Huddle up people. Listen, if you want to be against marriage for gay folk, I can live with that. Free country and all. You want to say some crazy stuff about marriage for same sex couples, go at it. However,  you cannot say something nutty and when the kitchen gets warm go on the denial kick.Rick Warren, the pastor of Saddleback Church and last heard invocating at Obama’s inauguration, has decided that we all misheard when he compared  gay marriage to incest and pedophilia.

“And I was asked a question that made it sound like I equated gay marriage with pedophilia or incest, which I absolutely do not believe. And I actually announced that,” the good reverend said in an interview with CNN’s Larry King.

Warren also noted that he went on an apology tour to all of his gay friends but that was never reported.  I’m wondering if these were the same  pals who apparently told Warren it was okay to have multiple partners (Rev. Warren: I’m still waiting for the names  of the “people” who told you this).

All of this is sort of nice for Easter week (redemptive and all), but it’s also a lie. An odious, “I can’t believe you are really saying this,” tall tale. I’m biased. So let’s look to Steve Waldman, the man who interviewed Warren when the reverend didn’t say what he said about gay marriage.

“The issue to me, I’m not opposed to that [some partnership rights] as much as I’m opposed to redefinition of a 5,000 year definition of marriage,” Warren originally said to Waldman. “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.”

Waldman points out Warren wanted to clarify a few points after the interview came out. Wait for it. Wait for it. Wait for it. Warren didn’t have anything to add, or take away, with the above nugget.

Mmmmmm. Maybe Melissa Etheridge can explain all of this.

This is not because things are getting worse. It’s because the national conversation on gay-rights issues is getting harder.

One reason is that, as cliché as it sounds, we are more polarized than ever. Gone are the days when House Speaker Tip O’ Neill could lambaste President Reagan by day and play cards with him after 6 p.m.

It has become too easy to surround oneself solely with like-minded people. (The internet is one key factor.) The result is a bunch of echo chambers, where opponents seem not just wrong, but borderline-insane.

The second reason is that the gay community’s specific goals have shifted. We are no longer asking merely to be left alone, as when we were fighting sodomy laws and police harassment. Our central political goal, for better or for worse, has become marriage.

Marriage is not merely a private contract between two individuals. It is also an agreement between those individuals and the larger community. It requires, both legally and socially, that community’s support. And so the old “leave me alone” script no longer quite works.

A third reason the conversation is getting harder is that the gay community is at a crossroads regarding how we treat our opponents.

On the one hand we talk about reaching out, promoting dialogue, emphasizing common ground. On the other hand we are quick to label our opponents as hate-filled bigots.

This combination obviously won’t work. A bigot is someone whose views, virtually by definition, are beyond the pale of polite discussion.

One sees this contrast in the fracas over Obama’s choice of Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration.

Compared to most evangelical pastors, Warren is a moderate, who focuses on common-ground issues such as poverty over the usual culture-war stuff.

But Warren supported Prop. 8, the California initiative that stripped marriage rights from gays and lesbians. (He has since suggested some possible support for civil unions.)

Obama’s camp is taking the “big tent” approach, acknowledging differences but emphasizing shared values. In a similar vein, Melissa Etheridge has opened a dialogue with Warren.

Most gay-rights leaders, by contrast, have decried Obama’s choice of Warren. As one friend put it, “it’s like inviting a segregationist to lead the invocation. ­I don’t care what other good things the guy has done.”

And there’s the rub: Warren does indeed espouse a “separate but equal” legal status for gays and lesbians (at best). Should we treat him the way we treat segregationists?

Before answering, remember that the majority of Californians, and a larger majority of the rest of the country, hold the same position as Warren on marriage. So does Obama himself (though he did oppose Prop. 8).

So in asking whether inviting Warren to lead the invocation is akin to inviting a segregationist to do so, we are also asking whether the vast majority of Americans are akin to segregationists.

It’s a painful question to confront. And the only fair answer is “yes and no.”

On the merits, yes. For practical purposes, no.

From where I stand, the arguments against marriage equality look about as bad as the arguments for segregation. They commit the same fallacies; they hide behind the same (selective reading of) scripture; they are often motivated by the same fears.

But I’m mindful of the fact that “from where I stand” includes decades of hindsight regarding segregation. The nation isn’t there yet on gay equality.

Today, nearly everyone finds the following sentiments repugnant:

“I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and black races which will ever FORBID the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”

The segregationist who wrote that?  Abraham Lincoln.

It is easy now to paint all segregationists as hatemongers, waving pitchforks and frothing at the mouth. Easy, but quite wrong.

The fact is that most segregationists were people not unlike, say, my grandmothers, both of whom were wonderful, loving, decent human beings, and both of whom – ­much to my embarrassment – ­opposed interracial marriage.

Their reasons had to do with tradition and the well-being of children. Sound familiar?

My grandmothers were not hatemongers. They were products of their time. So was Lincoln, so is Rick Warren, and so are you and I, more or less.

I don’t mean for a moment to let Rick Warren off the hook. He ought to know better. Maybe someday he will.

In the meantime, prepare yourself for a challenging 2009.

John Corvino, Ph.D. is an author, speaker, and philosophy professor at Wayne State University in Detroit.

For over fifteen years he has traveled the country speaking on homosexuality and ethics. His writing has been featured in regional and national periodicals, at the online Independent Gay Forum, and in numerous scholarly anthologies. His column “The Gay Moralist” appears Fridays on 365gay.com.

For more about John Corvino, or to see clips from his “What’s Morally Wrong with Homosexuality?” DVD, visit www.johncorvino.com.

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.

Melissa Etheridge, who once informed us that her son thought the language for Proposition 8 was “lame,”, was on the same stage with Rev. Rick Warren this week-end. At least that is the story scholar Juan Cole is telling.

Cole and Warren were headline speakers at an annual conference sponsored by the Muslim Public Affairs Council; Etheridge and Salman Ahmad were the musical performers for the evening and it looks like Warren and Etheridge spoke before the conference and got along swimmingly.
“Local television in Los Angeles showed a short clip of Etheridge after the event asking gay leaders to reach out to Warren, just as they wanted him to reach out to them.”

Don’t trust Cole? Cynic! Well what about Etheridge’s wife?

“…And then my wife meets the man behind the projections, the quotes, the ‘other side.’ And he is warm, caring, effusive, and loves gays. since he nearly swallowed honey when he hugged her, I tend to believe him. he wants our gay marriages to be just as respected and embraced as the straight marriages.”

My head hurts now. The same guy who is on the record of comparing the relationship between Etheridge and Michaels with incest and pedophilia now wants their relationship to be respected?!

I’m more than willing to accept Warren is not on the same level as other preachers who opine on gay sexuality, but his recent  interview with NBC’s Ann Curry shows  Warren ain’t a friend who is respectful. And I want these gay friends of the good reverend talking to him about gay sexuality to show themselves. If what he says is true, you all need a serious beat down!

Many celebrities grieved the passing of Proposition 8 in California this week. Some – such as Wanda Sykes, Rose McGowan and Lance Bass – attended a Wednesday protest criticizing the state’s gay marriage ban. Others – like Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie O’Donnell, Madonna and Melissa Etheridge – vented their frustrations online, on TV, and onstage.

Blocks away from the Thursday rally of more than 2,000 gay-rights advocates outside the gates of a Mormon temple, several stars – including James Cromwell, Patricia Clarkson, Anjelica Huston and Sean Penn – said they supported the protesters while walking the red carpet at the BAFTA L.A. Brittania Awards at Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel.

“I think it might be an idea to go out and join them shortly,” Penn said. “It was a shameful decision that was made.”

Etheridge, who exchanged vows with her longtime partner in a 2003 ceremony, declared in a blog entry posted Thursday on TheDailyBeast.com that she wouldn’t pay her taxes. The gay Oscar- and Grammy-winning singer-songwriter said that without the right to marry in California, she didn’t think she should have to pay taxes because “I am not a full citizen.”

“I don’t mean to get too personal here,” Etheridge wrote. “But there is a lot I can do with the extra half a million dollars that I will be keeping instead of handing it over to the state of California. Oh, and I am sure Ellen will be a little excited to keep her bazillion bucks that she pays in taxes, too.”

DeGeneres, on her show and the show’s Web site, provided a brief message of support Friday for President-elect Obama and the gay-rights advocates protesting Proposition 8. The talk show host, who married actress Portia de Rossi in August, previously donated $100,000 against the ballot initiative and starred in a commercial lamenting the measure.

“So there was a demonstration here on Wednesday night,” DeGeneres told the audience, “and just before I walked out here, I was watching the news and there is a huge, huge, peaceful demonstration going on in the streets, and I say, good for you, and I support you, and if I weren’t here, I’d be out there with you.”

O’Donnell, who lives in New York, responded to comments and questions about her stance on the issue on her Web site. When one person said he understood why she didn’t come out against the proposition, O’Donnell responded: “I AM AGAINST PROP 8. DUH.” She also wrote she believes the estimated 18,000 gay marriages would be annulled “like mine was years ago.”

The former talk show host, who lives with partner Kelli Carpenter and their four children, publicly wed Carpenter in San Francisco in 2004, two weeks after Mayor Gavin Newsom authorized granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The licenses were later voided by the California Supreme Court.

Also ranting online was celebrity disc jockey Samantha Ronson. Lindsay Lohan’s gal pal blogged Thursday that she was shocked that California voters approved an animal-rights initiative but that ballot measures about gay marriage and adoption in California, Florida, Arizona and Arkansas were shot down.

“I guess people care more about farm animals than they do their fellow man, that’s really sad to me,” Ronson wrote on her MySpace blog. “Yes, I am glad that the chickens will have more room and better conditions as they wait to die, but I just think it’s frightening that people show more compassion for tomorrow’s dinner than for the chef.”

Other celebs used time in the spotlight to decry the decision. Madonna took a moment during her concert at Dodger Stadium to declare to the audience that she was sad “because African-Americans are equal finally, but gay marriage is not.”

Singer Christina Aguilera also spoke out against the ban.

“I think it’s discrimination,” Aguilera said in a Thursday interview with MTV News. “I don’t understand how people can be so closed-minded and so judgmental. We chose an African-American president who means so much in a time in history of great change and open-mindedness. Why is this any different? It just doesn’t make sense to me.”

For one celebrity, voting on the ballot measure itself didn’t make sense. In a rambling message posted on her MySpace blog Friday, former Hole frontwoman Courtney Love wrote that the language on the California ballot “was confusing and people were voting yes when they meant no or something.”

Let’s get the crankiness out first. The image of Melissa Etheridge’s child reading the Proposition 8 ballot and describing it as “lame” is sickeningly cute, precocious, and probably made up. With that said, Etheridge does the anti Prop 8 team proud with an essay that chronicles her life as mother, wife, and citizen.

Etheridge covers well known territory. Her decision in 1997 to adopt her children, multiple visits from a social worker, the rejection from the agency (given with regrets), a judge over-ruling the adoption agency, which allowed the singer/songwriter to “adopt [her] children within the legal system.”

Three years later in 2000 California voters decided, via Proposition 22, to define marriage as a union only between a man and a woman. But this is Melissa we are talking about. She’s not going to stopped by some ignorance. In 2003, she and her children made a family with  with her partner Tammy. Yeah it was a domestic partnership but ME nails it.

“The day before the wedding Grey Davis gave same sex couples domestic partnership rights, one of his last moments as governor and we proudly hung our certificates on our wall. They were limited rights, but doggone it, it was a beginning.”

If ME leaves you cold, copy this essay and pass it around because she makes the anti-Prop 8 argument better than cranky hacks.

Melissa Etheridge brought the audience to its feet at the Democratic National Convention a few minutes ago. She sang a medley of songs that started with God Bless America, wove in Give Peace a Chance and Times, They Are a Changin’ until she exploded with Born in the USA.

People were singing, crying, cheering, and waving their arms. A proud moment for us all, when a lesbian can bring delegates from all over the country to its feet.

She was even more amazing than she was last night at HRC’s equality concert, when she ended the evening singing Scarecrow, waving goodbye as the crowd sang, love, love, love.