Malinda Lo

Today, Barack Obama will be inaugurated as the United States’ 44th president, and its first African-American one. What many might call his charmed candidacy and election has been marred, in my opinion, by his invitation to the homophobic Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration. Partly as a move to appease angered LGBT people, Obama later invited openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson to deliver the opening prayer at the first inaugural event last Sunday, at the Lincoln Memorial.

However, you might have noticed that Bishop Robinson’s prayer was not aired by HBO. HBO said that decision was made by the inaugural committee, and the inaugural committee agreed that they made a mistake. Yet another one, involving LGBT people.

Now, HBO will add Bishop Robinson’s prayer to the rebroadcast of Sunday’s We Are One concert that will air on the Jumbotron screens today before the inauguration, and in later televised rebroadcasts. Currently, the only version you can see is this videotaped one by Sarah Pulliam of Christianity Today:

What I liked about Bishop Robinson’s prayer was that it was not aggressively religious. As he told the Concord Monitor, “I will be careful not to be especially Christian in my prayer. This is a prayer for the whole nation.”

Bishop Robinson also spoke clearly about discrimination and intolerance, particularly in regard to LGBT people. There are so many vocal right-wing Christians that they often drown out the voices of other Christians — the kind like Bishop Robinson — who embrace humanity in all its diversity. On this inauguration day, I think that Bishop Robinson’s words are ones we would do well to remember:

Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences.

Read the complete text of his prayer here.