Consider, for example, the controversy swirling around pastor Rick Warren, invited to deliver the invocation at the inaugural. The choice is controversial because Warren, while something of a moderate in the evangelical world, is a blackhearted villain among gay-rights activists for his support of Proposition 8 in California, which successfully proscribed same-sex marriage. The interesting thing is that throughout the campaign, Obama and Joe Biden took the exact same position as Warren on gay marriage. And yet, gays overwhelmingly supported Obama (and Democrats generally) but consider Warren a slap in the face of the first order. That's one reason why the Warren appearance is so offensive to activists: It conjures the frightening possibility that Obama's election posturing wasn't posturing but rather (gasp!) his actual position.