When I’m wrong I’m willing to admit it, and I’m wrong. All I heard were the sound bites of Pastor Rick Warren on TV, and the Dateline interview and I thought I knew who Rick Warren is. I don’t. I was wrong to judge him on sound bites and first impressions.
Please visit this link to Melissa Etheridge’s article on December 22, 2008 in the Huffington Post:
Pastor Warren visited with Melissa, her spouse and their children at Ethridge’s home after she and Pastor Warren performed at the Muslim Public Affairs Council in California. He said he was sorry for his choice of words in the clip shown on TV. He is against gays calling our unions marriage because he defines it as only between one man and one woman, but he claims to be for gay equal rights if we call our unions something else.
He has changed his website, and I hope that the initial information I got about Rick Warren is not accurate, or at least less accurate than it appears, and that he and his congregation are open to dialogue and better relations with the gay and lesbian community.
I do have a problem with Pastor Warren’s seeming lack of scientific facts and knowledge, as I have the same problem with many on the far right about their beliefs that science and their religions are contradictory. I do not believe that they are contradictory. The Bible was written in a time when most people couldn’t even read and write, let alone understand science. It wasn’t written down for centuries after the stories were passed down by oral tradition. When we don’t understand something, we tend to make up a story that explains it for us. Later, when we have the facts, those stories can become metaphors for what we didn’t understand previously. I believe the Bible stories of creation are wonderful metaphors for the physics that happened before, during, and after the big bang.
But again, how am I going to change anyone’s mind if I walk with a picket sign outside their church? I might have a better chance if I go inside and talk to some of the people who might be willing to have a discussion and at least give my ideas a try.
December 29th, 2008 at 5:35 am
i read your original warren post and i don’t think you overreacted at all. i think that melissa etheridge bent herself in half to try and find some good in the man and his positions, and it is SHE who went too far.
it is an abomination that warren is speaking at this inauguration. i worked so hard to help get barack obama into the white house, and now it feels like his first act on his first day is to give the finger to the whole queer universe. it’s sad, and it’s surprising.
jackie sheeler’s last blog post..is rick warren insane? or simply retarded?
December 30th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Jackie,
In my third post on the issue, Beware of Snake Oil Salesmen, I decided I wasn’t over-reacting and I now believe that Rick Warren went to see Melissa Etheridge and family to put a more media-friendly spin on his anti-gay sentiments. It was a purely political play kumbaya moment to take some of the heat off of himself.
I am willing to concede that a 90 second prayer is no comparison to the policy and law changes that will either come from the Obama administration or there won’t be a second one. I hope that this is more Obama’s way of calling out Warren to tell him that he had better walk his talk and make some moves to the left and that his religious views don’t belong in civic discourse nor in civil rights and civil law.
Even though I don’t like this one bit, I still believe Obama is for gay civil rights even though I also believe he may be having a little personal trouble dealing with his own feeling about gay rights. He’s obviously not uncomfortable around gays and lesbians. He granted a long interview with Rachel Maddow, an out and proud lesbian and mainstream political analyst with MSNBC for her show. They seemed very comfortable talking with each other. He knows she’s a lesbian because it had to be in her file that had to be reviewed by the secret service before she was ever allowed to meet with candidate Obama. She doesn’t hide that fact in the least either.
Michelle Obama seems to have no such reservations when it comes to gay rights and gay equality. She will be our most staunch ally in the White House when Barack Obama is less than fully on board with us. He listens to her and she will make him understand exactly what a failure to work on our rights will cost him. Being bi-racial and raised in Hawaii, a very racially mixed and multicultural state, Barack did not grow up in the same circumstances that his wife and her family faced in the mainland states. She experienced first hand what it means to be considered a second-class citizen. I don’t believe he experienced that much during the formative years of his life if he ever has experienced it at all.