Samira wrote:
Something tells me the Pope is a lot less stressed by the presence of LGBT people than the pundits on the right are on his presumed behalf
It's not about stress, but that (apparently, based on the very very brief bits I've read on this), his advance team specifically objected to these people being invited, and Obama decided to invite them anyway. I'm sure it's not a huge deal for the Pope, but it's more of a hospitality thing. You're holding an event specifically for a guest, you usually defer to them in terms of who is invited. The larger point being made on the right is that there's a clear pattern of liberals doing this sort of thing. As long as liberals make a huge deal about "OMG! The pope spoke to a gay/bi/trans/whatever person, so I guess he's ok with that!", you're going to get conservatives making a huge deal about liberals deliberately inviting gay/bi/trans/whatever people to an event that the pope (or any person heavily associated with religion) is involved in.
Surely you can see how some of this is about pushing the situation. I'm sure that in any crowd of 15k people, there are going to be a mix of all sorts of different people. And yes, some of them will be gay/bi/trans/whatever. But he (his people anyway) made a point of inviting these people and telling everyone "we're inviting these people to meet the pope", presumably specifically to get a reaction, so that you all could point to the reaction. It's fabricated, and I don't blame the Pope's people for objecting to such silliness.