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I have been asked many times about Barack Obama's choice of Rick Warren for the prayer at his inauguration. I do in fact have some strong opinions about this (hard to believe isnt it?) and have written the following article for Ambush! to state those opinions....
Taking the good with the bad.
I don't think I am giving away any secrets when I say I was thrilled to bits when Barack Obama was elected. It reminded me of the feeling when Tony Blair was elected in 1997 - great optimism, and openness to change. The big difference is that Barack Obama has already changed a great deal just by being elected - he doesn't have to lift a finger in order to transform the perception of America around the world; just being there does that. Tony Blair ushered in ten years of prosperity and law reform that changed Britain forever, and left LGBT people with equal rights after a long struggle - it is my prayer that Barack Obama has at least as good a run (well, eight years, not ten).
It therefore came as a nasty shock to many people when Mr Obama decided upon Rick Warren as the pastor to give the benediction at his inauguration. When I first heard this I rolled my eyes but figured that he had to include as wide a range of people as possible in 'the project'. Indeed, I attended an HIV/AIDS conference at Rick Warren's church a couple of years back, and was struck by his sincerity, and what I took to be a genuine wish to do the right thing. I put his homophobia down to ignorance and misinformation. I still do, but the difference is that when ignorance is faced with truth it should give way - I cannot believe that in the last few years nobody has ever gone to Rick Warren and told him the truth of our lives, and yet he appeared on national television and spouted embarrassing lunacy about 'choosing' homosexuality being no different to him having a desire for ten wives. Please Rick, I mean... please!!
If he, coming from a conservative tradition, had said that all homosexuals should restrict their sexual behaviour to within covenanted relationships (marriages) I could have at least respected his position and argued from a position of equality, but no, he has not applied any empathy, or indeed reason to the issue, and instead has draped the whole subject in an easy 'one size fits all' set of solutions he received mail-order from the Southern Baptist Convention. This is not good enough. Rick Warren is obviously a very bright man - he could never had built a vast church and outreach network without some serious smarts; it is however equally obvious that he has put his reason and intelligence to bed when it comes to human sexuality - evidently the answers his reason gave him were just too troubling for his black and white faith, and therefore they had to be silenced.
Many people of apparently good intelligence do the same thing; treating God as if God is some deluded old lady that has fallen on hard times, and the truth of her reduced circumstances must be hidden from her. This God is also very frail, and cannot stand loud noises or bright lights! It is as if the truth is something that she must be sheltered from or she will shatter into a million pieces like glass. Well, what they have is a fragile construction, it is a religion based upon fond inventions and comfortable certainties, not upon the God of Truth or The God of Love - it is instead a collection of traditions and social conventions that are treated as law. This is much the same as the code of the Pharisees that Jesus railed against; it is a religion, not Christianity - it is a set of rules that have become more important that either the intent of the heart or the example of Christ.
Rick Warren's silliness could be laughed off if it didn't result in increased hatred, bible abuse and prejudice - if it didn't lead to beaten children and murdered LGBT teens. Rick Warren needs to wise up and understand that words have consequences and he is a man of some considerable power. If he has a personal conservatism all well and good - but that has nothing to do with sexual orientation! It may inform what he teaches about marriage, raising children or fidelity, but such teachings affect gay folk and straight equally. A conservative may argue that gay people need marriage, stability and the church, but it must be same-sex marriage (or it is meaningless and dishonest), it must be a church that celebrates them and it must be a stability that we have sought, not a prison cell of social convention.
Sexual orientation is morally neutral. We start, ethically, from the same point as straight people in that it is the free-will decisions in our lives that carry moral consequences, not the God-given traits that we are born with, things that we have no control over. It is no more sensible to say that being gay is immoral than it is to suggest that being left handed is immoral. It is no more sensible to suggest that gay sex is intrinsically immoral than to say that writing with your left hand is immoral - it is merely the natural outworking of the inborn trait. It is sensible to say that murdering someone with your left hand is immoral, just as it is sensible to say that raping someone of the same sex is immoral - but those are the only informed guidelines for making parallels.
Mr Warren, to suggest that falling in love with someone of the same sex - to whom you are by nature designed to be attracted, and then committing to them and devoting your life to them in mutual love and compassion is the same as choosing to have ten wives, or worse, that it somehow has parallels with pedophilia is deeply demeaning. It deprives you of the respect owing you as a major figure in the Christian sphere, and someone who has on occasion written with great wisdom. You can do better than that, and what is more, so can Barack Obama!
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Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner Sigourney Weaver stars in this emotional true story about a 1970s religious suburban housewife and mother who struggles to accept her young son Bobby being gay. What happens to Bobby is tragic and causes Mary to question her faith; ultimately this mom changes her views in ways that she never could have imagined. This movie highlights the work of both MCC and PFLAG and premieres on Lifetime at 8pm ct on January 24th. We have a couple of venues where folk are screening this in their homes, so if you want lets watch it together!
