Pam's House Blend:
Dear President-elect Obama -
Let me get right to the point. Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans. Our loss in California over the passage of Proposition 8 which stripped loving, committed same-sex couples of their given legal right to marry is the greatest loss our community has faced in 40 years. And by inviting Rick Warren to your inauguration, you have tarnished the view that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans have a place at your table.
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According to the NYT as reported in SJ Mercury(12/18/08), Rick Warren has been chosen by Obama to give the invocation at his inaugural. The article says it is "a role that positions Warren to succeed Billy Graham as the nation's pre-eminent minister and reflects the generational changes in the evangelical Christian movement.
....."The choice of Warren, pastor of a megachurch in Orange County, is an olive branch to conservative Christian evangelicals. He is an opponent of abortion and same-sex marriage---litmus-test issues for Christian conservatives. His selection set off criticism by gay rights groups angered by his support for California's ban on same-sex marriages.
But Warren has also been one of the most prominent evangelical leaders calling for Christians to expand their agenda and confront global problems like poverty, AIDS, climate change and genocide in Darfur. He has sometimes angered the older generattion of conservative evangelical leaders aligned with the Republican Party, as when he invited Obama to speak abut AIDS at an earlier event at his church"
