Obama Blew it with Robinson!

Alice C. Linsley

President elect Barack Obama just doesn't get it. He thinks that to build a strong base of support for his second term in office he has to include everyone and signal diversity. He doesn't realize that by inviting gay Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson to speak at his Inagural, he has slapped the faces of millions of Anglicans worldwide who have fought for 5 years to restore unity and stability to the Communion that was torn apart on the day that Robinson was consecrated.

The Robinson invitation will erode a good deal of the support Obama may have gained by inviting progressive Protestant Rick Warren to speak.

Like I said, Omaba just doesn't get it. He has bought the culturally popular lie that the Church and the Scriptures are nuetral toward homosex. The fact is that not a single sacred text of any of the world religions regards homosex as normative, good or a civil right.

Even African American pastors are shaking their heads. They recognize that homosexual activity is self-destructive (gay men on average live 20 fewer years than heterosexual men) and the Civil Rights Movement was not about self-destructive "rights" or societal acceptance of permiscuous lifestyles.

Not that I'm accusing Robinson of a permiscuous lifestyle. His sexual identity crisis came after he fathered children with his wife. It developed in the context of a sick denomination that rubber stamps every innovation that undermines traditional values and God's authoritative order in creation. The Episcopal Church still has some clergy and parishioners who hold to the "Faith once delivered", but they are few and far between. Most have left in heartbreak and anger. Robinson didn't cause them to leave. They left by choice and they are still very angry about what happened to their church. They aren't soon to forget.

Robinson continues to be the self-appointed crusader for gay activism in The Episcopal Church and that fact makes him a very risky Inagural speaker for Obama.

But like I said, Omaba doesn't get it.

Steve Waldman gets it though. He has noted that "...the Obama folks got so tangled up in the culture war politics -- balancing on gay rights, gender and race issues -- that they forgot, or downplayed, old fashioned religious base-covering", which is to say that Obama should have invited a Protestant Pastor, a Catholic priest, and a renown Rabbi.
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For how Obama's choices of religious figures for his Inagural highlight excluded Americans, go here.