Let's see who keeps his promise: Obama or Robinson

Gene Robinson Will Hold Obama’s ‘Feet to the Fire’ on Gay Issues

Gene Robinson, the gay bishop Barack Obama invited to his presidential inauguration, has criticized the president-elect in the past. But he’s on board with the transition team’s insistence that his invitation was long planned, well before the Rev. Rick Warren scandal … even though he wasn’t actually invited until recently. (Obama maintains they had planned to invite him all along.) Here appeared tonight on Rachel Maddow‘s show — which locked him in to a “speak to us and nobody else” arrangement — saying, “I do feel very confident that this president-elect understands us [the gay community] and stands with us in the issues that are important to us. Of course, we’re going to hold his feet to the fire about that.”

“But as a religious person, no one had a bigger tent than Jesus, and I must say I think the whole notion of the big tent, where every human being is acknowledged as being a child of God and frankly, as worthy of our respect and concern, that sort of vision I believe is Barack Obama’s vision as well, and I long for a government that respect the dignity of every human being, especially those who are less fortunate.”

And regarding Obama’s 1996 full support of gay marriage, Robinson says: “As you know, all the Democratic candidates stopped short of endorsing gay marriage. What I do believe about this new president is that he believes in equal rights for all American citizens. And in the end, I hope that that’s where America will move in terms of gay marriage. Certainly as a religious person I will support anything that shows us to be equally valuable to each other and to our government.”

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