Rick Warren and The Obama Inauguration

For those of you living under a rock, President Elect Obama has invited Rick Warren, from the Saddleback Mega-Church, to deliver the invocation at Obama’s inauguration. Gay rights and other activists groups have strenuously objected, and Obama and his aides have made any number of statements defending the choice with the tired old line of how the Obama campaign has always been about “uniting people” and showing how “we can disagree without being disagreeable,” and blah, blah, blah. (That’s the part of the message Rick Warren needs to get, not his critics.)

Warren’s supporters are up in arms claiming that it’s “the gays” who are being intolerant and showing hatred. Even some politically naive gay activists keep saying to let it go, and keep our powder dry for the important issues. Of course, these would be the same activists who led the strategy that cost gay people their rights in ballot issue after ballot issue over the past several years.

So let me be clear in my response. In the case of claims by the Warren supporters (including you Obama), they are correct. I am being intolerant and am applying the standard applied by Warren and his supporters to love the sinner and hate the sin. I believe that the sin of hate and bigotry, most especially when used for monetary gain, should never ever be tolerated. I guess that fits the definition of intolerance, so I am guilty as charged.

Jesus gave us the two most important commandments, and one was to love your neighbor as yourself. Rick Warren has not done that, and has worked aggressively to deny equal rights to gay people, and been dishonest in how he’s gone about it. Warren has compared homosexuality to incests and beastiality to be sure to arouse the gay sex “ick” factor. He has lied about the tradition of marriage in a video he taped in support of California’s Prop 8. Warren said, “We should not let 2 percent of the population determine to change a definition of marriage” — that definition being one man and one woman for life, of course, as he states moments earlier in the video — “that has been supported by every single culture and every single religion for 5,000 years.”

Of course, none of that is true. The fact is that different cultures have supported different definitions of marriage which have included polygamy (see Mormons for the most recent example of this one), marriages involving children, forced/arranged marriages (still practiced widely today), and marriages for dowry. To even hint that Warren’s definition of the “Ozzie and Harriet” norm to which is referring has obtained, only and everwhere, for five millenia is a bold-faced lie, and Warren knows it to be a lie.

Sure, Warren invited Obama to visit his church, but even then he was less than honest. Warren spent an inordinate amount of time on the social hot buttons of abortion and gay rights instead of the promised attendtion on poverty and social justice. Oh, and let’s not forget he promised that McCain would not hear the questions in advance. We now know that too was a lie.

The day after Obama’s appearance, Warren compared abortion to the Holocaust when he said to Beliefnet that an antiabortion voter backing a pro-choice candidate would be like a Holocaust survivor voting for a Holocaust denier.

He’s in favor of the Iraq war, and believes the Syrian government is moderate. In a report in “The New Republic,” Alan Wolfe writes about an experience he had while on a panel discussion with Warren:

When it came time for questions, a woman stood up, proclaimed her Judaism, and asked Warren if she was going to burn in hell. He paused before responding–and then answered her question the only way it could be answered. Yes, he said to audible gasps.

Warren claims he’s not a homophobe, but he basis that judgement on two facts:

1. He’s had dinner in gay homes. (I’m still trying to figure what a gay home is, but I do know he and his staffed lied about hosting a group of gay families on Father’s Day, so it does seem he’s a bit scared of gay people…maybe he’s just a little too afraid of what may come out of it...I’m just saying.)
2. He and his wife have helped people with AIDS in Africa. (I’ve yet to figure this one out. I’m sure there are gay people in Africa infected with AIDS, but in Africa AIDS is primarily a heterosexual disease. Warren always makes it a point to qualify this BS about helping people with AIDS with the “in Africa” qualifier. You see, that’s safe with the other wingnuts because we all know the poor unsuspecting savages over there are all straight, and don’t know enough to avoid it, so it’s OK to help them.)

Warren, a creationist, believes that homosexuality disproves evolution; he told CNN’s Larry King in 2005, “If Darwin was right, which is survival of the fittest then homosexuality would be a recessive gene because it doesn’t reproduce and you would think that over thousands of years that homosexuality would work itself out of the gene pool.”

According to a story in The Nation:

Warren protests that he’s not a homophobe; it’s just that two dudes marrying, in his mind, is indistinguishable from an adult marrying a child, a brother marrying his sister, or polygamy. He thinks his AIDS relief efforts represent an elevated form of Christianity over those non-evangelical do-gooders whom he compares to “Marxists” because they’re more interested in good works than salvation.

This guy is a fraud among frauds. During an interview in response to the invitation Warren, trying to sound the conciliatory, Holier-than-thou, friendly old-time pastor, said, “You don’t have to see eye to eye to walk hand in hand.” Well, the problem with that is you have be allowed in the door to even walk hand in hand. You see Warren’s church, according to a recent version of his website, does not allow gay people to join Saddleback. Interesting that this page was scrubbed from the website after the MSM started picking up on it. Which just furthers my argument that the guy is a fraud. His beliefs last when they make him money, but when they bite him in the ass, he has no problem deleting them.

In polite society today is not acceptable to say racists things. Sure, racism exists and people have racists thoughts. People even make racists comments in private, but it is simply not tolerated in the public square. It’s Constitutional to say racists things, but most people just don’t as they realize there will be a penalty extracted by society. It remains not only acceptable, but in some quarters even fashionable, today to attack gay people, make all sorts of outlandish and dishonest claims about gay people, the “gay lifestyle” and the “gay agenda.” Until we demand that every indignation visited on us by people like Rick Warren is punished in the public square, right-wing nut jobs will continue to build their empires around hating “the gay.” So, NO, I won’t shut up, and YES, I am over the Obama people for this selection. He didn’t invite a racists to give the benediction.