He says:
if that [Prop 8] did not pass, then any pastor could be considered doing hate speech if he shared his views that he didn’t think homosexuality was the most natural way for relationships. And that would be hate speech. To me, we should have freedom of speech.The Box Turtle Bulletin rebuts this:
This is unadulterated nonsense. First, a civil marriage law does nothing to impinge on what a pastor can preach. Divorce is very common, but you can waive all the divorce decrees and new marriage licences in front of a Catholic priest’s face and he’s not going to marry anyone unless the Vatican has granted an annulment....I love the delicious irony that Warren and the Catholic apologist Bishops and the head of the Mormons and Pat Boone are all scolding the gay community about our protests, with Seamus Hasson and Pat Boone calling OUR peaceful demonstrations "Terrorism", but this is all about free speech for them.
And what if it were considered hate speech? No problem there either because in the United States, hate speech is not against the law. And it can never be against the law as long as the First Amendment is in effect.....
I suspect Rev. Warren knows that. But he’d rather stoke the paranoia of his fellow evangelicals than actually discuss the issue “in a civil way.”
Meanwhile, I am dismayed that Obama has reportecly chosen Warren for an "invocation" for the inauguration. As Andrew Sullivan writes,
Warren is a man who believes my marriage removes his freedom of speech and cannot say that authorizing torture is a moral failing. ... if anyone is under any illusion that Obama is interested in advancing gay equality, they should probably sober up now. ... pandering to Christianists at his inauguration is a depressing omen.I don't often agree with Sullivan, but I do on this. Maybe someday I'll live in a country where I don't feel rejected for my faith beliefs or my sexuality. I don't think a secular society should have a invocation anyway. In the meantime, having an invocation from a hate-filled evangelical who lobbies against my equal rights tells me that I'm still nothing in this country, unwelcome, and unwanted. Obama is doing just the same thing to the GLBT community as the RC bishops: telling us to shut up and sit down. (But keep writing those checks.....!)
Update: Why not this kind of Evangelical to give the invocation?
Cross posted at Daily Kos, where there is also a poll!
15 comments:
Joseph Lowery is doing the benediction. I believe his views are somewhat different from Warren's.
Personally I'm not happy with Warren for his views on marriage, on reproduction choice, and on non-theists. Not to mention P.E.A.C.E. which isn't about peace.
Depressing but I never thought Obama was a great liberal.
Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with Rick Warren on the issue of homosexuality, describing him as a "hate-filled evangelical" dips into the same cesspool as those on the religious right who label more progressive Christians as heretics, apostate, or various other pejorative terms. My experience of Rick Warren is that he is not hate-filled at all. Mistaken and misinformed, but certainly not filled with hate.
I think that Father Tom here is a Concern Troll. He is posting like this in a number of places. Very akin to Grace.
I experience their opinions as hate. They are directly and negatively affecting my life. I'm tired of being told that they really "love" me while they treat me like @#$%.
That ain't love.
Incidentally, on the poll on the Kos page, I gave the option of
-No invocation
-rebuttal
-invocation by an inclusive figure
-no problem with warren.
Despite being accused of being a buncha atheist pinkos, my colleagues at Kos are putting choice #3 marginally ahead of choice #1 (the others are way behind)
Sorry, that anon was me, IT.
Equating gays and lesbians "biblically" with rapists, pedophiles, polygamists, and those who engage in incest is pretty darn hate-filled in my book.
So is writing a glowing paean to Akinola in Time magazine. A vocal supporter of Martin Ssempa in Uganda is pretty darn hate-filled too.
The man may talk a nice, inclusive message of love in public but he has not been so loving or inclusive when privately speaking to his fellow evangelicals.
There are many profiles, articles and blog posts that are bringing the falsity of his "moderation to light".
There was no need for the Obama transition team to stick us in the eye with this particular choice. Having this man invoke God is an affront and painful at best.
My experience of Rick Warren is that he is not hate-filled at all.
Are you gay, and OUT to him as such, Tom, when you had your "experience of Rick"? [Ooh, that's a stomach-turning phrase! :-X]
If not, don't lecture us.
***
Very skeeved at Obama, for the Warren invite. Left at message at the Change.gov discussion site, to say so. >:-/
There should be a couple of hundreds to choose from, shouldn't there?
Why this man?
Why?
Look, it's all part of the deliberate triangulation and outreach by the Obamas to THEM. We're all post-partisan, now. But when does post-partisan mean that you throw your own folks overboard?
there has been no outreach to US, no acknowledgement of the damage Warren et al did to us. Oh, we're supposed to be grateful that a GLBT marching band will be in the parade. Like that's making up for this.
Crumbs. We wrote the checks and we worked to get him elected and there is absolutely no recognition of us as a community.
THe Obama bus left us in the station. We knew that when the Yes-on-H8 folks used his voice on the robocalls, and there was only an anemic response from teh campaign. We knew when he and Biden said they were against gay marriage, but vote no on prop8, a contradictory message that the Yes-on-H8 campaign jumped on. And we know it now as they continue to ignore any recognition of what people like Warren did to us.
I have no confidence that his administration will do anything for the GLBT community. THere will be so many reasons they have why we should keep waiting. But my mailbox is full with requests for more money from them.
Yeah, right.
IT
IT: I'm not going to argue with you on the Rick Warren issue, since you obviously have a vastly different experience of him than I (as a white heterosexual male) do. What I _will_ argue with you on is this:
Crumbs. We wrote the checks and we worked to get him elected and there is absolutely no recognition of us as a community.
So you subscribe to the "pay to play" doctrine? Did the GLBT lobby think they bought a President? I'm hardly politically naive, but that statement sounds awfully close to "He OWES us!" or maybe even "We OWN him!", neither of which works well for me. I wrote the checks as well, as did many others outside the GLBT community, so you hardly have a lock on the President-elect's attentions.
President-elect Obama has made no secret of his post-partisan centrist views. Why folks thought he would be a raging liberal is beyond me. How about letting the man actually govern and make decisions before assuming that he is just another politician?
I recognize that you are writing from a position of pain (and I would have voted against Prop 8, FYI) but the way to defeat prejudice is to confront people with it and attach faces and relationships to issues, not to whine about not getting political paybacks.
Maybe, just maybe Warren will meet some real LGBT people and learn something? Where else might he be knowingly exposed to gay cooties?
I wouldn't have chosen Warren, and wouldn't have wanted him to. However, I think I can stand hearing him, if this is the last time. Even good change can allow time for folks to say goodbye.
Now, if he, and not, say Tony Campolo, starts showing up in the White House with the regularity Billy Graham used to, that would show a trend disturbing to those of us who support and agree with you, IT, even though we don't have the same experience.
I don't want pay to play, TomS, but it would be nice to have at least some minimal recognition of what happened to our community from people like this. Common decency.
And yes, I DO expect Pres. Obama to work for the civil rights of ALL Americans--and not just GLBT ones. But to conspicuously ignore the GLBT ones, that's the problem.
There are lots of people he could choose, but choosing one who calls my marriage similar to incest is deeply hurtful.
And it's not the first time.
it's not the most important thing, oviously, but it needn't have been a thing at all. That's the point. The prop8 thing has left the GLBT community deeply, deeply hurt and this just adds to it.
IT
Kind of makes you wish the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr. was still around to do the invocation, eh ?
Post a Comment