Not Cutting the Mustard. Mustard isn't hard to cut at all, but Barack Obama still isn't cutting it on the Rick Warren invitation. Obama says that he is "a fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans." If Obama was such a fierce advocate for LGBT equality, he have invited Rev. Gene Robinson, the gay Episcopal bishop from New Hampshire, to share the stage at the inauguration instead of Rick Warren. Likewise, Obama would use his inaugural address to come out in support of gay marriage and re-examine his own attitudes toward gays.

I want to emphasize that. However you "cut" it, the core of opposition to gay marriage is bigotry toward gay people. It's the belief that gay sex, gay love, and gay people are so far outside what is acceptable for human beings that their relationships must not be given the consecration of marriage. As a heterosexual, I can get married even if I am as far outside moral acceptability as serial killers, mass murderers, drug addicts, purveyors of pornography, sex tourists, tobacco lobbyists, Dick Cheney, or Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom. What opponents of gay marriage are saying to gay people is that being gay is worse than being a serial killer, mass murderer, etc. Hitler, Stalin, and Nero would have been recognized as having a right to marry but opponents of gay marriage do not recognize gay people as having an equal right. People like Rick Santorum are open about their bigotry when they compare gay marriage to incest and bestiality. The same is the case with Rick Warren who compared gay marriage to incest and polygamy in an interview with BeliefNet's Steve Waldman:

Warren dodged Waldman's question about whether he supported civil unions or domestic partnerships, answering instead, "I support full equal rights for everyone in America," adding that he only opposes a "redefinition" of marriage. He went on to say he's opposed to gay marriage the same way he is opposed to a brother and sister marrying (that would be incest), a man marrying a child (that would be statutory rape), or someone having multiple spouses (that would be polygamy). Pressed by Waldman, Warren said he considered those crimes equivalent to gay marriage.

However, all opponents of gay marriage assume that the most monstrous heterosexual imaginable is less repugnant than any gay person and therefore more deserving of the right to marry.

The denial of gay rights is just as much a travesty as slavery, segregation, the denial of legal rights to women, wife abuse, or rape. It's a different kind of travesty but a travesty all the same.

Barack Obama needs to examine the extent to which he's participating in this travesty.