explain it away like it's the gay community's fault that Warren causes such anger.

But Rich is also right, a little later in his article, when he writes that Warren's participation in the Inauguration is no "Bay of Pigs."  It's not good, and it certainly tarnishes what should have been a rather exciting Inauguration -- but it's not necessarily what folks will remember in four years.  What we'll remember in four years is whether (1) Obama works to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't tell," (2) Obama pushes Congress to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, the Uniting American Families Act and the Matthew Shepard Act, and (3) Obama welcomes supporters of marriage equality (both religious and non-religious) at his governing table, and gives them as much credence as he's about to give Pastor Warren.