Inauguration Hypocrisy

 

Richard Blanco, poet, and, on the right, Rev. Louie Giglio           Interesting day on-line. When I woke up this morning I discovered that President Obama had asked an unknown, gay, Hispanic-American poet living in Maine, Richard Blanco, to deliver the upcoming inauguration poem. Then, later on, I found that an Italian-American Baptist preacher, whom the President had asked to give the inauguration benediction, Rev. Louie Giglio, had withdrawn because back in the mid-nineties he had said in a sermon that gay people are (like the rest of us, no doubt) sinners. As an Italian-American poet living in Maine whose father, the Rev. Luigi Turco, was an Italian-Baptist preacher, I find enough politically correct hypocrisy in these events to make me sick to my stomach.