Loading ...Even on Planet California, gay marriage opposed
flockwoodANALYSIS
President-elect Barack Obama is getting a lot of heat from the gay community for inviting Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. They object to Warren primarily because Warren believes marriage is the union of one man and one woman.
If Warren has a place at Obama’s table, leading gay rights activist Joe Solmonese said, it suggests gays and lesbians have no place at the table.(click here for Solmonese’s complete statement.) Nonsense, Obama replies. The table is big enough for both sides.
Strategically, Obama’s move is probably smart politics.
Warren is no Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell. He’s widely popular, having sold 30 million copies of “The Purpose Driven Life.” He gives away millions of dollars to help the poor and the sick. He “tithes” 90 percent of his income to charity. And his position on gay marriage is far and away the majority position in America in 2008.
Warren will share prayer-giving duties at the inauguration with the Rev. Joseph Lowery, a civil rights leader and strong supporter of gay marriage.
To set up a “gay marriage litmus test” for Obama’s administration would be to dismiss a majority of Californians, including 70 percent of African American voters, 64 percent of Catholic voters and 65 percent of white Protestant voters and 81 percent of white evangelicals, if this exit poll is correct.
And remember, this is Planet California — a highly diverse, urban, gay-friendly, liberal blue-state biosphere that is often a decade ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to social trends. [And a place where church membership, affiliation and attendance are low.]
The reason why the California vote was relatively close is because secular voters supported gay marriage 9 to 1. In other states, the votes against gay marriage have been far more lop-sided.
If Obama had a litmus test on gay marriage, it would disqualify almost everybody in the South: 86% of Mississippi voters, 84% of Alabamans, 82% of Tennesseans, 77% of Georgians, etc. Plenty of Northern and Western voters would also be ineligible: Ohioans (62%) North Dakotans (73%) and Alaskans (68%), for example. (Click here for more state by state vote statistics).
The numbers are so lopsided that no presidential nominee has ever called for gay marriage to be recognized. The Clintons haven’t. Jimmy Carter hasn’t. Barack Obama didn’t.
If the polls continue to shift, the politicians will eventually shift, too. But they’re not ready yet.
If gay marriage had been the pivotal issue in this campaign, it would’ve been a disaster for Obama. [Some speculate, with reason, that the issue sunk John Kerry's 2004 presidential bid, because state marriage initiatives drove up conservative turnout.]
Solmonese, the head of the Human Rights Campaign (the nation’s largest gay rights group), says Obama has shown “a deep level of disrespect” to gays and lesbians by including Warren.
Arguably, Obama isn’t disrespecting anyone. He’s showing that he understands political reality at the moment. He can read the polls. He can measure the mood of the country. And he’s willing to work to build bridges.
Attacking Obama for his ties to Warren is a losing strategy at this point, and could actually backfire on Warren’s foes.
By RACHEL ZOLL
AP Religion Writer
The clergy chosen by President-elect Barack Obama to pray at his inauguration fill separate symbolic roles: One is a nod to the civil rights activists who made Obama’s election possible. The other is an overture to conservative Christians who rankles some Obama supporters.
The Rev. Rick Warren, who will give the invocation, is the most influential pastor in the United States, and a choice that has already caused problems for Obama.
Warren is a Southern Baptist who holds traditional religious beliefs and endorsed California’s Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage. But he also wants to broaden the evangelical agenda to include fighting global warming, poverty and AIDS.
The Rev. Joseph Lowery, 87, is considered the dean of the civil rights movement. For the benediction at the Jan. 20 swearing-in, he says he will pray that the “spirit of fellowship and oneness” at the inauguration endures throughout Obama’s presidency.
“He gets a lot with these choices,” said David Domke, author of “The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America.”
“Here’s a guy who wants to run a progressive administration getting a substantial lift in his wings from the nation’s most popular evangelical,” Domke said. “But he balances that with Joseph Lowery, who speaks to the more liberal, social justice and African-American heritage.”
By picking Warren, Obama is sending another signal, about his willingness to upset liberals by tilting to the center. Gay rights groups are demanding that Obama rescind the invitation because of Warren’s opposition to same-sex marriage.
“By inviting Rick Warren to your inauguration, you have tarnished the view that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans have a place at your table,” Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a letter to the incoming president.
In a news conference Thursday, Obama said he is a “fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans.” But he said he will build relationships with people of opposing views, and wants his inaugural to reflect that goal.
“That dialogue, I think, is part of what my campaign’s been all about: That we’re not going to agree on every single issue, but what we have to do is to be able to create an atmosphere when we — where we can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans,” he said.
Warren praised Obama for “his courage to willingly take enormous heat from his base by inviting someone like me.”
“Hopefully, individuals passionately expressing opinions from the left and the right will recognize that both of us have shown a commitment to model civility in America,” Warren said in a statement Thursday night.
In the past several decades, inaugural prayer has most often been the job of evangelist Billy Graham, who forged relationships with every president from Dwight Eisenhower to George W. Bush. Dubbed “America’s pastor,” Graham is now 90 and off the public stage.
His son, Franklin, stepped in for his father and gave the invocation at Bush’s 2001 swearing-in. Bush’s personal pastor, the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, an African-American Methodist from Houston, was chosen to give the inaugural benediction twice. Caldwell supported Bush in both his presidential campaigns, then backed Obama this year.
But Obama no longer has a personal minister. He resigned his membership at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago after an uproar over incendiary parts of sermons by his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Obama instead turned to two preachers who could set a tone for his administration.
“I’m overwhelmed. I’m very grateful. I’m humbled and honored,” Lowery said in a telephone interview. “When we worked on the Voting Rights Act in the ’60s, we hoped and felt that one day there would be an African-American president. I honestly can say I didn’t think I’d live long enough to see it.”
Lowery’s biography reads like a history of the civil rights movement.
As a young pastor in 1950s Alabama, he helped lead the Montgomery bus boycotts. With the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and others, Lowery created the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which anchored the national civil rights movement. In 1965, Lowery played a key role in the bloody, pivotal Selma-Montgomery March. He led a delegation of marchers presenting their demands to then-segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace.
Lowery, a Methodist, expanded his agenda in later years to fight poverty, stop violence and end apartheid. In 2006, he drew criticism — and a standing ovation — at Coretta Scott King’s funeral by condemning the Iraq war and poverty in the U.S. as Bush looked on.
Warren, 54, has become the most prominent clergyman of his generation.
His Saddleback Community Church in Orange County, Calif., has grown to more than 22,000 worshippers each week. His book, “The Purpose Driven Life” is one of the best-selling books in the world, with more than 30 million copies sold. He is mobilizing churches around the globe to fight poverty and illiteracy through his P.E.A.C.E coalition.
Last month, he joined forces with Reader’s Digest Association Inc., to launch a multimedia juggernaut based on his “Purpose Driven” writing. He and his wife, Kay, have become leading advocates for people with HIV/AIDS. On Dec. 1, World AIDS Day, the Warrens gave Bush an award for creating a multimillion-dollar U.S. fund to combat the virus.
With Warren, “Obama shows he is willing to work with a new breed of evangelical and kind of move beyond the tired figures associated with the religious right,” said Randall Balmer, a Barnard College professor of religious history and author of “God in the White House.”
In August, before the party conventions, Warren hosted Obama and Republican presidential nominee John McCain at Saddleback, quizzing them separately on issues ranging from personal failures to Supreme Court justices. Obama’s campaign had done extensive religious outreach. But he hurt his appeal to churchgoing voters when Warren asked when a baby gets human rights. Obama said it was “above his pay grade” to answer “with specificity.”
Still, Obama and Warren, who does not make political endorsements, are friendly, and the two men pray together.
“It’s nice to see a conservative evangelical pastor play such a prominent role in such an important event,” said Tom Minnery, a senior vice president at Focus on the Family, which has fiercely criticized Obama over his support for abortion rights and other issues. “I think what it does is it underscores the importance of evangelicalism in the country.”
December 21st, 2008 at 2:17 pm
“They object to Warren primarily because Warren believes marriage is the union of one man and one woman.”
The outcry against Rick Warren is not so much what he believes, but what he does. If Rev. Warren just preached to his congregation his belief that same sex marriages were contrary to God’s law then there would be much less controversy. But Warren’s actions went much further.
Rick Warren actively campaigned in favor of Proposition 8, to change the law of the state of California and impose his religious beliefs on all citizens.
In an interview with BeliefNet, Warren had this to say about same sex marriage:
WARREN: “I’m opposed to having a brother and sister being together and calling that marriage. I’m opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that marriage. I’m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.”
BELIEFNET: “Do you think those are equivalent to gays getting married?”
WARREN: “Oh , I do.”
Asserting that gay marriage is no different than incest, pederasty, or polygamy is not just insensitive and insulting, but also ignorant.
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:09 pm
“Asserting that gay marriage is no different than incest, pederasty, or polygamy is not just insensitive and insulting, but also ignorant.”
The assertion that same-sex sexual relationships are the moral equivalent of incest, polygamy, or pederasty is not born of ignorance – rather conviction. In Warren’s case in particular, it is clear that he still, firmly and publicly, holds to the ancient Christian standard for acceptable sexual relationships – man and woman, husband and wife.
December 23rd, 2008 at 8:08 am
Ignorance and conviction are not mutually exclusive. In fact, quite often you might find them to be reinforcing.
Warren’s comment indicates to me that he considers these actions technically equivalent. Moral equivalence would be something more abstract. He could, of course, affirm that the ban on same sex marriage is morally equivalent to other social traditions that are justified by scriptural interpretation, such as racial segregation or restriction of rights for women. And I would wholeheartedly agree with him and you on those points. Many people see those parallels.
We ought to presume freedom as the norm and then justify any restrictions based on sound and convincing reasons. Warren says that same sex marriage should be illegal, but in this interview, including his clarifications published later, there is no such rational argument. His justification is tradition and faith, and that alone is just not good enough. If tradition and faith were sufficient grounds for legislation then we could still enslave Negros and treat adult females like children or property. Thank God we do not.
December 23rd, 2008 at 9:57 am
I continuelly hear of racial segreation and restriction of rights for women as justified in scripture–I hve never read this and would like to know where it is in scripture.
December 23rd, 2008 at 11:59 am
Peach, the best person to have answered that query was Jerry Falwell, who built his early career on his support for segregation, and built his first school, the predecessor of the current one, on the premise of providing a segregated school for people who didn’t want to send their children to integrated public schools. I personally don’t believe that anything in the Bible supports the type of segregation that existed in America, but the preachers of the time, Falwell included, took various obscure passages from the Old Testament and suggested that they meant that people of different races shouldn’t mingle.
What I have often said on this blog is that the Bible does not condemn slavery, and if anything, supports it. As a reference for that you need look no further than the New Testament letter to Philemon, which concerns the return of a runaway slave. Nowhere in the letter does the Apostle Paul express any suggestion that a Christian ought not to be a slave owner, though he does suggest that a Christian treat his Christian slaves as brothers and sisters, while keeping them as slaves. Slavery is described throughout the Old Testament, which says that even “holy” patriarchs like Abraham owned slaves, and in his case ended up taking one as a concubine. Early Christians in the Roman Empire owned thousands of slaves, as did Christians in various places (including America) until slavery was legally abolished.
As far as being anti-women, we have discussed some of the New Testament language telling women to be subject to their husbands and be quiet in church on this blog a number of times.
I personally see Biblical strictures against gays and women as in the same category as the support of slavery, that is, simply the authors of the material that ultimately made its way into the Bible were social conservatives, and tended not to say things that would make waves in their own times. Those of us in the progressive movement tend to see these strictures as inconsistent with the real message of the Gospel, that we are all to love one another and try to understand each other. It is clear that nothing like the forms of homosexual relationships that exist today existed in Biblical times, and it is also clear that women had been so downtrodden and oppressed that society did not recognize their equality. I think it would be foreign to everything that Jesus preached to bring prejudices such as these into religious thought today, but that is exactly what the conservatives want to do.
December 23rd, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Caleb: I have been studying for quite some time and continue to do so. I am finding out that all scripture is under subjection to the interpretation.
The Bible condoned slaves primarily because man wanted them to build cities and pyramids; if everyone was a Pharaoh then no work would have been done. Same as in our society. If we have all CEO’s we would then have no factory workers to build what we need. This is one of the problems facing us now; so what have we done? We developed a policy of no-child left behind which means no child advances forward. Simply put those that can afford to put their child in a private school will make them into a CEO (pharaoh), and those that are in the public schools will be the factory workers (slaves).
As far as women, Paul was speaking to women of his time, a dead christian woman could not advance the Kingdom of God, a live one could atleast bear the children (I am sure this will get Jack Brooks out–Merry Christmas Jack), but I have found no scripture in the Old Testament to back up Paul’s writtings. Yes Sarah may have called Abraham “Lord” , but I guarantee you that he gave her full reigns in all other matters, else there would have never been an Ishmael!
December 23rd, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Part 2: Interracial marriages have never been condemned by the Bible, despite what people may claim. Moses’ sister (Miriam) was given Leprosy for opening her mouth against Moses wife-an Ethiopian. The only ‘mix marriages’ the Bible speaks about is in 1 Corinthians 7 and it concerns those being unequally yoked in their religious beliefs.
Now I set my standards as to what is in both Testaments as to how I base my beliefs, certainly not by the morality standards that the society or religious systems set. The Bible strongly condemns Homosexuality and effeminism and unless the wording of scripture is changed, and not just the translation of that scripture as so often as done in all ages; then I am compeled to comply with that scripture, as so should we all
December 24th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Peach, the bible condems sinners too, how we gonna get rid of all of them.
December 25th, 2008 at 12:34 am
Perplexed: it is not up to us to do anything with them, Merry Christmas
December 25th, 2008 at 6:47 am
Merry Christmas Peach, and to the rest of you guys. Peace be with you.
December 26th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Peach, two points. First, there is a huge difference between a factory worker and a slave. Even the lowest paid worker in America would not trade his life for that of a slave in any society that had slaves, including our own. There have always been class divisions, and while the socialist in me hates that, it also recognizes that our unfettered capitalism makes it inevitable. We built the Empire State Building and the Pentagon without slaves and they could have built the pyramids without them, too, just not as quickly. The Bible didn’t condemn slavery because it generally didn’t condemn anything that was well recognized in society at the time it was written.
Second, I agree that the Bible never supports segregation or racial exclusion. But the point is that ten generations of Christians in the Southern part of the US were taught. and chose to believe that it did, even when others believed otherwise. That was because they were racists, who had been taught racist notions from birth. Today, many of these people of the same theological beliefs choose to believe that the Bible condemns gays and lesbians, despite the fact that others believe otherwise. Again, I suspect it is not because they truly believe that the Bible condemns homosexuality, but because they are homophobic, having been taught homophobia from birth, and simply choose to incorporate it into their religion, as ten generations of their predecessors did with race.
December 26th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Just because traditions exist, it doesn’t make them good or bad, it just makes them traditions. Good points Caleb.
December 27th, 2008 at 6:40 am
Caleb: When my daughter was in the fifth grade I complained to the school system that they had not taught her cursive handwriting. The answer was that they were more concerned with Mathematics, reading, and ‘story’ writing. I then replied that my child would never be able to read the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution in original form and the reply was I can’t either. How sad, we are producing a generation of children who are losing the ability to know their basic rights because they are unable to read–and this is what it boils down to. Yes, they can go to a computer and read what ever is typed, but it is only as accurate as the person typing it into the system.Do you not find it ironic that the biggest complaint about the Bible is translation errors, and now we may have the same problem with the Bill of rights–as they too were originally written in cursive handwriting?
December 30th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Peach, the problem with the Bill of Rights is not that we can’t read it (there are millions of printed copies in the world, and if anyone doubts that they are accurate, the original is right there in the national archives), but that our Federal court system seems determined to pull what few teeth the bill has left.
Now, rewind four hundred years, and people were saying the same thing when the European educational system began teaching in the vernacular (that is, languages that people actually speak, like French and English) instead of in Latin and Greek. They said that no one would be able to read the Bible (which was then only available in the Latin Vulgate, or in the Hebrew and Greek of the old texts), or much of anything else that was written at the time. They were right, but soon books were being published in the vernacular languages as well.
Don’t get me wrong: I think everyone in America should be able to read English in both cursive and print, and frankly can’t imagine that anyone who can read printed English couldn’t also read cursive; it’s not that different. But every time we stop teaching one thing, we free up time to teach something else. I learned no Greek and Latin in high school, but spent lots of time learning to use a slide rule, a skill that is hardly useful to me now in the computer age. In college, I learned to program in a number of computer languages that were the height of fashion in 1978, but that are in museums today. I also learned to adjust a carburetor, a device that cars generally no longer employ. I’d have been better off spending the time I devoted to these studies learning Latin and Greek, but of course I did not know that at the time.
December 30th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
I wish we all had learned Latin and Greek in High school at least it would have been more useful than home EC. I guess that is why I am so adamant that my children have a better education–anyways most of the mayors in your town-my town graduated from my alma-mater is that tells you anything, BTW I have jury duty the next month, so my seeing everyone around the threads may turn into see ya around the courtyard.