Members of the MSU Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, Transgender and Straight Alliance Students, or LBGTSA, disapproved of Obama’s selection of the Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the invocation speech at the presidential inauguration.

Members of the group said Warren is anti-gay rights and they worried Obama is turning his back on a constituency that helped earn him the presidency.

Since then, Obama has chosen Gene Robinson, the United States’ first openly gay Episcopalian bishop, to give an invocation at a welcoming concert Monday at the Lincoln Memorial.

The LGBT community showed peaceful protest and activism can foster results, and Obama’s decision is a testament to the openness he has promised to exercise.

But Obama’s selection of the more conservative Warren exemplifies the post-partisanship his administration hopes to achieve. Obama will be sworn in as the president of this entire nation, a representative to those who voted for him and those who didn’t. Nearly 46 percent of the country sided with Republican candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Hopefully, a soapbox constructed by groups such as the LBGTSA to declare Obama’s negligence is presumptuous.

The LGBT community’s actions paid off, but people must be wary of making Obama guilty by association for picking Warren.

Obama’s supporters were the ones who argued that connections to the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers were not reasons to blast Obama.

It’s reasonable for members of the LGBT community to keep an eye on Obama. After all, politicians have lied before. It is the LGBT community’s responsibility to keep him and other politicians responsive to their desires.

Obama has preached unity, post-partisanship and setting differences aside, and it is time to do that. It’s time to discuss how all Americans — black, white, gay, straight, Muslim, Christian — fit into this nation. It should be as one whole piece, not just fractions of a larger puzzle.

We must have tolerance in every sense of the word.

In a nation that is home to people of so many faiths and so many different people and cultures, now is the time to establish a new dialogue about the problems that face our nation.

Obama’s choice of Warren emphasizes his approach to hearing the other side, and hopefully that quality will trickle down to everybody else.

Although we as a nation are making steps toward equality, the LGBT community is not the only group that is being underrepresented. If Obama wants to have his middle name — Hussein — mentioned so people will understand this is a nation of many people, faiths, ideas and backgrounds, we should have an inauguration ceremony that mirrors such a concept.