This Week in the Mercury
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Politics Richard Cohen on Rick Warren
Posted by Dan Savage on Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 2:23 PM
Richard Cohen in the Washington Post:
Not that he was planning to attend, but Barack Obama should know that my sister's inauguration night party—the one for which she was preparing Obama Punch—has been canceled. The notice went out over the weekend, by e-mail and word of mouth, that Obama's choice of Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation had simply ruined the party. Warren is anti-gay, and my sister, not to put too fine a point on it, is not. She's gay....
She's been in a relationship with another woman, the quite wonderful Nancy, for 19 years, and she resents the fact that [Rick] Warren has likened same-sex marriage to incest, pederasty and polygamy.... There you have the thinking of the man Obama has chosen above all other religious figures to represent him in this most solemn moment. He likens my sister's relationship—three children, five grandchildren, so loving as to be envied and so conventional as to be boring—to incest or polygamy.
The conventional thing to say is that Obama has a preacher problem—first the volcanic Jeremiah Wright and now the transparently anti-gay Warren. But the real problem has nothing to do with ministers and everything to do with Obama's inability or unwillingness to be a moral leader. Sooner or later, he just might have to stand for something.
This was apparent to me almost a year ago when I reported that Obama's church, the Trinity United Church of Christ, had given a major award to Louis Farrakhan, the anti-Semitic leader of the Nation of Islam.... I never for a moment thought Obama viewed Farrakhan any differently from the way I do. But I also thought that as a U.S. senator, as a presidential candidate or even as a mere citizen, he had an obligation to denounce the award—maybe quit the church. Do something! He did nothing.
Now we have a repeat of that episode. This time it is not Obama's preacher who has decided to honor a bigot, it is Obama himself.
Read the whole thing here.
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Enough with this Rick Warren horseshit!!! Sure, evangelicals and other Christian types don't like homosexuals too much, but neither do the majority of people in the country, whether you and I, living in liberal bubbles, like it or not. Yes, it sucks, but get over it already.
Warren also says women should be subservient ("submit" is the word he uses) to their men, abortions are like the Holocaust and humans and dinosaurs co-existed.
I am terribly disappointed. What a tragedy that Obama couldn't pick a minister that at least believed in science, let alone respects LBGTs and women. Heartbreaking.
No thanks, "maricona", I've had my fill. Wonderfully witty response though. Nice!
Maybe Rick will say in his speech that he is pro-marriage for everyone!
I'm sorry Jake. What I meant to say was Merry Christmas!
Jake: I join with maricona in cordially inviting you to feast upon an unlimited plethora of male reproductive organs (just for the record, my own is off the table). Hope that was witty enough for ya!
Actually Tommy, you just rephrased it in a pretty boring way--nice try though! As I wrote before, I've eaten enough cocks to last me a lifetime, but I appreciate your invitation to try more. Maybe you've got something I might be interested in trying.
Anyhoo, you missed my point. Obama's whole thing is to appeal to everyone. Like it or not--and I don't, but that's beside the point--Rick Warren holds a lot of weight with a lot of people in the world outside Portland, so it's no surprise he was chosen.
So I don't understand all the outrage, realpolitik-wise.
Just saying.
Leslie and The Badgers
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