Subscribe to Breaking NewsWithers: Etheridge says give Warren a chance
I can’t wait for the responses. There will be boycott calls and a few will even suggest album burning as the only appropriate response (those people will assure us how radical and uncompromising they are). So here goes: Melissa Etheridge thinks we gays and lesbians should give Rev. Rick Warren a chance.
The guy whose vision on sexuality is one full step beyond kooky is just misunderstood and a victim of the media. At least that is what Etheridge says.
“When I heard the news, in its neat little sound bite form that we are so accustomed to, it painted the picture for me. This Pastor Rick must surely be one hate spouting, money grabbing, bad hair televangelist like all the others. He probably has his own gay little secret bathroom stall somewhere, you know.”
Ahh but this all changed after she and Warren talked over the phone and met. The reverend is a fan of Etheridge’s music despite her incest like loving ways. Okay. Okay. That’s a cheap shot. Warren is an Etheridge groupie, apparently has all her albums, and comes off as an affable fellow in the musician’s description. In fact Etheridge says Warren took himself to task for using the words incest and pedophilia when describing gay relationships. Call me a cynic but I’ll wait to hear Warren say that himself.
Etheridge invited Warren to her home and he to his church. A special plea to my bosses: we need to have our LOGO cameras all over Etheridge and her little gay family when they go to Warren’s church!
I’m not sure where this Etheridge/Warren love fest will get us, but I do have a suggestion to Etheridge. Stay away from any all gay events for awhile. Someone is going to throw a shoe at ya.
Shari,
“The idea that it’s impossible to change a narrow mind results in limited actions to change narrow minds.”
That’s not the issue here. I don’t know your life experiences. I grew up in a fundamentalist christian church background. I know how these people think and why they think the way they do. Ever been to an ‘ex-gay’ outreach by Focus on the Family? I have, was invited to one by a friend who is a christian. Ever read christian books about homosexuality? I have.
This conflict is not about opening arms, building bridges of understanding, or anything like that. People like Warren just view homosexuality as wrong and something that people need to be saved from, for their own good – not only to live a ‘better’ life on earth but also for their life after death.
It doesn’t matter to people like Warren whether the cause of homosexuality is biological, psychological, or spiritual – the end result is the same and that is that it’s [homosexuality] just wrong and needs to be corrected or resisted.
The real problem is that it shouldn’t even matter what Warren believes! We shouldn’t even have to be concerned about the religious debate regarding homosexuality! This is about civil rights and human equality as the government sees it, not some religion or group of religions. We shouldn’t even be having discussions about how to help religious people understand us better when it comes to what we are and why we should be treated equally despite their religious judgments about it. This is not a theocracy!
And having gays like Etheridge treat the issue so blasé only gives people like Warren the time and credibility they need to make it that much more harder for gay people to get equality and civil rights.
My evangelical brother told me at length last year that “He loves me.”, “He supports me.” and “He wants me to be happy.”
I would not be surprised if Rick Warren said all the same two-faced words to Melissa Etheridge.
Let there be no misunderstanding, my brother’s compassionate and supportive words were neither genuinely compassionate
nor supportive. In reality he believes homosexuality is a deviant sinful behavior.
What my brother was really saying was: He loves me, except the gay part. He supports me, except the gay part. He wants
me to be happy, except the gay part.
Evangelicals like my brother and Rick Warren believe they can separate a person from their actions and say they love the person while subtly not mentioning vile hatred for the gayness. It is a evangelical PR tactic that has been, and continues to be, effective and disarming.
Rick Warren must be measured by his actions not by his slick intentionally misleading words.
As Whoopie’s character, Fontaine is wont to doing before making an observation: “Maybe it’s me”, but what makes Etheridge’s “outreach” strategically superior or any different from the scores of men & women who tried to reach out to christian ayatollahs before her? Did she do something that I missed or haven’t seen since I came out in the 60s?
I’m not pissed at her for her personal effort; I’m pissed at her for coming back to our camp with a Chamberlain-esque message. Her personal observation are simply that, a personal take on a man with whom she has claimed to dialogue. I don’t for one minute believe that he will change his position on us, nor will he disarm his troops.
So she can break bread and shoulder rub all she wants with him, but that isn’t going to change the fact that the right-wing has avowed to withhold our civil rights in order to further their dangerous, corrupt theocratic agenda.
Okay Trace, I’ll give you that it takes all of us, everyday people, optimists and cynics alike, working together to make change. Yes, it takes cynics & realists to ground some of us optimists & idealists. But it also takes the idealists & optimists to hold the vision and hope. So there’s a place in this for all of us.
My main point is that some efforts for the change we’d like to see include reaching out to people who don’t like us. We can be doing our civil disobedience efforts while also doing outreach. It’s going to take it all to get it done & I’m surprised at the vilification pointed at those of us taking efforts in the outreach area. The way people get less ignorant is by teaching them.
Will Melissa Etheridge succeed in changing Rick Warren’s mind? Probably not. Duh. Will Melissa Etheridge succeed in changing a whole mess of people’s mind who were on the fence about it, because they just witnessed a kind action as opposed to further hostility? Very likely.
I’m a lesbian and I don’t support ME. I support IG. Ha!
But seriously folks, Evangelical Churches are stealing our AIDS funding. They’re using AIDS funding to convert gays. They’re idea of AIDS prevention is to teach people to not be gay.
We cannot work together with Rick Warren on HIV because his goal is to convert gays and coerce people into joining his church.
You know what his church is doing in Africa? Building a church to be the hub of HIV prevention and treatment. Not clinics, but churches. If you want treatment, you’ll have to be preached to.
They’ll either kill us or convert us.
Shari, who is going to change Melissa’s narrow mind!?!?!
And as one of the resident cynics, I would have to argue that it is the realists and the cynics that keep the idealists heads out of the sky.
It is not the realists, the cynics, optimists, pessimists or the idealists that achieve any great goal. It is the every day people that are encouraged by the previous groups to make change.
“Blessed are the Meek for they Shall Inherit the Earth.”
As a gay senior who grew up in the 40’s and 50′’s and under communism at that, and as one who reads 365 gay at least 5 times per day, I see all sorts of views re the matter here; some of them starkly contrasted! I think that we are extremely fortunate to have this site, be able to express our opposing views (right will triumph); in my time, the only discussions we had might have been between 3 of us meeting at someone’s home on a Sunday afternoon.
The idea that it’s impossible to change a narrow mind results in limited actions to change narrow minds. Melissa Ethridge was in the position to talk to one of the religious leaders preaching hate about homosexuals and took the opportunity. What should she have done? Punched him? Yeah, that would have been really helpful to the cause. Now she has further opportunities to school him and persuade him to a different view, and I say – Go for it, Melissa!
I think it’s unfortunate that so many people are vilifying her over this. And then vilifying those of us who agree with her methods or believe that there is a chance to reach people – even those who seem unreachable. No fight for civil rights was ever won by cynics (or even ‘realists’). The fights were won by idealists who would not accept anything less than equality.
So, please stop beating up on people in your own community who may want to try every possible tact to get some equality happening for us – even such radical notions as making contact with those who hate us, so they won’t hate us so much anymore.
You are not thinking. Listen to what Todd is telling you in his response to your Ethridge support. Warren may love the sinner but he hates the sin and will never change his narrow mind. This is a battle between the bible and Constitution. And the Constitution will win because it is fact and not myth.
Melissa is poking her nose in where it should not be.
Awesome post in the Chicago Sun Times describing Rick Warren for what he is.
“…a tree-shaking huckster and publicity seeker who believes that millions of his fellow citizens are hellbound because they do not meet his own low and vulgar standards.”
http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/1350834,CST-EDT-hitch27.article#Comments_Container
Melissa Supporter,
‘She’s always preached “Give peace a chance” and that’s all she’s doing.’
That line was crossed decades ago..
It’s not that Warren does not understand gay people, he just views homosexuality as a sin that must be refrained from or changed from. It’s that simple. He has said this. In his mind it doesn’t matter what the cause of homosexuality is, whether it’s natural or not, choice or not – he just views it as wrong and that it’s better for a person to be ’saved’ from the sin of homosexuality, period, end of story, game over!
Where are all these gay people sympathetic to the people that would rather homosexuality not exist coming from?
Woo.. I can understand gay men making rude comments about ME, but not lesbians. Gay men see her first as a woman and toss out the hate. Women will give her words some consideration. She’s always been a strong voice in out community so I think that deserves some benefit of the doubt.
Melissa has the right idea. She’s trying to let this guy into her life to see what she’s all about. To see that gay/lesbians are not bad folks and who deserve his respect.
Sure it may not work, but she has to try.
If our first thought is to throw out hateful words and calling the peacemakers (ME) benedict arnolds the gay rights will never get anywhere. The more people who we allow to get to know us – the more of a chance we will have at getting the rights we want so badly.
Men and women like him generally just don’t understand our community – our people.
I’m supporting Melissa here.
I think if she finds it’s a losing battle – she too will back away from him, but at least she’s giving him a chance.
She’s always preached “Give peace a chance” and that’s all she’s doing.
Shame on you all!!
What a joke! I did not think that Melissa Etheridge would stoop this low. I surprised that she would even talk to a homophobic crack-pot like Rick Warren. As others have said in the comments, she does not represent everyone; I am glad for that. Me being a gay-atheist what would you expect me to say. This really did change my view of Melissa. How people can change.
OK, boys & grrls; put the crème brûlée torches away! It’s obvious that Mouthy Melissa doesn’t speak for us, and she’s doing a poor job of standing up for her own civil rights.
She’s free to express her personal admiration, respect and kiss Warren’s ass. Let her invite his “flock” to her concerts; I doubt that they’ll attend, and that message will sink in at the break when all she hears are crickets chirping.
It’s pathetic when people with access to the talking-stick make a muck of the opportunity.
So sad that we have such weak “friends” in the LGBT community.
PS – Nice take on the “Scorpion and the Frog” story sweetie. But, if the Scorpion bit her, he probably would have died too. Betrayal is that toxic.