1. If you climb a gate, jump into a zoo habitat for polar bears, and get beat down by a polar bear, expect little sympathy from me. Instead I’m going to laugh and start a petition demanding that animal gets some type of prize.

2. The New York Mets play their first game in a new stadium today. Sure you come here for “gay news” but if they make the playoffs, I’m writing about it for a whole week. So deal.

3. Dr. Laura said good things about gay relationships?!?! Dr. Laura?! Get out!

4. My apartment is a pigsty and I don’t care.

5. Rev. Rick Warren is not making sense.

6. Newt Gingrich said something smart yesterday: the Obama dog story is stupid. However, Bo is a cute little thing; the new Obama pet doesn’t hold a candle to Bailey.

7.  No cherry pie yet. That  will change by Friday.

8. The Amazon.com story reminds why my cash only goes to independents. Good morning 192 and Book Court.

9. If my doctor ever tells me to give up coffee, I’m getting a different opinion.

10. Bacon salt. God bless this land!

Huddle up people. Listen, if you want to be against marriage for gay folk, I can live with that. Free country and all. You want to say some crazy stuff about marriage for same sex couples, go at it. However,  you cannot say something nutty and when the kitchen gets warm go on the denial kick.Rick Warren, the pastor of Saddleback Church and last heard invocating at Obama’s inauguration, has decided that we all misheard when he compared  gay marriage to incest and pedophilia.

“And I was asked a question that made it sound like I equated gay marriage with pedophilia or incest, which I absolutely do not believe. And I actually announced that,” the good reverend said in an interview with CNN’s Larry King.

Warren also noted that he went on an apology tour to all of his gay friends but that was never reported.  I’m wondering if these were the same  pals who apparently told Warren it was okay to have multiple partners (Rev. Warren: I’m still waiting for the names  of the “people” who told you this).

All of this is sort of nice for Easter week (redemptive and all), but it’s also a lie. An odious, “I can’t believe you are really saying this,” tall tale. I’m biased. So let’s look to Steve Waldman, the man who interviewed Warren when the reverend didn’t say what he said about gay marriage.

“The issue to me, I’m not opposed to that [some partnership rights] as much as I’m opposed to redefinition of a 5,000 year definition of marriage,” Warren originally said to Waldman. “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.”

Waldman points out Warren wanted to clarify a few points after the interview came out. Wait for it. Wait for it. Wait for it. Warren didn’t have anything to add, or take away, with the above nugget.

Mmmmmm. Maybe Melissa Etheridge can explain all of this.

And now the 26-year-old has a new position: head of the new President’s Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Under Bush, this was called the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, and it spent a lot of money pushing abstinence-only programs.

Obama’s idea is different. His office will increase spending on social services – it will also forbid religious organizations from sexual orientation discrimination in hiring in any services that are taxpayer supported.

What it seems like to me is this: Obama’s religous outreach is not witchhunting or targeting gays in any way. But it also is not looking at us as important religious partners. Newsweek columnist Sally Quinn says that DuBois was the person who first floated Rick Warren’s name as a possible inaugural speaker; DuBois, who was in charge of faith-based outreach for the Obama campaign, also put together the program that featured Donnie McClurkin, an “ex-gay” gospel singer who has said that “homosexuality is a curse.”

DuBois is young. I don’t think he did these things to send a message to gays and lesbians – I think he did those things because he doesn’t figure us in at all.

Gays and lesbians have given religion over to the right. This is not good. There are many religions that have denied us our personhood; there are many of us who have been hurt by the religious traditions we grew up in. But gays are a diverse people, and there are many of us who are religious or spiritual – and we should not be ignored by a national program that should serve the whole country.

My hope is that gay religious organizations will approach DuBois’s office about funding their valuable social service programs that assist homeless queer youth, people with AIDS, and other disenfranchised LGBT communities.

Any President’s Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships should not only be reaching out to Evangelicals – it should also be reaching out to us.

Warren was invited to give the keynote address at the church, but gay rights advocates said he belied King’s message of inclusiveness. His participation at the event and his invitation to deliver the invocation at President-elect Barrack Obama’s inauguration on Tuesday has infuriated gays and lesbians.

Warren, the pastor and founder of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., publicly supported California’s Proposition 8, which amended the state Constitution to ban gay marriage.

Dr. King never publicly spoke about gay rights, but his 1963 March on Washington was organized by Bayard Rustin, an openly gay black man. King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, often appeared at LGBT rights rallies before her death in 2006.

In 2003, she invited the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to take part in observances of the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.

It was the first time that an LGBT rights group had been invited to a major event of the African American community and drew the ire of some of the other speakers.

King said her husband supported the quest for equality by gays and reminded her critics that the 1963 March on Washington was organized by Rustin.

In March 2004, she told a university audience that same-sex marriage is a civil rights issue and denounced a proposed amendment to the Constitution ban it.

“Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union,” she said in a speech at The Richard Stockton College in Pomona, New Jersey.

The protest against the appearance by Warren at Ebenezer Baptist Church was the second day of protests over the involvement of Warren in the inauguration.

On Sunday about 100 people, many waving rainbow flags, demonstrated in California front of Saddleback Church.

Obama’s invitation to Warren to say the invocation at Tuesday’s inauguration led to criticism by many gays who had supported the President-elect’s campaign.

That anger led the inaugural committee to invite Gene Robinson, the openly gay Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, to appear at Sunday’s official inaugural kickoff at the Lincoln Memorial.

Robinson asked the crowd to pray for “understanding that our president is a human being and not a messiah.”

“Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS,” he said in his invocation.

“Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.”

But the appearance before an estimated 400,000 was not covered by HBO, which had bought the television rights to the massive concert.

Several blocks away at 17th and Constitution, a small group of anti-gay protesters demonstrated but followers of Rev. Fred Phelps who had said they intended to protest were visibly absent. Phelps is the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas which is largely made up of family members and routinely pickets LGBT-positive events.

In his address to the throng that spread from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument Obama declared that “Anything is possible in America.”

“Despite the enormity of the task that lies ahead – I stand here today as hopeful as ever that the United States of America will endure – that the dream of our founders will live on in our time,” the President-elect said.

Among the stellar lineup of stars was Washington’s Gay Men’s Chorus.

Obama arrived in Washington on Saturday, ending a majestic train ride across the frigid mid-Atlantic seaboard that recreated the triumphant journey of President-elect Abraham Lincoln.

Celebratory crowds braved subfreezing weather to salute Obama along his 137-mile journey to the nation’s capital from Philadelphia.

On board the “Obama Express” were several dozen “everyday Americans” who Obama had met on the campaign trail.

Among them were Lisa Hazirjian and her Michelle Kaiser of Cleveland.

Hazirjian, a Case Western Reserve University history professor, recruited volunteers from the gay community in Ohio and Pennsylvania. She worked full-time for the Obama campaign in Cleveland over the summer and fall.

Hazirjian became involved in LGBT civil rights after she was denied a job at another university when she sought domestic partnership benefits for Kaiser.

Both women, along with Robinson and other gay rights leaders also will attend the inauguration.

The Jan. 19 event in Georgia is the day before the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, who has chosen Warren to give the inaugural invocation. Warren had backed the recent Proposition 8 ballot measure banning same-sex marriage in his home state of California.

On Monday, the inaugural committee announced that Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the world Anglican Communion, would lead prayer at the Lincoln Memorial on Jan. 18 for one of Obama’s kick-off inaugural events.

Warren, pastor of the 20,000-member Saddleback Church in Southern California and author of the best-selling “The Purpose Driven Life,” will appear on Monday at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King preached from 1960 until his death in 1968.

This is not because things are getting worse. It’s because the national conversation on gay-rights issues is getting harder.

One reason is that, as cliché as it sounds, we are more polarized than ever. Gone are the days when House Speaker Tip O’ Neill could lambaste President Reagan by day and play cards with him after 6 p.m.

It has become too easy to surround oneself solely with like-minded people. (The internet is one key factor.) The result is a bunch of echo chambers, where opponents seem not just wrong, but borderline-insane.

The second reason is that the gay community’s specific goals have shifted. We are no longer asking merely to be left alone, as when we were fighting sodomy laws and police harassment. Our central political goal, for better or for worse, has become marriage.

Marriage is not merely a private contract between two individuals. It is also an agreement between those individuals and the larger community. It requires, both legally and socially, that community’s support. And so the old “leave me alone” script no longer quite works.

A third reason the conversation is getting harder is that the gay community is at a crossroads regarding how we treat our opponents.

On the one hand we talk about reaching out, promoting dialogue, emphasizing common ground. On the other hand we are quick to label our opponents as hate-filled bigots.

This combination obviously won’t work. A bigot is someone whose views, virtually by definition, are beyond the pale of polite discussion.

One sees this contrast in the fracas over Obama’s choice of Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration.

Compared to most evangelical pastors, Warren is a moderate, who focuses on common-ground issues such as poverty over the usual culture-war stuff.

But Warren supported Prop. 8, the California initiative that stripped marriage rights from gays and lesbians. (He has since suggested some possible support for civil unions.)

Obama’s camp is taking the “big tent” approach, acknowledging differences but emphasizing shared values. In a similar vein, Melissa Etheridge has opened a dialogue with Warren.

Most gay-rights leaders, by contrast, have decried Obama’s choice of Warren. As one friend put it, “it’s like inviting a segregationist to lead the invocation. ­I don’t care what other good things the guy has done.”

And there’s the rub: Warren does indeed espouse a “separate but equal” legal status for gays and lesbians (at best). Should we treat him the way we treat segregationists?

Before answering, remember that the majority of Californians, and a larger majority of the rest of the country, hold the same position as Warren on marriage. So does Obama himself (though he did oppose Prop. 8).

So in asking whether inviting Warren to lead the invocation is akin to inviting a segregationist to do so, we are also asking whether the vast majority of Americans are akin to segregationists.

It’s a painful question to confront. And the only fair answer is “yes and no.”

On the merits, yes. For practical purposes, no.

From where I stand, the arguments against marriage equality look about as bad as the arguments for segregation. They commit the same fallacies; they hide behind the same (selective reading of) scripture; they are often motivated by the same fears.

But I’m mindful of the fact that “from where I stand” includes decades of hindsight regarding segregation. The nation isn’t there yet on gay equality.

Today, nearly everyone finds the following sentiments repugnant:

“I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and black races which will ever FORBID the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”

The segregationist who wrote that?  Abraham Lincoln.

It is easy now to paint all segregationists as hatemongers, waving pitchforks and frothing at the mouth. Easy, but quite wrong.

The fact is that most segregationists were people not unlike, say, my grandmothers, both of whom were wonderful, loving, decent human beings, and both of whom – ­much to my embarrassment – ­opposed interracial marriage.

Their reasons had to do with tradition and the well-being of children. Sound familiar?

My grandmothers were not hatemongers. They were products of their time. So was Lincoln, so is Rick Warren, and so are you and I, more or less.

I don’t mean for a moment to let Rick Warren off the hook. He ought to know better. Maybe someday he will.

In the meantime, prepare yourself for a challenging 2009.

John Corvino, Ph.D. is an author, speaker, and philosophy professor at Wayne State University in Detroit.

For over fifteen years he has traveled the country speaking on homosexuality and ethics. His writing has been featured in regional and national periodicals, at the online Independent Gay Forum, and in numerous scholarly anthologies. His column “The Gay Moralist” appears Fridays on 365gay.com.

For more about John Corvino, or to see clips from his “What’s Morally Wrong with Homosexuality?” DVD, visit www.johncorvino.com.

Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration is certainly the biggest letdown of the transition from the campaign trail to the White House.

The Obama team, responding to the criticism that followed the announcement that Warren would give the prayer, acknowledged that the two men disagree on gay equality and reproductive freedoms, but “agree on many issues vital to the pursuit of social justice, including fighting poverty and moving toward a sustainable planet.”

Is Rick Warren the only minister in the United States who wants to fight poverty and protect Earth?

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor of some 20 years until he was tossed under a bus for too forcefully pointing out that back-of-the-bus attitudes still exist, might support a sustainable planet and the eradication of poverty. He also would travel far beyond Warren on social justice issues.

Obama’s post-election decision to select Warren for the invocation and his primary fight decision to distance himself from Wright make me think about labels and perceptions, definitions and perspectives, especially in regard to race.

The black minister’s perhaps most controversial statement suggested a causal connection between the U.S. intervention in the Middle East and terrorist attacks against the United States. When the Wright videos were playing in greater rotation on cable than “Seinfeld” episodes, how many of you heard friends, family and neighbors say Obama’s association with the minister showed bad judgment, that Wright’s statements were appalling and anti-American? How many people did you hear vow not to support Obama for his association with Wright and his attendance at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ?

You might go back to those people now and ask them how happy they are with the president-elect’s selection of Warren.

But you also might ask them if they were appalled when two white evangelists — Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson — suggested that American liberalism invited the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Falwell, appearing on Robertson’s “700 Club,” said, “God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.”

Robertson replied, “Jerry, that’s my feeling.”

Curious. Falwell and Robertson talk about America getting punished for politics and policies and they get invited to White House consultations, praised as patriotic and all-American. Wright talks about “chickens coming home to roost” and gets buried, denounced as subversive and anti-American.

Warren may not preach the hate of Robertson or James Dobson, but he has shared their beliefs on issues of abortion and homosexuality, and Warren is not a moderate.

In an e-mail sent prior to the 2004 election, Warren said for Christian voters issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and stem cell research were non-negotiable, “not even debatable because God’s word is clear on these issues.”

Until very recently, the Web site for Saddleback contained the statement, “Because membership in a church is an outgrowth of accepting the Lordship and leadership of Jesus in one’s life, someone unwilling to repent of their homosexual lifestyle would not be accepted at [sic] a member of Saddleback Church. That does not mean they cannot attend church — we hope they do! God’s Word has the power to change our lives.”

And, this past election season Warren encouraged votes for Proposition 8, which amended California’s constitution to deny gays the right to marry.

Warren has said legalizing same-sex marriage is like redefining marriage to allow incest and pedophilia.

In defense of the Warren choice, the Obama team promoted the inauguration as “the most open, accessible and inclusive inauguration in American history.”

Obama was quoted as saying, “During the course of the entire inaugural festivities, there are going to be a wide range of viewpoints that are presented. And that’s how it should be, because that’s what America’s about. That’s part of the magic of this country.… We are diverse and noise and opinionated.”

Of course I welcome the president-elect’s calls for unity and inclusion, but I just don’t understand and certainly don’t find any magic in giving Rick Warren the honor of delivering the inaugural invocation.

I don’t know what Warren will say on Jan. 20, but I’ll remind you of what he said approaching a vote on Proposition 8: “About 2 percent of Americans are homosexual or gay, lesbian people. We should not let 2 percent of the population determine, to change a definition of marriage that has been supported by every single culture and every single religion for 5,000 years. This is not even just a Christian issue, it’s a humanitarian, a human issue.”

You would think after spending 8 years shilling for the Bush White House, New York Times  columnist William Kristol would at least learned a little irony. There isn’t anything wrong with shilling (what’s that tune by Bob Dylan about having to serve?), but Kristol is so into the sale that it makes him utterly tone deaf.

This Sunday Kristol was doing his usual ruminating in the New York Times and he was describing the reaction some have had to Obama’s choice of Rev. Rick Warren to give the invocation at next month’s inauguration.

“I suspect he’ll be careful to say nothing pro-life or pro-traditional-marriage — but we conservatives have already gotten more than enough pleasure from the hysterical reaction to his selection by the tribunes of the intolerant left.”

Hold on to your wallets boys and girls because there is a thief in town. The term “intolerant left” is a favorite by our brothers and sisters on the right.  They will argue, with verve and nerve, that it’s the left that has a problem with diversity and is really hateful; however, the right is filled with folk who adore disagreements and debate.

Before Kristol goes on about the “intolerant left”, he best look at his own house. Here are a few names that come to mind and the coffee hasn’t even kicked in: Rev. Jerry Falwell, Senator Jessie Helms, columnist Patrick J. Buchanan, writer Anne Coulter.

Intolerance, alas, is an equal opportunity offender (and yeah I’m calling many of my liberal brethren and sistern as close minded as anyone on the right),  but to admit that requires Kristol to be critical of his own side. Can’t do that when all you care about is the hustle.

PS; RIP Freddie Hubbard.

I just received a press release about a campaign from December 31st until January 2nd aimed at encouraging Obama to choose William White, an openly gay man.

EqualRep states: “Retired general Hugh Shelton, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said White “would be phenomenal.” He added that White’s extensive background as a fund-raiser for veterans’ and military causes would be helpful in the job. Congressman Jerrold Nadler said White is “very capable” on the basis of observing his work at the Intrepid, located on the Hudson River, which is in Nadler’s district. Nadler added that White has been a friend of service members and their families through his work with the museum and philanthropic efforts, according to The Washington Times.”

Check out the website HERE for all the contact details. At least it gives us a New Year’s outlet to take out our frustration with Rick Warren. And a gay Navy Secretary might go a long way towards the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.