The Nation: A Bigot, Anti-Choice Pastor Picked for Obama's Inauguration

http://www.alternet.org/election08/113772

A Bigot, Anti-Choice Pastor Picked for Obama's Inauguration
By Sarah Posner, TheNation.com. Posted December 18, 2008.

A very strange pick -- Pastor Rick Warren opposes gay marriage, doesn't believe in evolution and compared abortion to the Holocaust.

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There was no doubt that Obama, like every president before him, would pick a Christian minister to perform this sacred duty. But Obama had thousands of clergy to choose from, and the choice of Warren is not only a slap in the face to progressive ministers toiling on the front lines of advocacy and service, but a bow to the continuing influence of the religious right in American politics. Warren vocally opposes gay marriage, does not believe in evolution, has compared abortion to the Holocaust and backed the assassination of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Warren has done a masterful job at marketing himself as "new" kind of evangelical with a "broader agenda" than just fighting abortion rights and gay marriage. He dispatches members of his congregation to Africa to perform AIDS relief and has positioned himself as a great crusader for bringing his "purpose-driven" pabulum to the world.

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Beneath the sheep's clothing lurks a culture warrior wolf. After the Saddleback forum, he told the Wall Street Journal that the only difference between him and James Dobson was that of "tone." After insisting that his agenda was "broad," and holding himself out as an impartial arbiter of the Forum, he declared that voting for a "Holocaust denier," (i.e., someone who is pro-choice) is a "deal-breaker" for many evangelicals. Obama was pressured to talk about "abortion reduction," but Warren likens such rhetoric likening it to Schindler's List: an attempt to save some lives but not end a "holocaust."

In the world of the "broader agenda" evangelicals, when liberals advocate for gay marriage, they're stoking the culture wars; when a "broader agenda" evangelical crusades against it, he's merely upholding biblical standards. In that tradition, in October, Warren implored his followers to vote for Proposition 8 because "there are about 2 percent of Americans are homosexual, gay, lesbian people. We should not let 2 percent of the population change a definition of marriage that has been supported by every single culture and every single religion for 5,000 years." Warren called opposition to gay marriage a "humanitarian issue" because "God created marriage for the purpose of family, love and procreation."

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Warren represents the absolute worst of the Democrats' religious outreach, a right-winger masquerading as a do-gooder anointed as the arbiter of what it means to be faithful. Obama's religious outreach was intended, supposedly, to make religious voters more comfortable with him and feel included in the Democratic Party. But that outreach now has come at the expense of other people's comfort and inclusion, at an event meant to mark a turning point away from divisive politics.

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disturbing pick no matter how you cut it. And why does he have to have two Christians? Why not have picked a Rabbi to give the invocation? Or an Imam? And why two men?

Warren, a creationist, believes that homosexuality disproves evolution; he told CNN's Larry King in 2005, "If Darwin was right, which is survival of the fittest then homosexuality would be a recessive gene because it doesn't reproduce and you would think that over thousands of years that homosexuality would work itself out of the gene pool."
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Apparently, they don't teach biology at divinity school....

I think that would have set a better opening tone.

We should be trying to marginalize these people, not lend them legitimacy. Sigh.

K-R

Give us a break, sweet Lord!!!

Obama just stole the ball from the Radical Rectally-Religious Right. Didn't you see it?

Getting Warren brings him the sentimental support of over 80% of the "Fundagelical" community. They won't like 100% Obama does or has to say, but they will feel comfortable with him. And by elevating Rick Warren to Billy Grahamitude, it undercuts Dobson, Robertson, Phelps, and the rest of the Church of Clown-Car Christianity.

The "Lord's sheep" aren't going to go right out and demand GLBT and reproductive rights, but if Obama is courting them, they will start seeing things "our" way a lot more. Little by little, they will come along.

After the inauguration, it's going to get a lot easier to convince the fundy rank-and-file that Jesus wasn't a member of the John Birch Society. After all, Rev. Warren and The Prez are tight, and Dobson can go spank his monkey. Evangelism is a two-way street.

--p!

A chess move in other words and a brilliant one at that. It will get the fundies to watch the inauguration and hear Obama's speech.

So much for enjoying the inaugural.

This is very similar to FDR's mistake of getting the Southern Democrat Senators on his side by ignoring the lynching, KKK cross burning and jim crow laws of the south. FDR's new deal passed on the backs of Black American's freedoms.

Is Obama hoping to get the Southern senators on his side on the backs of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters freedoms?

I thought Obama was smarter than that.

:eyes:

There are fundies in all corners of this nation. I'm really tired of explaining this.

Sarah Palin, for Heaven's sake, lives as far away from the Southern United States as one can get and she's a fundie!! Orin Hatch? Utah. Most red swath of the US? The Great Plains states.

Please.

Something that the STFU Crowd in GD:P needs to read to understand why we don't want him there.

by sending him e-mails? He could have picked Jesse Jackson couldn't he?

You can do so here:

# parag.mehta@ptt.gov (Parag Mehta is Obama's LGBT liaison in the transition team.)
# dnoble@barackobama.com
# bbond@barackobama.com
# steve@hildebrandtewes.com (Steve Hildebrandt)
# fred.hochberg@ptt.com

like a fart in church.

Did they have to pick the craziest one they could find with an open date in his calendar? I guess Fred Phelps was off picketing another soldier's funeral that day :sarcasm:

I thought we'd had enough of the nutjobs and that's why we put the "Change" organization in place. This looks like a buncha MOTS to me (more of the same), only they're right up front with it. Didn't waste any time cozying up to the craziest, most insincere, most seditious and subversive element of society -- the fucking snake-handlers, of all people to kick off the new administration.

Way to step in some shit, O. It stinks all the way up to the ass.

Sid