Dear neighbor Obama,

Even though you are currently enjoying a much warmer climate in Hawaii (and believe me I can’t blame you for it is freezing in Chicago) instead of having a snow ball fight with me, I would like to take some time off my Christmas Eve Eve and write you a letter expressing my concerns.

It is still difficult for me to understand how could you , who has been so on point on almost everything you’ve done as President elect, invite an anti-gay theologian to deliver your inaugural invocation. Did you think for a minute that by inviting a gay band would make everything balance? Or by inviting that band would make your decision to invite Reverend Rick Warren suddenly ok?  Well, let me tell you, it is not “ok”.

Rev. Rick Warren is the pastor of an evangelical Church in Orange County, California.  The same Reverend is the author of a bestselling book “The Purpose Driven Life”.  Oh and did I forget to mention that Warren was one of the leaders in the campaign to pass California’s Proposition 8. And let me remind you what Proposition 8 did:  it took away the legal marriage rights of same-sex couples.

After building a message of unity and hope and change in your campaign, what kind of message do you think your Warren invite will send to LGBTQ couples throughout the country? Actually, with that invite…I don’t feel like a lot of things are changing, nor am I feeling hopeful, or united for that matter.

I understand that Reverend Joseph Lowery who is a LGBTQ-friendly  civil rights icon will close the ceremony, but what bothers me the most about these choices is the thought process that must have taken place when these speakers were chosen.

I hope that it did not go something like: “ Oh we’re inviting Warren to appeal to all evangelicals, he is anti-gay, but it’s ok we have a gay band oh and Lowery too.  That should do it.”

I hope that this is nowhere close to the rationale you used when it came to justifying your choices. I hope that the LGBTQ population was not just a “problem” or an “issue” that the campaign had to “deal” with. I hope that Lowery was not invited just to appease the growing criticism over your choice to invite Warren (although that is very likely). Once again, not much change or unity or inclusion or hope. Tsk tsk.

And the thing that bothers me the most about this is that you could have taken your choice for  the inaugural invocation speaker in so many directions.  You could have invited a prominent civil rights leader—to connect the current movement to the movement of the 60’s and the 70’s.  You could have invited a prominent female leader.  If you wanted to include the religious community, you could have invited a religious figure with a more inclusive message on love and acceptance in the name of our Lord, or something along these lines.  You had so many options, and you went with a Proposition 8 leader?  Good one.

We all need to remember that although January 20^th, 2009 is a day that will be remembered forever in history, we also cannot forget the disappointment we felt the day after the election when we found out that AZ, FL, and CA passed constitutional gay marriage bans and AR passed a ban on adoption for unmarried couples. Speaking of taking a step forward and then four steps back—not much hope or change there either.

What you need to understand is that by placing such high emphasis on the civil rights and equality throughout the United States in the campaign and then following these words with a Warren invite—the message sent to the LGBTQ community is “Hey, your struggle is not important.  Your struggle has nothing to do with civil rights or equality.”

After 8 years of politics based on religious ideology, I am sick and tired of seeing yet once again civil marriage rights for same-sex couples being turned into a a religious issue rather than a human rights issue.  It is sickening and alarming and it betrays millions of hopeful people who have voted for Obama because they truly believed in his message of change.