Topless Barack Obama Photos Meant to Ease Rick Warren Sting?

President Elect? More like President Select...Beef, that is!

Some hot new pix of Barack Obama are burning up the web, and showing the world that while we may not have a prime minister, our chief executive certainly is a prime cut of beef.

The pix are available at BauerGriffin.com, which is crashing (probably from all the traffic), but Huffpo has the Full Monty of the sample pictured here.

As a formerly in-shape dude myself, I feel pretty confident in saying that the POTUS-E was totally "Oops! posing" for that shot, and I think I know why.

The President-Elect has taken a lot of heat, lately, from the LGBTQ community and its allies among the decent, for inviting homophobe and Tim-Allen-sidekick-lookalike Rick Warren (we would also accept Future Mark McGwire) to give the inaugural invocation.

This beefy pose is obviously an attempt at reconciliation. How sucessful it is is anyone's guess. What do you think?

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Here's what I think. Although I have found little to criticize about Barack Obama, from a political perspective, I think he made a grave miscalculation with Warren. Obama seems to be re-enacting the parable of the prodigal son, only with a smilingly hateful asshole in the douchebag son role. I never got the point of that whole story, and thought the older brother should have told his dad to cram it.

On the other hand, Obama isn't alone among Democrats in taking the gay vote for granted. Of the major Democratic primary candidates, only John Edwards had an LGBTQ-specific bullet on his online platform. The fact is, the Democrats have decided that they can't get elected being the "party of the gays," and want to keep those votes on the "down low." The LGBTQ community is left to trust that the Dems will do that which is "achievable," to qoute Bill Richardson.

The question is, will that mean civil unions, or defensive bullshit like DOMA and "Don't ask, don't tell?"

Barack Obama's stance on gay marriage concerns me, but on the other side of the ledger, his commitment to civil rights engenders confidence. I believe that he is committed to equality for all Americans. I'm not sure this Rick Warren sleight-of-hand is necessary to get that rabbit out of the hat.