Dear President Elect.

I have been a fervent supporter and past contributor to your historic campaign. I believe you will usher in badly needed reform and thoughtfulness into our government and society as a whole. Whatever else happens, I believe you are the right man for the job, and I will continue to support you in the years to come. I believe in you.

So it is with a heavy heart that I must respectfully resign from your organization under protest because of your selection of Rick Warren to speak at your inauguration.

I am a married heterosexual male, and yet many people in my life are gay, and I am not blind to their struggle for respect and equality in America. That is why I am dismayed that such an exclusive and derisive figure as Rick Warren will speak on your behalf.

Warren's assertion that gays are defacto as heinous as pedophiles and gay sex is as abhorrent as incest is just the kind of backwards thinking and discriminatory rhetoric that I would hope would start to disappear under your stewardship. Just ask the next generation, they understand that our parents generation, and regrettably many of us still cling to medieval mores that seek to brand homosexuals as deviants and affronts to God. Kids don't care, they know many gay folks and realize that blanket condemnations are the result of fear and lazy thinking. These are the young people whose votes you so courted, the same people who you should have shown some respect for when you selected a spiritual figure to bless your inauguration.

You know, sir, it isn't as if you couldn't have found a religious person who believes in an inclusive, Christian attitude toward all of God's children. People who don't judge, after all, are the real Christians.

I will always relish the day I cast my ballot for you, but alas I will always remember the day when you dealt me my very first major disappointment.

respectfully,

James Dimitrios Fourniadis