The part they left out

As I watched inauguration coverage today, I kept waiting for Gene Robinson’s prayer… and I never saw it — I flipped between several channels, and don’t think it was actually aired anywhere. I just did a search for it though, and found this on youtube  and this transcript.  It’s really quite beautiful; you should read it. 

I am very, very tempted to point out that it is probably not a mistake that this was left out, and that if that is so I am irked by it  seriously pissed off.  He’s gay! He’s a bishop! Get over it! The whole mood of the day was supposed to be moving  forward. Maybe all of the networks collectively assumed that viewers would be so touched by images of the surviving Tuskegee Airmen and stories of hundred-year-old African American great-great grandmothers living to vote for a black man that we would excuse the exclusion of a highly-anticipated speaker. I am of course pleased that America has come this far, but people, please, this whole civil rights thing is not over, not resolved, and not going away. Don’t get complacent because we have a president of a racial minority. Discrimination is alive and well ugly as ever. 

Maybe sixty years from now we will be inaugurating a gay or lesbian president, and people will be tearfully sharing stories of decades ago when a gay bishop couldn’t pray on live TV…