Barack Obama’s campaign was the most technologically savvy ever run. Part of that technological capacity was passed on to the transition team in the form of a blog and comment page on Change.gov, the website headquarters for Obama during these next few weeks.

The question the transition team asked this week of commenters on the site was, “What social causes and service organizations are you a part of that make a difference in your community?” The answer they got has everything to do with Rick Warren.

Here are some of the responses that give me hope:

“I have read Dreams From My Father several times, finding it personally inspirational and stimulating to my personal growth. Barack in his biography is remarkable in is objective ability to learn from personal mistakes. The time in elementary school when he slighted a classmate, the time when he experimented with drugs, the hard lessons learned from a failed community event in Chicago’s South Side…..

So I have every confidence that Barack will also learn from the mistake of inviting Rick Warren to give the invocation. As an old community organizer he should recognize that he has prematurely set up a culminating event of reconciliation without laying the required groundwork and without doing the necessary healing first, and without clearly stating the limits of religion, especially conservative evangelical religion, in government, and realizing the intense pain this would cause many of his supporters who have been subject to homophobic hate and after the abuses of the last eight years under Bush. This will go into his next book as an embarrassment that became a stepping stone for his personal growth as he learns to be a fine president. The time for Rick Warren might have been his second inauguration after there was an actual reconciliation to celebrate”

From Crystal_Eyes

“I am a straight married woman with three kids who voted for Barack and I think his choice of a pastor to speak at the inauguration is innappropriate as well. He should have chosen someone who was more ecuminical and open to all walks of life. In this most important event we need everyone to feel welcome and that will leave some Americans feeling left out, Please understand this Barack…”

From chala

“I am so very saddened by the choice of Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation. I cannot fathom your insensitivity on this matter. I have been such a strong supporter of you and for you to disrespect gays and lesbians in the way you have is a slap in the face to all those supporting human rights. My wife was disabled and very active in the disability right movement yet she believed that to oppression of one group is the oppression of all. I fear that this is a continuation of all our oppression

Would you have chosen someone that advocates segregation to deliver the invocation, or someone the denies the holocaust, or someone who strongly advocates the cloistering of all people with disabilities? Yet you have someone like Rick Warren with his open and strong anti gay views to deliver the opening remarks at your inauguration.

I am shocked and saddened Mr. Obama. I hopped for so much more from you.

Carl Doering”

From Carl Doering

“I am trained as a Christian feminist theologian though I now teach on global religion and politics. As a progressive Christian. I believe that the ‘revolution’ in the evangelical community has broken away from the Falwell-Robertson-Dobson obsession w/ sexual morality towards a more diverse agenda (environment, poverty, AIDs – only in Africa, of course, interfaith dialogue).

If Obama wanted an evangelical to make his point, why not Jim Wallis? If he really had to have Warren for some Machiavellian reason, then why not the benediction. Why the lead singer?
Why put Rev. Lowrey at the back of the inaugural bus?

But why two Christians at all? The Democratic Convention’s invocations were more diverse than Obama’s Inauguration.

Obama has lost my respect on this one.”

From K Poethig

But these are not the only voices heard.

“As Californians we expressed our voices at the polls Novomer 4th. Prop 8 won by a margin of 600,000 votes: 7,001,084 to 6,401,483. To provide some context for this vote:

Prop. 8 received 2,150,000 MORE votes than did Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was reelected in 2006
Prop. 8 received nearly 2 million MORE votes than Dianne Feinstein did when she was reelected to the US Senate in 2006

Prop. 8 received 250,000 MORE votes than did John Kerry when he carried California in 2004

Prop. 8 received 45,000 MORE votes than did Barbara Boxer in her landslide reelection to the U.S. Senate in 2004

Prop. 8 passed with approximately the same percentage of the vote that Barack Obama received nationally.

So I wholeheartedly agree with President- elects decision to include Pastor Warren, a man who represents a large portion of our country.

Thank You President-elect Obama for not excluding those of us who have socially conservative values!”

From netbrown

“I wanted to say, I didn’t vote for Obama but he has pleasantly surprised me from day one. I do believe that the abortion questions does begin with how do we reduced them. I’ve never thought it could be effectly advocated through laws, it is a problem of the heart. I know because I’ve changed from pro choice to pro life. I think picking Rick Warren for invocation was brilliant I saw the civil debate and he is a good and honest man who sincerely wants there to be conversations about those things we disagree. I think what I see is Obama being true to his soul. It’s a good thing…don’t sell your soul for anything. I feel President Obama is my president.”

From Teresa K

There are over four thousand comments on the site and a good 90% relate to Warren. What this shows is not that the country as a whole supports or opposes LGBT rights. IT does show, however, that Obama’s inauguration will be a divisive event, and event many of us will not be able to celebrate. That is the real loss this decision will cause.