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Loading ...Neff: Pastorgate II
Barack Obama’s inauguration on Jan. 20 is building up to be one of the most monumental in contemporary American history.
Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration is certainly the biggest letdown of the transition from the campaign trail to the White House.The Obama team, responding to the criticism that followed the announcement that Warren would give the prayer, acknowledged that the two men disagree on gay equality and reproductive freedoms, but “agree on many issues vital to the pursuit of social justice, including fighting poverty and moving toward a sustainable planet.”
Is Rick Warren the only minister in the United States who wants to fight poverty and protect Earth?
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor of some 20 years until he was tossed under a bus for too forcefully pointing out that back-of-the-bus attitudes still exist, might support a sustainable planet and the eradication of poverty. He also would travel far beyond Warren on social justice issues.
Obama’s post-election decision to select Warren for the invocation and his primary fight decision to distance himself from Wright make me think about labels and perceptions, definitions and perspectives, especially in regard to race.
The black minister’s perhaps most controversial statement suggested a causal connection between the U.S. intervention in the Middle East and terrorist attacks against the United States. When the Wright videos were playing in greater rotation on cable than “Seinfeld” episodes, how many of you heard friends, family and neighbors say Obama’s association with the minister showed bad judgment, that Wright’s statements were appalling and anti-American? How many people did you hear vow not to support Obama for his association with Wright and his attendance at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ?
You might go back to those people now and ask them how happy they are with the president-elect’s selection of Warren.
But you also might ask them if they were appalled when two white evangelists — Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson — suggested that American liberalism invited the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Falwell, appearing on Robertson’s “700 Club,” said, “God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.”
Robertson replied, “Jerry, that’s my feeling.”
Curious. Falwell and Robertson talk about America getting punished for politics and policies and they get invited to White House consultations, praised as patriotic and all-American. Wright talks about “chickens coming home to roost” and gets buried, denounced as subversive and anti-American.
Warren may not preach the hate of Robertson or James Dobson, but he has shared their beliefs on issues of abortion and homosexuality, and Warren is not a moderate.
In an e-mail sent prior to the 2004 election, Warren said for Christian voters issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and stem cell research were non-negotiable, “not even debatable because God’s word is clear on these issues.”
Until very recently, the Web site for Saddleback contained the statement, “Because membership in a church is an outgrowth of accepting the Lordship and leadership of Jesus in one’s life, someone unwilling to repent of their homosexual lifestyle would not be accepted at [sic] a member of Saddleback Church. That does not mean they cannot attend church — we hope they do! God’s Word has the power to change our lives.”
And, this past election season Warren encouraged votes for Proposition 8, which amended California’s constitution to deny gays the right to marry.
Warren has said legalizing same-sex marriage is like redefining marriage to allow incest and pedophilia.
In defense of the Warren choice, the Obama team promoted the inauguration as “the most open, accessible and inclusive inauguration in American history.”
Obama was quoted as saying, “During the course of the entire inaugural festivities, there are going to be a wide range of viewpoints that are presented. And that’s how it should be, because that’s what America’s about. That’s part of the magic of this country.… We are diverse and noise and opinionated.”
Of course I welcome the president-elect’s calls for unity and inclusion, but I just don’t understand and certainly don’t find any magic in giving Rick Warren the honor of delivering the inaugural invocation.
I don’t know what Warren will say on Jan. 20, but I’ll remind you of what he said approaching a vote on Proposition 8: “About 2 percent of Americans are homosexual or gay, lesbian people. We should not let 2 percent of the population determine, to change a definition of marriage that has been supported by every single culture and every single religion for 5,000 years. This is not even just a Christian issue, it’s a humanitarian, a human issue.”
I hope the US can get rid of that 2-party democracy. We’re getting some tendencies towards that here in Sweden. It can’t be good for the diversity.
A PROP H8 SUPPORTER PLANNING TO RUN FOR GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/AP-source-ExeBay-CEO-to-run-apf-13973268.html
Heads up, Meg Whitman, ex CEO of ebay, a republican and prop h8 supporter wants to be governor. We need to organize and protest her where ever she goes.
“Consider what difference it would make if Warren gave the invocation and we still received every commitment made by Obama (no loss to us).”
You just don’t get it, do you. Yes, it will make a difference if Obama keeps his promises. No doubt. But it will come on the heels of an almighty slap in the face for all of us.
By selecting Warren to deliver the invocation, Obama is, in effect, endorsing the man, giving him and his views credibility. He is saying that it doesn’t matter that Warren is a homophobe, that he spreads the message of hatred, because he says some nice things too.
My God, when are people going to get it. Obama is telling the world that being homophobic does not make you a bad person. He is saying that it’s ok to hate gays. He is rewarding this man for a lifetime of hatred and cruelty because amidst his bigotry he happens to also have a few nice things to say and has done some charity work.
I sincerely doubt that Obama will do anything significant for the gay community, but even if he does it will come after he’s sent a message to everyone in the United States that it’s ok to hate gays, that there’s nothing wrong with homophobia. By appointing Warren to deliver the invocation he is making hatred socially acceptable, and for that he can never be forgiven.
Take heart, kids. The republican party is crumbling (moderate republicans are flocking to the democrats, libertarians, and just becoming independents…it’s becoming the palin party), and that means we’ve got options. Deserving third party candidates are going to sweep in and pick up the slack, and that is leverage. If obama and the democratic congress don’t an inclusive ENDA passed, or the repeal of DADT, or a federal hate crimes bill passed…or, specifically what he promised, the repeal of DOMA so we can start taking advantage of the full faith and credit clause, we’ve got options.
I don’t know whether or not Obama is backtracking on gay rights. The issue is Warren’s words and beliefs are harmful to gay people. What he promotes is that gay people are inferior to straight people. He’s made that very clear.
By Obama inviting him to participate in the Inauguration, it sends the message that it’s socially acceptable to say and believe those things. When Rev Wright said what he said, Obama had to practically repudiate him. But Warren’s words are okay.
The recent changes to this web page are encouraging:
http://change.gov/agenda/civil_rights_agenda
Although parts of the page are vague (”Barack Obama agrees…” “Barack Obama believes…”), it seems clear that Obama and Biden will pass employment nondiscrimination and the Matthew Shepard Act. We must not become complacent, but I think we can be encouraged.
A quick note – according to Queerty.com, the Obama team made these changes before Warren was selected. So, this wasn’t a response to the outcry over Warren.
Well said, Richard Smith! This is not the battle to pick. The real battles come later, and perhaps Obama will fight on the side of fairness.
I am the only gay person who plans to not only watch the historic inauguration with joy and happiness but also hit the mute button when rev. warren speaks? Give me a break – this is not the battle to pick. that would be if the president elect does not keep his promises to our community!
I have to disagree with most of the views here on this blog. I emphatically agree with Lisa Neff. We in the gay community have presumed, based on who Obama chose to give his invocation, that he is backtracking on gay rights. He is not even president yet therefore he could not provide any legislative support for community until the inauguration is complete. Can we stop the assumptions here? Obama can choose whomever he wants for his inauguration as long as he keeps his commitments on his website to our community. Consider what difference it would make if Warren gave the invocation and we still received every commitment made by Obama (no loss to us). On the other hand, if someone not homophobic were chosen for the invocation but we received no commitments from Obama, that would be the actual slap in the face. This man is faced with enormous problems right now. As long as he keeps those commitments, he can have mickey mouse give the invocation and I still would be happy. I will be watching the inauguration with excitement and hope for our future as well as this nation!
My main concern is if Obama will sign ENDA and other LGBT rights measures. He may still do so, despite his selection of Warren. His transition website seems to indicate that he will. Until we find out, it’s vital that we fight for LGBT rights however we can.
“Regardless of Obama’s tastless choice of having Warren delivering the invocation. I still support him.”
Off the cliff, Once more!
What a lousy way you partisans have of dragging all of us down with you.
I’m sorry Chris. Your one sentence post was rather cryptic.
Do you disagree with me in that Saint Obama has backtracked from gay issues at the speed of light and dismissed us as second class citizens? Or do you disagree with me that Pastor Warren remains steadfast in the statements that he’s made?
Maybe you disagree and feel that Warren needs to receive a prominent role in the inauguration because discrimination against gay people is ok?
Funny, I see no ignorance but simple accuracy in those statements.
“Regardless of Obama’s tastless choice of having Warren delivering the invocation. I still support him.”
I sincerely hope you’re right about Obama, but I feel certain that you’re in for a big disappointment. Obama will make a fine President, but he is no friend to the gay community and will do nothing to aid us in our quest for equality. America as a whole will do well under his leadership, but the gay community will suffer.
Warren’s statement is factually inaccurate for other reasons too Robert. For instance, from … http://www.aaanet.org/press/an/0405if-comm4.htm …
“Politicians and the public in the US today are raising a question once pursued by anthropologists in the 1950s, namely, what should we mean by marriage? The politically charged issue concerns whether or not a constitutional definition of marriage can exclude same-sex couples. With over a century of experience in the study of kinship and marriage worldwide, anthropology can offer perspectives on this debate that may be of interest to our students or the general public.
Can Marriage Be Defined?
Many politicians claim that those advocating gay and lesbian marriage are trying to redefine marriage. But what anthropologists have learned is that from a global, cross-cultural perspective, “marriage” is in the first place extremely difficult, some would say impossible, to define. One anthropologist, Edmund Leach tried to define marriage in his 1955 article “Polyandry, Inheritance and the Definition of Marriage” published in MAN. Leach quickly gave up this task, concluding that no definition could cover all the varied institutions that anthropologists regularly consider as marriage. Rejecting Leach’s conclusion, Kathleen Gough attempted to define marriage cross-culturally in 1959 as an institution conferring full “birth status rights” to children (The Nayars and the Definition of Marriage. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 89:23-34). Gough’s definition of marriage was convoluted—notable, in her own words, for its “inevitably clumsy phraseology”—since it covered monogamy, polygyny, polyandry and same-sex marriage. But most important, its core feature—conferring of birth status rights on children—does not hold up cross-culturally.
It is true that virtually every society in the world has an institution that is very tempting to label as “marriage,” but these institutions simply do not share common characteristics. Marriage in most societies establishes the legitimacy or status rights of children, but this is not the case, for example, among the Navajo where children born to a woman, married or not, become full legitimate members of her matriclan and suffer no disadvantages. “Marriage” around the world most often involves heterosexual unions, but there are important exceptions to this. There are cases of legitimate same-sex marriages as, for example, woman-woman marriage among the Nuer and some other African groups. Here, a barren woman divorces her husband, takes another woman as her wife, and arranges for a surrogate to impregnate this woman. Any children from this arrangement become members of the barren woman’s natal patrilineage and refer to the barren woman as their father. Among some Native American groups, males who preferred to live as women (berdache) adopted the names and clothing of women and often became wives of other men.
Marriage usually involves sexual relationships between spouses. Yet this was not true of Nuer woman-woman marriages and we find in European history cases of “celibate marriages” among early Christians. Often spouses are co-resident but very often this is not the case. A separate residence of husbands in “men’s houses,” away from their wives and children, has been common in many places. Among the polyandrous/polygynous Nayar of India, wives and husbands remained in their own natal groups with husbands periodically “visiting” their wives and with children raised by their mothers and mothers’ brothers. Indeed the only feature of marriages that is apparently universal is that they will create affinal (in-law) relationships, or alliances, a fact that Lévi-Strauss and others considered to lie behind the origin of human marriage. But even here, affinal relationships are themselves quite varied in their nature and importance across societies. Thus, in terms of child legitimacy, sex of spouses, sexual activity, residence and so on, what we see around the world in terms of marriage is most notable for its variation.
Variation and Change
Anthropologists have accounted for this variation in a number of ways, looking to economic, ecological, demographic and historical processes. For example, polyandry, especially in Himalayan regions, is now well understood as in part related to the benefits of low population growth in areas of scarce environmental resources (Nancy Levine, The Dynamics of Polyandry, 1981). On a broader scale, Jack Goody has contributed to our understanding of marriage variations by drawing comparisons between Eurasian monogamy (with dowry) and sub Saharan African polygyny (with bridewealth). His work, published in Production and Reproduction (1976), has shown important connections that marriage forms have with agricultural practices, the development (or lack of development) of socioeconomic classes, marriage payments and patterns of property inheritance throughout the history of Africa and Eurasia.
Anthropological studies of kinship and marriage can also provide an understanding that within any society, marriage and the family will change over time. Whereas in the US legal marriages have been traditionally monogamous unions between a woman and a man, the nature of marriage, the domestic economy, husband-wife relationships, parent-child relationships, family structure and household structure have seen considerable transformation since the 1700s (Stephanie Coontz, The Social Origins of Private Life, 1988). Relevant transformations of marriage and the family have been in particular occurring in the US since the 1960s. Here we have seen rising rates of divorce, resulting in greater numbers of single-parent households. A rise in remarriage following divorce has additionally brought about the growth of so-called blended families, consisting of various combinations of step-parents, step-children and step-siblings. Many US children today are raised in two separate households, where one or both may consist of a previous parent and a newer set of step-relations.
The development of New Reproductive Technologies (such as, surrogate motherhood, in-vitro fertilization, frozen embryos) meanwhile has conceptually fragmented motherhood. We can today distinguish a birth mother from a genetic mother from a legal mother; all three “mothers” may be one, two or even three separate women. By contrast, fatherhood, once considered “uncertain” compared with motherhood, can now be made certain, one way or another, through DNA testing.
From Biology to Choice
Perhaps the most profound change of all, and one undoubtedly linked with the above transformations of kinship and the family, is a perceptible change in the cultural construction of kinship in the US. An earlier emphasis on kinship as based on biological connection (what David Schneider termed “shared biogenetic substance” in American Kinship, 1980), is giving way to a new conception of kinship as a relation based on personal choice and commitment (Linda Stone, Introduction, Contemporary Directions in Kinship, Kinship and Family, 2004). The US is in many respects culturally embracing a wider variety of family forms and an expanded construction of kinship through choice and self-definition as much as through biology.
It is within these new dimensions of family variation and choice as a basis of kinship that, I think, we can best view the movement for legalization of same-sex marriage. From an anthropological perspective that focuses on the whole of humanity, what same-sex couples seeking legal marriage in the US are trying to do is not to redefine marriage. They are seeking legal recognition in the US for doing what people around the world have always done, that is to construct marriage for themselves.”
Trace makes a valid point. We simply do not yet know where Obama stands on our issues. We know that he SAYS he’s for equal rights for us, but what has he DONE to further our causes??? Not much, as of yet.
Rick Warren, on the other hand, makes it very clear where he stands.
I greatly appreciate your remarks, Sam, and I think it would be wise to revisit Mrs. Kings words, in light of the outcome of Prop 8….
“For too long, our nation has tolerated the insidious form of discrimination against this group of Americans, who have worked as hard as any other group, paid their taxes like everyone else, and yet have been denied equal protection under the law…I believe that freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. My husband, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” On another occasion he said, “I have worked too long and hard against segregated public accommodations to end up segregating my moral concern. Justice is indivisible.” Like Martin, I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.”
She was a wise woman, and is sorely missed.
Regardless of Obama’s tastless choice of having Warren delivering the invocation. I still support him. Lot of this is for political gain. Warren will get his. He will face his challenging opposition who will be more popular than him. Warren is only a leader of his own group not to all people. His leader is himself; he is not lead by God. Most of what he believes in like many Chrisitans ,who are not Gnostic Christians, is man-made lies. God is not a fairytale. When people stop believing in lies and start believing in truth. The truth is love.
Obama is smarter and clever than what he is letting other people to believe. We will just have to wait and see.
In the meantime, continue to have a positve outlook. If the whole LGBTQI community drop pessimism and despair in the rivers, we would a more profound and postive movement.
Time to move on people and stop riding on this way of disappointment. I ecourage gay news sites and their writers to do so. You can’t change the choice of a past decision, but you can change your current voice while working on a more bright future.