No, not Warren G. Or even Warren G. Harding (one of the worst presidents ever, allegedly, and someone to whom I am, allegedly, distantly related…my mom said never to tell anyone that). Just in case you haven’t yet heard, gays are pissed about Rick Warren, a slightly-less conservative evangelical pastor of the Saddleback mega-church (he’s less conservative in that he believes in helping the poor and occasionally listens to other people though they don’t really change his mind all that often, and he’s not filled with outright hate).
Obama has selected to Warren give the invocation at his historic inauguration. And gay rights groups are up in arms over this. Sure, Warren (author of that Purpose-Driven Life book) is moderate and I understand and sympathize with Obama’s political needs and intentions. But Warren’s church does have one of those “ex-gay” groups, a program to help homosexuals stop being gay. That’s really disgusting to me. And he’s sorta kinda equated gays with child molesters and polygamists. But my good man Obama has selected him to reach across party lines and be a symbol of Obama’s post-partisan world.
I get it, Barack, and I love you. I really do. But I always said that when I was supporting you that I was prepared to be disappointed, because part of the reason I loved you was the sweeping rhetoric that made me feel good, and that’s not really a rational way to choose a President, so I voted on his policies, which I like (but in the primaries, when faced with a choice between Clinton and Obama and their very similar policies, Obama’s ability to make me happy and talk about unity in an interesting, compelling manner put him over the top for me… but I really wanted Bill Richardson).
You’ve already managed to disappoint me. And that’s fine. I know you don’t endorse everything Warren has said and that you’ve stated that time and time again.
I think a caller on Talk of the Nation said today something along the lines of, “what if Rick Warren had said he didn’t believe that interracial marriage was okay?” What if Rick Warren was an anti-semite? I think Obama would not have him at the inauguration. But right now, whether you believe it or not, it’s socially acceptable to treat gays as not equal. 10% of the population and their small group of friends gets pissed and then what happens? Nothing. So you don’t have to take gay rights seriously as a public figure.
Obama doesn’t take gay rights seriously. That’s what I’ve learned from this. Or, at the least, he’s not yet ready to risk his political goodwill and take gay rights seriously. But risk it he has.
What’s more shocking to me is the furor over this inauguration — the event that was supposed to basically end such partisan back-biting in America — is being stirred up by gay folks. We are now dividing Obama’s supporters. Not Republicans (well, maybe they’re on the other side). The first major blow to Obama’s ability to govern as everyone’s President comes from folks pissed off about Prop 8 and Warren’s support of it.
And we’ve made Obama talk about it and say he fully supports gay rights (though he’s a civil union guy, which is fine with, though Andrew Sullivan or one of his readers has suggested this is a “separate but equal” compromise–click around those links up top).
Neat stuff to think about.
This post created something of a conundrum on the back-end of this blog. I went to put this in “Radical Wrong,” Z’s cleverly named category for the Radical Right, but then realized that label doesn’t really fit this post. So this is a new category called “Radically Wrong Moderates”.
UPDATE: Due to it being the devil and all, I don’t normally like to talk about the National Review. I started reading it when I was doing a lot of political blogging, for “balance.” I mostly fume at everything they say. But Ramesh Ponnuru has nailed it:
By giving Warren a platform, Obama is not endorsing his views—but he is saying that those views are a legitimate part of the national conversation.
He goes on to attack liberals, but he’s right in this one line. Obama is saying that those who talk about gay rights as if it’s ridiculous (or disgusting, or whatever) are okay, and shouldn’t be treated like outright haters of other groups.
I’m not one to say gay rights are Big C and Big R “Civil Rights” as in the black Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. But it’s not because I don’t believe that homosexuality is in-born (probably a mix of genetics and other neo-natal factors), because I do. In that way, it’s like race (well, without the other factors). But I don’t equate the two because there’s not really a huge movement and in our time there haven’t been nearly as many snarling dogs, jail cells, murders, firehoses, bombs, and riots (not to take away from those who have been harmed by bigots and stupid laws, at all, just the suffering on a mass quantitative level is not quite the same). But there certainly have been similar things.
I was kind of hoping we could do it without the bombs, dogs, firehoses, jail cells, murders, and riots. I was kind of hoping we would have learned from the Big C and Big R Civil Rights movement.