Joseph Lowery

CNN's Don Lemon said last year that he hoped to "change minds" when he declared that he was gay. And on Sunday evening he showed exactly where he lies on same-sex marriage and in no small words challenged the fundamental beliefs of its opponents, comparing them to those who opposed interracial marriage and integration.

He later compared Mitt Romney to segregationist Governor George Wallace, but during the 6 p.m. hour Lemon hosted activist Rev. Joseph Lowery – who also gave the benediction at President Obama's inauguration – and both of them criticized opponents of same-sex marriage. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

To the trend-setters on the set of The Daily Show, white-mocking prayers are adorable, and experience in race-baiting churches is an "enormous advantage" for Barack Obama. When liberal PBS Washington Week host Gwen Ifill showed up on Tuesday to plug her "Age of Obama" book, Jon Stewart suggested Rev. Joseph Lowery was "maybe the most adorable man I’ve ever seen." Ifill suggested "Isn’t he the cutest civil rights leader ever?" That’s a strange reaction for a preacher who prayed at the Obama inauguration that one day the clueless Caucasians will be enlightened: "white will embrace what is right." Ifill and Stewart were discussing how Obama’s victory changes the black civil rights movement:

STEWART: Where does it leave the old guard in that movement?

IFILL: It depends on which ones are the old guard. Joe Lowery, who gave the benediction, that great benediction at the Inauguration –

Given some of the reactions to an item I wrote yesterday about Barney Frank's objections to Rick Warren giving the invocation at the inauguration, let me state for the record that I lean libertarian on marriage.  On the one hand, I don't like courts substituting their judgment for legislatures or the will of the people.  But in the long run, I think it might be better for government to recognize that marriage is a religious or spiritual institution, and confine its role to enforcing agreements between partners.

That said, I can't help but chuckle at the way the MSM is twisting itself into knots over the Rick Warren issue.  The latest, most entertaining episode occured on this evening's 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, on MSNBC. David Shuster discovered that, contrary to his presumption, civil rights pioneer Rev. Joseph Lowery, also on the inaugural program, does not support gay marriage!

While the media are fixated on the ire gay activists are directing at the president-elect for selecting Prop 8 proponent Rick Warren to give the invocation at the Obama inaugural, I've noticed little attention given to the fact that the man selected to give the benediction is pretty much the polar opposite of Warren on some key doctrinal matters related to homosexuality.

Rev. Joseph Lowery, a liberal United Methodist minister, has mostly been referred to in the media in connection to his work in co-founding the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, one of the key organizations in the civil rights movement. Yet freezing Lowery in time as an icon of the 1960s civil rights era doesn't do justice to his status as a vocal clerical advocate of same-sex marriage and openly gay clergy.

Reports Cathy Lynn Grossman of the USA Today Faith & Reason blog: