When you legitimize someone with a high honor, are you not

approving of their words and actions also?? Logic would seem to dictate it so.

I'm sure he would have been if the media had not made such an issue of his more radical sermons. I defended Obama over that even though I found some of Wright's sermons offensive, and I would have defended him if he had had Wright do the prayer at his inauguration. I don't think it's an endorsement of the pastor's views, and I think it's worth noting that Warren has encouraged evangelicals to do more to focus on poverty in addition to the social wedge issues. I do think it's sad that pastors who bash gays are considered acceptable in American society while Reverend Wright was considered so offensive, but that's the political reality. Obama probably would have had Wright do the prayer at his inauguration had the media not made such a shitstorm and forced Obama to sever ties with Wright or give up his chance to be president.

a bigot?

This person, and the hateful ideology they wield, is acceptable to me.

That is what you are saying.

Obama is legitimizing Rick Warren as a human being, not any of his political positions

Warren is praying at the pulpit. Warren teaches religiously inspired bigotry from his church pulpit.

and the people upset by this will have no where else to go (given no primary) and four years to get over it.

That's what is being said.

too lazy to link..but I was surprised that it says they he and Warren are friends and he was thanked by Obama in his Audacity of Hope book.

with unaligned world leaders, it gives them legitimacy.

:sarcasm:

I despise this twisted logic. Can you find no way to slam the fuckbag Warren and voicing you're utter distaste for including him in this event without relying on this pissant argument to do it?

At his core, on of the main things Obama is all about as a politician and as a person is about bringing people together and finding common ground even when there might be contentious differences on issues. In many ways, the arguments being made by people here about Warren are not that different from those who attacked Obama's plan to meet with rogue foreign leaders, or those who attacked him for his membership in Reverend Wright's church.

Talking to an enemy or unaligned world leader is not an honor. It's just an act. You can assign whatever you believe about that act.
But giving someone the spotlight as your personal choice of religious/ spiritual leader to give the prayer of the very first thing of your presidency is either an honor or nothing "big" to Du'ers who don't care about gay marriage or women's rights.

Obama doesn't pick the leader of Iran but he picked this dude. It was his choice. Maybe it's not an honor. Maybe Obama will stop him from speaking and mock him openly on national t.v. but I kinda doubt it.

with world leaders its for specific reasons. Name one good reason other than political expediency that he is "sitting down" with a homophobe?

When Warren prays or whatever he's going to do.....he is there with a man who does not walk the line on fundi ideas. Warren is the one who will be compromising his "principles" in this aspect.
Obama has taken the radical and put him on stage with the liberal and in this instance it's the liberals party. Liberal trumps fundi.

Historians will look back at the last years of the 20th Century and conclude that the biggest mistake America, its mass media and the Democratic party made was enabling and legitimizing fundamentalists, rather than ridiculing them- and relegating them back to the fringe where they belong (and where they remained in other western nations).