Andrew Sullivan has two posts which go to underscore the foul hypocrisy of Christianist, Rick Warren, and which further make my blood boil that Obama invited this viper to give the inaugural invocation. The first deals with the fact Rick "I love gays" Warren's church runs what is tantamount to ex-gay programs through something called "Celebrate Recovery" that occurs every Friday night at Saddleback Church. So now we know that Obama has invited an ex-gay advocate to give the invocation. It truly doesn't get much more insulting to LGBT Americans than to have a hate filled bigot like Warren (although a polished one at that) given such an honor. As I sad yesterday, why didn't Obama just take out a TV ad telling LGBT Americans to go f*ck themselves? Here are some highlights from Andrew's first post:*
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.
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.
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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.
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The second post makes a great case of just how dishonest the Warren/Christianist argument that CIVIL law gay marriage would threaten the religious freedom within church denominations. I have not heard the analogies made before, but they are 100% on point. Yet further proof that Rick Warren is a disingenuous liar. Here are highlights:
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[T]here is no conflict whatever between religious liberty and civil same-sex marriage. . . . The biggest single denomination in America - Catholicism - denies the existence of divorce, does not recognize the sacred status of re-married couples, and has life-long marriage at the core of its definition of the institution. Has the Catholic church's religious liberty been infringed by the ubiquity of divorced couples? Are Catholic priests denied their First Amendment rights because they occasionally have to interact in the civil sphere with married couples whose marriages they deem invalid? Was the late Archbishop O'Connor of New York giving up the First Amendment by treating Ronald and Nancy Reagan's marriage as a precious thing?
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Or take the Catholic church's insane position on the ordination of women. Gender equality is much more deeply embedded in the law than orientation equality. Has anyone actually sought to prosecute the church for being a deeply sexist institution? Have women brought lawsuits against priests because a parishioner went out and raped someone - or discriminated against them in employment? I mean: please. The whole idea is fueled by [people like Rick Warren and] pure panic at the thought of having to live in a society in which gay citizens are treated like everyone else.
Or take the Catholic church's insane position on the ordination of women. Gender equality is much more deeply embedded in the law than orientation equality. Has anyone actually sought to prosecute the church for being a deeply sexist institution? Have women brought lawsuits against priests because a parishioner went out and raped someone - or discriminated against them in employment? I mean: please. The whole idea is fueled by [people like Rick Warren and] pure panic at the thought of having to live in a society in which gay citizens are treated like everyone else.
1 comment:
It is exactly right to argue that the Catholic bishops were mendacious when they argued that same-sex marriage was a threat to our religious freedom. The bishops certainly did not try to insert into the civil law other unpopular teachings on marriage and sexuality. The bishops did not try to stop legal contraception, divorce and remarriage, or in vitro fertilization, although all violate Catholic sexual morality. Instead, they picked on only those that they considered weakest, and that they could scapegoat: gays. This is bullying behavior, and has no place in American politics, or for that matter, in the Catholic Church.
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