Strange Bedfellows

I will be the first to admit that I willingly and enthusiastically worship at the altar of Obama. I also openly praise his willingness to open his Cabinet to his opponents from the presidential race, including Hilary Clinton and Bill Richardson, and retain Robert Gates as his Secretary of Defense. However, I am somewhat bewildered by President-elect Barack Obama's decision to select Richard Warren to deliver the invocation at Obama's inauguration ceremony next month.

Author of "The Purpose Driven Life", Warren is also the founder and senior pastor of the Saddleback Church, an Evangelical Christian megachurch in Lake Forest, CA. The church's weekly attendance of more than 23,000 makes it the fourth largest church in the United States. And although Warren has taken a stance against torture and global warming and promoted AIDS awareness, there are some other areas in his background which make me scratch my head:

• On gay marriage: "I'm not opposed to [visiting rights] as much as I'm opposed to re-definition of a 5,000-year definition of marriage. I'm opposed to having a brother and sister being together and calling that marriage. I'm opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that marriage. I'm opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage."
• On homosexuality: "The designer of sex has clearly and repeatedly said that he created sex exclusively for husbands and wives in marriage. Whenever God's parameters are violated, it causes broken hearts, broken families, emotional hurt and shame, painful memories and many other destructive consequences. There would be no STDs in our world if we all played by the rules."
• On Proposition 8: "For 5,000 years, every culture and every religion -- not just Christianity -- has defined marriage as a contract between men and women. There is no reason to change the universal, historical definition of marriage to appease two percent of our population."

I would just like to comment on Warren's quote regarding gay marriage. I am utterly amazed by how, when conservatives speak about this topic, they ultimately end up comparing a perfectly harmless arrangement to incest, pedophilia, polygamy, bestiality, etc. However, while they continue to denigrate homosexuals with these associations, these same bigots never seem to complain when homosexuals put their lives in danger as firefighters, police officers or members of the military; treat the sick and dying as doctors and nurses and teach our nation's children as teachers and professors.