Is Bishop Gene Robinson enough to make up for Rick Warren?

I tend to think so.  Nancy Goldstein over at Salon’s Broadsheet disagrees.

So one can hardly say that Team Obama had never dealt with a similar situation before. I’m going to bet that whether we ever deal with it again depends largely on whether we give Obama a pass -- yet again -- for playing the “inclusivity” card, but only when it comes to LGBT people having to tolerate virulent homophobes, or give him hell. I vote for giving him hell.

Politics always makes strange bedfellows and involves tricky calculations. My beef with Obama isn’t that he’s involved in some interesting ménages, or that he does his math -- only that he seems to think the LGBT community is such an easy lay and comes so cheap.

I’m actually a mainline Protestant, so I’m more impressed by the Robinson pick as he was controversial enough to cause a schism and when he wasn’t invited to an Anglican leadership conference in England he proved no shrinking violet.  Similarly, while the kick-off is a lower profile event, there is a definite symbolism to doing it from the Lincoln memorial.  I think the ‘symbolism off’ will ultimately come down to the two speeches and what Obama says of course.  Obama’s victory speech explicitly had a shout out for sexual and gender equality, so I’m hopeful.

That said I’m linking to this because I’m open to disagreement.  I welcome comments on this one if you think one or both of us are wrong.