Day: December 18, 2008

UPDATE: Aug. 16, 2010: The video I posted here in 2008 has been removed by YouTube, and the video from BeliefNet does not work. I found a clip from GoodAsYou.org that features Warren’s “money quote” and am posting it to replace the original.

You don’t have to dig too deep to find bigoted statements by Rick Warren, the homophobe who is Obama’s new BFF. Just last week in a video interview, Warren compared gay marriage to incest and pedophilia:

RICK WARREN: But the issue to me is, I’m not opposed to that as much as I’m opposed to the redefinition of a 5,000-year definition of marriage. I’m opposed to having a brother and sister be together and call that marriage. I’m opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that a marriage. I’m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.

STEVEN WALDMAN: Do you think, though, that they are equivalent to having gays getting married?

RICK WARREN: Oh I do. …

The favored form of marriage in the Middle East 5,000 years ago was polygamy. Abraham, the father of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, was a polygamist, as were Jacob and the kings David and Soloman. Until the early 19th century, marriage was predominantly a business arrangement between male heads of households.

There’s more to Warren’s statement that was not included in the video:

… Most people, you know … I have many gay friends, I’ve eaten dinner in gay homes, no church has probably done more for people with AIDS than Saddleback Church. Kay and I have given millions of dollars out of “A Purpose-Driven Life” helping people who got AIDS through gay relationships. So they can’t accuse me of homophobia. I just don’t believe in the re-definition of marriage.

Of course, marriage was redefined in the 1967, when the Supreme Court overturned laws against inter-racial marriage in Loving v. Virginia. Doubtless, Pastor Rick is glad marriage was redefined that way. But changing it to accommodate gay rights goes too far.

This is really bad:

Barack Obama’s choice of a prominent evangelical minister to deliver the invocation at his inauguration is a conciliatory gesture toward social conservatives who opposed him in November, but it is drawing fierce challenges from a gay rights movement that — in the wake of a gay marriage ban in California — is looking for a fight.

Rick Warren, the senior pastor of Saddleback Church in southern California, opposes abortion rights but has taken more liberal stances on the government role in fighting poverty, and backed away from other evangelicals’ staunch support for economic conservatism. But it’s his support for the California constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage that drew the most heated criticism from Democrats Wednesday.

After the debacle of Prop 8 — which Obama never mentioned on a public platform during the campaign and has not addressed since Election Day — this is a kick in the gut to every gay American. Here’s a quick look at Warren’s positions from Right Wing Watch:

[In] 2004 Warren declared that marriage, reproductive choice, and stem cell research were “non-negotiable” issues for Christian voters and has admitted that the main difference between himself and James Dobson is a matter of tone. He criticized Obama’s answers at the Faith Forum he hosted before the election and vowed to continue to pressure him to change his views on the issue of reproductive choice. He came out strongly in support of Prop 8, saying “there is no need to change the universal, historical defintion of marriage to appease 2 percent of our population … This is not a political issue — it is a moral issue that God has spoken clearly about.” He’s declared that those who do not believe in God should not be allowed to hold public office.

So why has this man been tapped to deliver the invocation at Obama’s inauguration?

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