Evidently, Rick Warren isn't too keen on gay marriage. This shouldn't come as a big surprise.

The founder of Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., where he shepherds a flock of 23,000 evangelical Christians, Warren is one of the most popular pastors in America at the moment. Not to mention one of the most politically influential.

Then candidate Barack Obama Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church, Calif., at a panel on moral issues in August 2008. (Rick Vogel/Associated Press)

I've never quite followed their logic, but evangelical Christians tend to believe that if gays are allowed to marry, it might destroy the institution of marriage. A great many evangelicals actually regard homosexuality as a disease.

Warren has compared gay marriage to legitimizing incest, child abuse and polygamy.

Some of his colleagues go further. Richard Land, a high official at the Southern Baptist Convention, the evangelical stream with which Saddleback Church is associated, told me once during an interview that he thinks gay sex should be illegal.

Understandably, the gay community considers evangelical Christians vilifiers and adversaries. And because evangelical Christians form one of the Republican party's most dependable bases of support, most gay Americans backed Barack Obama.

So you can see why they are upset now that Obama has asked Rick Warren deliver the opening prayer at the presidential inauguration on Jan. 20.

You saw this coming

Washington writer Kevin Naff pretty much summed up the reaction among gays: "We have just endured eight years of endless assaults on our dignity and equality from a president beholden to bigoted conservative Christians," wrote Naff in his magazine, the Washington Blade. "The election was supposed to have ended that era. It appears otherwise."

In other words, we won, so why are we being forced to listen to the enemy on an occasion as historic as this inauguration?

You can bet there would be no comparable outreach if the shoe were on the other foot.

It's hard to imagine, say, the Right Rev. Gene Robinson, New Hampshire's openly gay Episcopal bishop, being invited to deliver the opening prayer at the inauguration of a Republican president John McCain and his mission-from-God running mate, Sarah Palin.

But then, perhaps all those gay volunteers who worked so hard for Obama didn't listen to him.

First off, Obama himself opposes gay marriage. It is a counterintuitive position for such a liberal politician, but he clearly sensed mainstream opposition to the idea and compromised, endorsing "civil unions" instead.

Furthermore, in calling upon Rick Warren, Obama is doing exactly what he promised to do.

Purple reign

Just about every day, for the better part of two years, Obama gave Captain Kirk-like campaign speeches about peaceful coexistence, bridging America's social divides and bringing everybody together.

There is, he insisted, "no red America and blue America, there is only the United States of America." Democratic partisans cheered wildly at those speeches. But clearly, they were thinking more in terms of ending the so-called culture war by winning it, not declaring some pusillanimous post-victory truce.

To many Democrats, especially those on the party's left, victory should be used. They looked forward to crushing Sen. Joe Lieberman, the independent Democrat (and former vice-presidential candidate) who supported the Iraq war and crossed lines to campaign beside McCain.

Instead, Obama publicly forgave Lieberman and stopped the party brass from stripping him of his Senate perks.

And now, here's Obama offering someone like Rick Warren a seat of honour at the inauguration, declaring that he wants to create a situation "where we can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans."

It's easy to imagine what the more militant Democratic troops are thinking: What's he going to do next? Reach out to the anti-abortion bunch? The gun nuts?

A glaring divide

Again, that would be an understandable view for liberal Americans. The other side shows no mercy. Why should they?

What the next president appears to understand, though, is that the culture war in this country is not winnable.

The two sides have been demonizing one another since the 1970s. Neither has budged, and neither has advanced much. They glare at each other across a scorched, uninhabitable middle ground with contempt and hatred.

In this country, you're with the left or the right, and once you've chosen sides, you're expected to stick with the program. The fight is politically corrosive and self-perpetuating. Because ending it means swallowing hard and giving in, at least in some measure, to the detested ideologies of the other side.

If Obama actually intends to do that — to grimace and compromise — he may indeed be the latter-day Lincoln some here want him to be.

With that in mind, this first outreach is pretty shrewd. Of all the oversized evangelical figures in this country, Rick Warren is probably the least divisive. He wrote The Purpose Driven Life, a bestseller that emphasizes working for a common good.

The book's first line: "It's not about you."

Reaching back

Warren has also pushed for action on climate change, which for some reason is an unpopular cause among conservative Christians.

Plus, he has also worked for the prevention of and relief from AIDS, which a good number of evangelicals still believe is God's punishment for the sinning homosexual.

The day before the inauguration, he is to give the keynote speech at Martin Luther King's former church in Atlanta, the highlight of a week-long celebration of the slain civil rights leader.

As for Obama, whether he can succeed in ending the culture war here is anyone's guess.

Compromise is boring, sloganeering combat is exciting and the powerful media outlets with their talk radio and cable news panels are addicted to confrontation.

So, it seems, is much of the American polity.

But the next president seems to be taking this challenge seriously. His cabinet picks so far reflect that: a bunch of brainy, accomplished academics and technocrats, many of them holding advanced degrees from excellent universities. Not a populist in the lot.

Hard-core conservatives will oppose any effort to end the fight. But that's expected and they were, after all, vanquished to some degree election night.

Obama's bigger obstacle will be within his own party. With the millions of people like Kevin Naff who feel aggrieved, some of them quite rightly, and who view rapprochement as abhorrent.

They'd rather glare and keep fighting.