Today, it becomes real!

Happy MLK Jr Day (a.k.a. Obama Inauguration Eve)

"...a new declaration of independence...from...small thinking, prejudice & bigotry..."

Maybe I've taken our soon-to-be-President's message of Hope too much to heart, and maybe I am more excited than I should be to hear the person who will soon hold the Highest Office in The Land even mention the word "gay" in an inclusive & respectful way, but this excerpt from President-Elect Obama's speech as he left the Philadelphia train station today heading to D.C. for the inauguration reminded me that the American President can be more than just the country's CEO, the President of these United States can be the personification of the hopes & dreams of an entire country. In the even more difficult economic times to come, it's good to know that we'll have a President at the helm whose eyes and heart are wide open.

We are here today not simply to pay tribute to our first patriots but to take up the work that they began. The trials we face are very different now, but severe in their own right. Only a handful of times in our history has a generation been confronted with challenges so vast. An economy that is faltering. Two wars, one that needs to be ended responsibly, one that needs to be waged wisely. A planet that is warming from our unsustainable dependence on oil.

And yet while our problems may be new, what is required to overcome them is not. What is required is the same perseverance and idealism that our founders displayed. What is required is a new declaration of independence, not just in our nation, but in our own lives - from ideology and small thinking, prejudice and bigotry - an appeal not to our easy instincts but to our better angels.

That is the reason I launched my campaign for the presidency nearly two years ago. I did so in the belief that the most fundamental American ideal, that a better life is in store for all those willing to work for it, was slipping out of reach. That Washington was serving the interests of the few, not the many. And that our politics had grown too small for the scale of the challenges we faced.

But I also believed something else. I believed that our future is our choice, and that if we could just recognize ourselves in one another and bring everyone together - Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, north, south, east and west, black, white, Latino, Asian, and Native American, gay and straight, disabled and not - then not only would we restore hope and opportunity in places that yearned for both, but maybe, just maybe, we might perfect our union in the process.

Obama Invites Bishop Gene Robinson to pray at Inaugural Event

President-elect Obama has invited openly-gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire to give the opening prayer at the inauguration ceremony this Sunday at the Lincoln Memorial .

I am sure there will be many people who will be discussing why Bishop Robinson was given this opportunity, and if the choice of Robinson was meant to counter-balance Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to give the Inauguration Day invocation, and the political implications thereof, but—for me personally—this is a huge step toward healing the hurt in my heart caused by even the inadvertent message sent to me by this man who will be President, and in whom I have placed so much of his nearly-trademarked hope, that I must yet again defer my dream of equality for the sake of political expediency.

I know that I’ve made my feelings about Rick Warren known here, and I won’t go into it any further, but I just wanted to say—in the same place where I made my displeasure over Warren known—how much I appreciate my new President hearing the concerns of so many GLBT people—and our wonderful, loving allies--about the kind of message Obama’s choice of Rick Warren was sending to those of us who had genuinely come to believe we could expect better from this President.

All this reminds me of a line I once heard or read somewhere that seems somehow apropos:

There is no sound, no voice, no cry in all the world that can be heard until someone listens.

Thank you, soon-to-be-President Obama for not just hearing us, but listening to us.