Here’s an idea. A reader notes that one of the other Americans honored at Obama’s inaugural will be Itzhak Perlman, the great musician and violinist. Rick Warren compared one of Perlman’s daughters to someone practicing incest or pedophilia, and argued forcefully that her marriage be nullified. Perlman, for his part, made a moving commercial against Proposition 8 in defense of his daughter’s marriage, dignity and humanity.
Would it not be appropriate for Obama to invite Perlman’s daughter and her wife to share the podium with her father? If the inaugural is to be inclusive, wouldn’t it be a good gesture – and an olive branch to the gay community – to invite a lesbian married couple to the stage?
As often in Iraq, the truth is hard to discover. The Maliki government is denying reports of a coup and we discover the following:
Initial accounts provided by Iraqi security officials said that Gen. Ahmed Abu Raqeef, the director of internal affairs for the Ministry of the Interior, was among those arrested. But that account was wrong; Gen. Raqeef is, in fact, part of a committee overseeing the investigation of government officials’ possible links to the Baath Party.
Dan Radosh remembers a telling moment in Rick Warren’s career of reaching out to those who disagree with him. It occurred this summer when a group of gay families asked to talk with Warren and explain their lives at his church. Newsweek and other outlets reported that Warren had agreed to meet with gay Christians from the religious group "Soulforce." And Warren responded with the following statement:
(You) were correct in assuming Newsweek quoted a Soul Force press release headline that was 100% false. We did not invite this group and I will not be meeting with them. They invited themselves to draw attention to their cross country publicity stunt.
My staff has already told them that neither my wife nor I will meet with them for any discussion or debate. This weekend, both Kay and I are receiving awards from two different universities so we’ll be out of town! Also, it’s Father’s Day and I’m spending the holiday with my children and grandchildren, as are all my staff.
Warren’s statement contains several simple untruths. The first is that heterosexual marriage between one man and one woman for life has been endorsed by every religion and every culture for five thousand years. This is so obviously untrue it’s telling about Warren’s own lack of knowledge that he would repeat it. Polygamy has long been a strong contender against that model in many societies and cultures, including plenty of revered and holy figures in the Bible. Moreover, divorce altered the definition of marriage far, far more profoundly than any other change in human history. For good measure, many faiths in America already acknowledge and support gay unions and gay marriages. So Warren was simply wrong on many counts.
Let’s hope that Rick Warren will use his channel of communication to the new President to press him for more pro-family policies-rather than simply being used by Mr. Obama to make political inroads with evangelicals.
Of course, being "pro-family" for Perkins and Warren definitionally excludes gay family members. My own view at the end of this deeply upsetting day is that we should all take a deep breath. That doesn’t mean forgetting this; or denying the untruths and prejudices of Rick Warren. It means focusing on getting Obama to support the substantive work of equality; and making the case ourselves.
I’ve been traveling today but sitting on the Acela and reading your emails and pondering the Warren pick, I’ve found myself both better understanding Obama’s gambit politically and feeling more betrayed at the same time. I fought against the Christianism of Bush for this? A reader helps focus my evolving and conflicting feelings and thoughts:
As a longtime reader of your blog, I have to say that I respectfully dissent from your conciliatory tone on the Obama/Warren debacle.
Most people probably don’t know this, but Warren’s Saddleback Church has a Friday night program called Celebrate Recovery. On the whole the program is modeled after the twelve steps, albeit with an evangelical supplement to it. There are subgroups in the program that cater to men with “addictions” to pornography, recovery alcoholics, and women with codependency issues. There is also a group for those who struggle with “same sex attraction”, the discourse of which is directly borrowed from the ex-gay movement. I know this, of course, because I was involved with the group in Spring of 2007.
I was in full time ministry at a neighboring evangelical megachurch, where I was fighting a desperate battle against depression and despair in attempting to “cure” myself of my homosexuality. This was, without a doubt, the worst time in my life. I spent the majority of my Fridays as a young, 23 year old gay man sitting in a room with a group of men whose self loathing and struggle was overwhelming. These were largely married men, men with children, some of them former ministers, whose entire lives became consumed with undertaking the impossible act of modifying, or at least seeking to neuter, their own sexual orientation.
Looking at the deadlock these otherwise gifted men were in was extremely painful and one of the major spurs to my rethinking issues of sexual orientation and faith, and I am proud to say I came out the other side a reasonably well adjusted gay man. So when I send emails to my otherwise liberal friends telling them to send an email expressing their disapproval of the choice of Warren, and they send me emails back acknowledging the political symbolism of why Obama did what he did, please understand my frustration.
It’s obvious what Obama is trying to do by having Warren give the convocation at his inauguration, and it is understandable – but for me as a human being who was personally damaged by Warren’s theology and his church specifically, it is unforgivable. And to cover it over with vague rhetoric about a politics of inclusion and unity is similarly unforgivable.
Some friends have told me that my “personal issues” make me too emotionally involved with this issue, and of course they do – but perhaps that is precisely what gives me the right to be upset about this decision. I’ve been out for about a year and a half now and am in a really healthy relationship. I moved out of Orange County, the place I was raised, a place where I no longer feel comfortable. When Prop 8 passed, the most painful thing was the feeling I had that no matter how far away I got away from the oppressive forces of my past, I couldn’t get far enough away. I felt little victory in Obama’s success. This is yet another smack in the face, and similarly discouraging. If I didn’t have respectable gay elders in my life to teach me the value of patience – but also the value of protest – I’d be in a pretty dark state of mind about the whole fiasco.
"I commend President-elect Obama for his courage to willingly take enormous heat from his base by inviting someone like me, with whom he doesn’t agree on every issue, to offer the Invocation at his historic Inaugural ceremony. Hopefully individuals passionately expressing opinions from the left and the right will recognize that both of us have shown a commitment to model civility in America. The Bible admonishes us to pray for our leaders. I am honored by this opportunity to pray God’s blessing on the office of the President and its current and future inhabitant, asking the Lord to provide wisdom to America’s leaders during this critical time in our nation’s history."
Civil rights are not about left and right; they are about right and wrong. And the hurt that this choice has caused is not a function of an alienated base, it seems to me, so much as salt on the wound of Proposition 8. I understand why Obama did this. I just wonder if he understands how deeply hurtful it is to be asked to pray with someone who has compared my marriage with the sexual abuse of children, incest and polygamy. Yes, I am, in Warren’s eyes, the equivalent of a pedophile, as is my husband. This comparison is what Warren calls his commitment to "model civility."
"The number-one reason foreign fighters gave for coming to Iraq to fight is the torture and abuse that occurred at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. The majority of suicide bombings are carried out by foreign fighters who volunteered and came to Iraq with this motivation. Consequently it is clear that at least hundreds but more likely thousands of American lives (not to count Iraqi civilian deaths) are linked directly to the policy decision to introduce the torture and abuse of prisoners as accepted tactics.
Americans have died from terrorist attacks since 9/11; those Americans just happen to be American soldiers. This is not simply my view – it is widely held among senior officers in the U.S. military today. Alberto Mora, who served as General Counsel of the Navy under Donald Rumsfeld, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2008 that “U.S. flag-rank officers maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq–as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat–are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.” We owe it to our troops to protect them from terrorist attacks by not conducting torture and we owe it to our forefathers to uphold the American principles that they passed down to us," – Matthew Alexander, a soldier who, unlike countless shock-jock radio hosts, actually interrogated Qaeda suspects in Iraq.
A doorman at the building of disgraced investor Bernard Madoff looks out to the media gathered outside December 18, 2008 in New York City. Madoff was released to his apartment rather than jail after being accused of bilking investors of over $50 billion. By Chris Hondros/Getty.
"I am very disappointed by President-elect Barack Obama’s decision to honor Reverend Rick Warren with a prominent role in his inauguration. Religious leaders obviously have every right to speak out in opposition to anti-discrimination measures, even in the degrading terms that Rev. Warren has used with regard to same-sex marriage. But that does not confer upon them the right to a place of honor in the inauguration ceremony of a president whose stated commitment to LGBT rights won him the strong support of the great majority of those who support that cause.
It is irrelevant that Rev. Warren invited Senator Obama to address his congregation, since he extended an equal invitation to Senator McCain. Furthermore, the President-Elect has not simply invited Rev. Warren to give a speech as part of a series in which various views are presented. The selection of a member of the clergy to occupy this uniquely elevated position has always been considered a mark of respect and approval by those who are being inaugurated."
The Dish 