Controversy Emerges Over Obama's Choice of Inauguration Pastor

HARRY KNOX, Human Rights Campaign: Well, we were profoundly disappointed in the president-elect's pick because he chose someone who is a divisive person, who has attacked our community and attacked our families, families like mine, and called us every horrible thing he can think of.

And that's the person that the president-elect has chosen to represent all of religious thought in America on this most important symbolic day, this very first day of his administration.

For us, it was a real slap in the face that the person who associated people like me and my partner, Mike, my husband, Mike, with bestiality and polygamy and pedophilia, of all things, would be the person that the president-elect would choose.

RAY SUAREZ: Does this choice represent all of American religious thought, Mr. Cromartie?

MICHAEL CROMARTIE, Ethics and Public Policy Center: Oh, no, of course it doesn't. But what it does say is that -- what we need to know about Rick Warren is that he has become sort of the next Billy Graham in our country, sort of America's pastor.

In fact, I think if Billy Graham's health was better now, he would probably be the person doing this. But Rick Warren has become that person.

RAY SUAREZ: But it didn't sound like Harry Knox is too happy about the idea that this might be America's pastor.

MICHAEL CROMARTIE: No, that's right. And I would just remind Harry this is not a cabinet appointment. This is an invocation, a short prayer that will be a very nonsectarian prayer.

Rick Warren, by the way, has an amazingly great reputation with ministers of compassion around the world. He's an incredibly magnanimous man. And I think that President-elect Obama picked him because he likes him personally.

MICHAEL CROMARTIE: Well, it tells you that President-elect Obama is a man who respects Rick Warren because Rick Warren is himself not a culture warrior.

And it also tells us that maybe President-elect Obama is making an appeal to one segment of the population that voted 98 percent for him or 99 percent, and that's African-Americans.

I would remind you that African-Americans voted, in California, 74 percent of African-American women voted for Proposition 8, over 70 percent of African-American men voted for Proposition 8. It may well be that President-elect Obama is -- is having some solidarity with the people who voted that way.

RAY SUAREZ: How do you respond to that idea?

HARRY KNOX: Well...

RAY SUAREZ: Because Rick Warren was an outspoken supporter of Prop 8 in California.

HARRY KNOX: He certainly was. And God help us if he's America's pastor. He has, in fact -- Michael, I disagree -- been a general in the culture wars in that state and around the country, around a woman's right to choose and also around lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues.

This is a person who has fundamentally disrespected people like me on every occasion that he had opportunity. He has, in fact, leveraged homophobia to get ahead in his career. And this is like putting an anti-Semite at the first part of the program and then saying, "Well, we're going to add a rabbi at the end. Won't all the Jews be happy?"

This is the worst possible choice the president-elect could have made. This is a divisive choice, not one that brings America together.

MICHAEL CROMARTIE: If that's true, Ray, I might say the president-elect supports traditional marriage. So we might want to say, is the president-elect divisive, our new president divisive? He supports traditional marriage himself.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, wouldn't Barack Obama oppose -- given his record, given what he said during the campaign, oppose, as Rick Warren did, efforts to legalize gay marriage in a state?

HARRY KNOX: What the president-elect did was to oppose Prop 8 as an institutionalization in the constitution of the state of California of discrimination. And that's what the president-elect made a real decision and a real statement about during the election.

We certainly don't think that he's a supporter of marriage equality today, but he has been a supporter of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a fully transgender-inclusive version of that, and the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Protection Act.

What I hope is that, if he's really serious about a dialogue and bringing Rick Warren into a dialogue, that he'll ask Rick to take the lead on helping us pass those two pieces of very important protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in our country.

MICHAEL CROMARTIE: Well, that's right. And I think one of the interesting things we're going to see in the next few days is actually Rick Warren is going to have critics from his right for identifying and, in fact, in agreeing to do this, to give the invocation.

And, again, I would remind you: This is just an invocation. It's not a cabinet appointment. Rick Warren has a reputation in this town of being a person who talks across party labels and party lines. He has friendships with Democrats and Republicans.

He has a good reputation of being a person who leads dialogues. And that's why, for instance, he was the one pastor that conducted the Saddleback Forum. So I think this is the beginning of a conversation, not the end of one.

RAY SUAREZ: Can you be putting too much importance on the symbolism rather than what it was that -- what it is that this new president will do in office?

HARRY KNOX: This is a conversation among friends with us and the president-elect. We, though, take very seriously our friendship, and good friends don't insult each other unremarked.

And we have said to the president-elect today in very strong language, the strongest we can think of and be respectful of the office, you have really slapped us.

And we want you to think about that and think very hard about what your actions will be going forward, because this very symbolic early decision has sent the exact wrong message about a big table -- an American table at which everyone is invited to sit, because we are not invited to sit at Rick Warren's table, believe me.