Adele Stan: Reflections on Rick Warren

Among the bloggers I met at the LGBT Blogger Summit in early December, 2008, was Adele Stan who among other things writes fro the Huffington Post. Like many of us, Adele has mixed emotions about Barack Obama's selection of anti-gay bigot Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation. Adele's latest column at Huffington Post looks at the Warren issue and her thoughts on the same. I share many of her feelings of betrayal and hope that somehow Warren either is uninvited or forced to recant from some of his hateful beliefs. If neither happens, unless and until Obama makes a MAJOR move in support of LGBT rights, I will have lost all belief in the man - something I have shared directly with his campaign. Here are some highlights from Adele's column:

*

Nearly two weeks after Barack Obama stunned his most passionate supporters by announcing his choice of Rev. Rick Warren to make the invocation at Obama's inauguration, you'd expect the thing to have blown over. That it has not says as much about the American people as does our election of Barack Obama, of which we like to think as the expression of the better angels of our nature.

*
Count me among those who felt stung, yea, smitten, by the announcement. As you've no doubt heard countless times by now, Warren didn't simply support Proposition 8, the ballot measure that overturned same-sex marriage in California -- he grouped same-sex unions in a category of unacceptable institutions that includes polygamy and marriage between an adult and a child. Perhaps you heard, as well, that Warren compares abortion to the Holocaust, and describes pro-choice advocates as "Holocaust deniers." For many of us who supported Obama vociferously during the campaign, this all feels a bit personal.

*

"I don't even want to go to this inauguration now," I told one friend. Trust me, reader, that's a sentiment of extreme deflation, so excited have I been, so looking forward to a transcendent moment on the Mall with hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, straining for a glimpse at a Jumbotron amid children and grandmas as they jockey for position. And still a bitter taste laces my tongue when I imagine Warren at the microphone, calling for the blessing of a God he believes sanctions bigotry against queer folk, a God who would deny a woman her bodily integrity, a God who demands that Jews and other non-Christians burn in Hell. Not my God, thank God.

*

In fact, the predictable back-and-forth between left and right around this issue leads me in moments when my worser angels -- you know, the less-than-angelic angels -- of my nature have my ear to wonder whether or not we just got Souljahed out. Would Obama step on our tails to make us squeal so that he might look "normal" to the pro-America parts of the country?

*

Over the days since Obama announced the honor he conferred on Rick Warren, I have engaged at least a dozen friends and colleagues in discussions where I vent my fury, listen carefully, vent some more -- all in the hope of ultimately letting go. After all, like just about everybody, I really want this Obama thing to work.

*

Guardian America editor Michael Tomasky warily suggests an outside chance that Warren's stance might change through the experience of calling the blessing on the Obama presidency:
Maybe having given this "Holocaust denier" [Obama] his high-profile blessing will require over time that Warren moderate his views and his public posture, and maybe that would lead some portion of his flock to do the same. Jim Toevs of the Seattle Gay News suggests that Warren's increased contact, due to the controversy, with gay people may even transform him into a gay ally.

*

Personally, I do not see Warren ever becoming a gay ally. On the other hand, all the media attention may either (1) harm his image and lessen his influence or (2) cause him to moderate some of the foul poison that he currently promotes.