Rick Warren
I've been following the issue of Mr. Obama choosing Rick Warren with some alarm for a while, but I've lately gotten to the point where I view it with the same contempt I have for public pronouncements of religiosity in general rather than my previous deep concern for whether I'd been taken for a ride politically.
There's been a lot written about this from all corners, gay, straight, right-wing, left-wing, religious, non-religious, etc. It's been an interesting deal, to be sure - right-wingers confused about whether to criticize Warren for accepting the gig, Obama for pandering/posing, liberals for pandering/posing, or liberals for opposing this choice. Right now, I'm not sure what the trend is of the right-wing propagandistrocracy is, but it's a good bet "liberal" is in there. But if you criticize liberals of making nice to the church, you're basically admitting that you belong to an exclusive club, which lies in direct contrast to Jesus's message of reaching out to everybody. And Warren is well-respected in churchy-people circles as well, so there's a cost to throwing mud in that direction.
Politically, that's checkmate. Anytime you give an opponent a situation where there are multiple answers available, each with strong negatives associated with that answer, you've been able to "make the circuitous direct" as it were, which will have the effect of amplifying disarray by giving multiple voices opportunity to suggest proposed solutions with roughly equal weight, and raising the stakes for any decision.
But for my thinking, that alone wouldn't be enough. Is it not good enough from a position of strength to carry the direct route towards a goal? Why pander to those who have stood for so much that is vile?
I think what moved me toward the accommodation I have now is encompassed in a quote by Melissa Etheridge, who in this post said:
Brothers and sisters the choice is ours now. We have the world's attention. We have the capability to create change, awesome change in this world, but before we change minds we must change hearts. Sure, there are plenty of hateful people who will always hold on to their bigotry like a child to a blanket. But there are also good people out there, Christian and otherwise that are beginning to listen. They don't hate us, they fear change. Maybe in our anger, as we consider marches and boycotts, perhaps we can consider stretching out our hands. Maybe instead of marching on his church, we can show up en mass and volunteer for one of the many organizations affiliated with his church that work for HIV/AIDS causes all around the world.
Maybe if they get to know us, they wont fear us.
Reading that, I can well remember my own experience of growing out of homophobia. I was sixteen and worked at a fast-food restaurant. Among the closing-shift employees I worked with were a couple of women who eventually came out to me as a couple. Up to that point, I'd seen no reason not to adopt the narrow and often hateful views of my suburban peers. But now, confronted by two people who were solid co-workers and good people to be around, it was a tectonic shift. Over the months we'd worked together, I'd been happy enough not knowing some particular issue that distinguished them from what I'd known about anybody else. And because - THANKFULLY - I didn't have some power-mad preacher man trying to brainwash me into believing otherwise, I took the logical route and decided that the fact that these two women were gay and in fact lovers - it just didn't matter to me anymore. And if it didn't matter in the case of my friends at work, then it didn't matter anywhere else.
But it's also fair to say I don't know what it's like to be gay in this country or anywhere else, for that matter. Just as I don't know what it's like to be a member of a racial minority, physically or mentally disabled, etc... there's a lot of world out there that has a lot of grievances, and I was not socialized to have a complete understanding of the nuances. I can try...
So is this just a matter of some breeder agreeing with the first famous-sounding sell-out to hit the media? No. Let's get back to politics for a minute. There are people who have been preached at for their entire lives, with no reason to think any other way than what their well-coordinated preachers have been telling them. That kind of "knowledge" is every bit as quick-spreading as it is aggressive - a really bad cancer on the psyche of this nation, especially over the past few decades. So anyhow, you have here a guy named Rick Warren who, well, let's just say he's aware of his audience, shall we? During Prop8, he was pretty darn clear, and now he says "I didn't mean it that way, really..."
OK, here's a guy who likes power. If he were truly sincere in his fairy-tale trip, he'd have stood his guns about it and said "We should send our wives and daughters out to be raped to death by an angry mob rather than turn away from these here fairy tales!" (Judges 19:22-29). Nah, he said "Oh, that guy's in charge? Well then, whatever he said, I agree with it!" Perhaps he recognizes that the current generation of evangelical leaders is facing a shrinking population of elderly white people from various backwaters and armpits as constituents, and would like not to have to suffer obsolescence right alongside the old-timers.
Now most smart people will quickly see this for what it is. Many millions of people won't, though: to be led to believe, with current knowledge being what it is, that the universe is only 6,000 years old, is conclusive evidence of a broken mind (as is the belief in the notion that blowing up people trying to do grocery shopping will lead to eternal indecencies with virgins, a thread often found in cult-of-Yahweh belief systems). So anyhow, here are millions of people who are ready to be led by the nose to any form of idiocy, so long as the right sort of person (white, male, southern accent, talks about the bible a lot) says there's a biblical thing that says so.
HOW HARD IS IT TO GET THROUGH TO THESE PEOPLE??? Well, watch the next six months and find out. It promises to be a fun show! I might drop a few hints along the way, or say "My guess was horribly wrong, sorry!" I certainly hope the former occurs, mainly because the long-term outcome if I'm right is such a great opportunity for the world as humanity matures beyond needing Pater Noster to tell us what to think all the time...
