A President-Elect's Progress

...Gender and sex are more complicated—which is why even in our “enlightened” age, all distinctions based on gender and sexual orientation haven’t collapsed...

...This isn’t the time for conservatives to snipe at Obama’s motives...

...It’s time to welcome him into the American mainstream, to salute the presidentelect’s progress from Reverends Wright to Warren...

...He’s for overturning Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell—but he’s also concerned about the military’s smooth functioning...

...EDITORIAL A President-Elect’s Progress Until last week, the most important and most famous man of the cloth with whom Barack Obama was associated was the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his longtime pastor from Chicago’s South Side...

...Or, as the Human Rights Campaign’s Brad Luna told Byron York of National Review, dismissing the fact that the benediction will be delivered by the Reverend Joseph Lowery, who is more friendly to gay marriage: “I don’t think any Jewish Americans would feel much comfort in knowing that an anti-Semite is starting the inauguration with an invocation, but we’re going to end it with a rabbi...

...Many of its key policies will be anathema to social conservatives...

...If Obama’s selection of Warren is smart politics, it’s of a piece with four years of smart politics...

...To be against same-sex marriage, even against the judicial imposition of same-sex marriage, is to be a bigot...

...Skin color is skin deep...

...They’re right...

...Obama’s growing even before he assumes offi ce...

...Does it mean Obama has studied the mistakes of his predecessors, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton...

...And, one could add, gender and sex are at least potentially morally relevant in a way a decent society will not allow skin color to be...

...For now, it might be a good idea to offer a few olive branches to Obama as well...

...One can see this from the hysteria on the left and among gay activists...

...Obama says he’s not hostile to faith-based initiatives...

...Maybe pro-lifers should offer to work with him on this...

...Similarly, Obama has said he wants to reduce the number of abortions...

...William Kristol...

...Ironically, Lowery himself, who is a (somewhat equivocal) supporter of gay marriage, refuses to equate the gay rights and the civil rights movements: “Homosexuals as a people have never been enslaved because of their sexual orientation,” he told the Associated Press...

...But the Warren invitation means that one can at least appeal to Obama’s own precedent against suppressing out-of-favor views...

...And it’s certain Obama is going to govern as a pro-abortion rights, not-particularly-pro-traditionalfamily, social liberal...

...How about some money for crisis pregnancy centers...

...They might try taking Obama at his word...

...Social conservatives could offer to join a bipartisan commission to study how the policy has been working and to consider alternatives—asking for assurances up front that Obama isn’t dogmatically committed to the conclusion that there’s nothing problematic about open gays serving anywhere and everywhere in the military...

...Social conservatives might offer to work with him to make sure his ACLU-type appointees don’t inadvertently— contrary to Obama’s wishes—shut down many of those fi ne programs...

...And that leaves some political space for social conservatives to continue making their case over the next few years...

...In his 2004 Democratic Convention speech, with his statement that “We worship an awesome God in the blue states,” Obama tried to reassure red-state awesome-God-worshipers about the Democratic party...

...There will be plenty of occasions to draw lines with the Obama administration...

...The assault on Prop 8 supporters has been extraordinary in its mean-spiritedness and extremism—but the left knows what it’s doing...

...But social conservatives need to persuade some social moderates, and social undecideds, and social confl icteds, and social uncertains of the reasonableness of conservative concerns, and the sincerity of conservatives’ claims that they seek progress in these areas, not merely confl ict...

...He knows— better than many Republicans—that social conservatism is the strongest political force on the right...

...Making that charge is at the heart of the agenda of the gay lobby...

...Indeed, he has generally gone out of his way not to disparage social conservatives...

...They don’t want to debate same-sex marriage...

...But he at least seems open to a discussion of these issues...

...Today, that distinction belongs to the Reverend Rick Warren, best-selling evangelical author (The Purpose Driven Life) and pastor of Saddleback Church, thanks to Obama’s inviting him to deliver the invocation at the Inauguration...

...So the claim is, opposing same-sex marriage is tantamount to being a racist or an anti-Semite...

...Obama may have learned from their examples that, even though everyone says the economic crisis has put social issues on a far back burner, mishandling those issues can severely damage one’s presidency: Recall gays in the military under Clinton and the IRS ruling on Christian schools under Carter...

...They want to demonize its opponents...

...God knows, Obama isn’t going to be out there defending such distinctions, or explaining which are reasonable and which aren’t...

...Sure...

...As one leftwinger said on CNN, Warren is a “hatemonger” comparable to “the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan...

...Obama’s invitation to Rick Warren doesn’t mean his administration won’t put a heavy thumb on the left side of the scale in our cultural confl icts...

...Probably...

...No conservative should kid himself about what the Obama administration is going to be like...

...The left senses that the invitation to Rick Warren is a blow to their effort to establish a soft tyranny of “correct” opinion, to enforce society-wide political orthodoxy, on social issues...

...It doesn’t even mean that organs of the federal government, over which Obama will of course be presiding, won’t try to stifl e nonconforming opinions...

...Talk about growing in offi ce...

...So social conservatives may want to respond with some smart politics of their own...

...Is this smart politics on Obama’s part...

...The purpose has been to intimidate people with an opposing point of view from defending their position...

...They sense that Obama isn’t willing to sign on to their campaign to delegitimize, to cast out beyond the pale of polite society, anyone who opposes same-sex marriage—and in particular, anyone (like Warren) who supported Proposition 8 in California, the initiative that overturned the California Supreme Court’s legalization of same-sex marriage...

...But they’ve never been enslaved and declared less than human...

...And the selection of Rick Warren may turn out to have signifi cance beyond short-term political maneuvering...

...they may have been discriminated against...

...Conservatives have to be ready to stand up for themselves— and for each other—if and when the left comes at them from the academy, Hollywood, and the media...

...He and the Democratic Congress are going to try to funnel gushers of money to Planned Parenthood...

...They may have been scorned...