Rick Warren’s Paternalistic Love for Muslims, Republicans, Democrats, Gays, and Straights Doesn’t Compensate for His Homophobia

Attempting to educate bigots who are oblivious to their bigotry is becoming tiresome. Christina Hoag’s (AP) report of Rick Warren’s address at the 8th Annual Convention of the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Long Beach, California on Saturday provides ample evidence the evangelical pastor would require many intense consciousness-raising sessions to overcome his homophobia and other irrational biases.

For starters, Warren apparently believes his loud paternalistic declarations of love toward Muslims, people of other religions, Republicans and Democrats, gays, and straights somehow compensates for his refusal to support equal rights for the GLBT community.

Hoag notes in her article:

“Although Warren has said that he has nothing personal against gays, he has condemned same-sex marriage.

‘“I {Warren} have many gay friends. I've eaten dinner in gay homes. No church has probably done more for people with AIDS than Saddleback Church,’ he said in a recent interview with BeliefNet. But later in the interview, he compared the ‘redefinition of marriage’ to include gay marriage to legitimizing incest, child abuse, and polygamy.”’

Underlying the controversy over Warren’s invitation to give the inaugural invocation is a popular misunderstanding that the evil of bigotry varies depending on who the victims are. Extrapolating from the Obama team’s responses to human rights violations, on a scale of 1 to 10 the importance of any suggestion of bigotry targeting a straight Christian African-American male ranks as a 10; whereas, easily trivialized bigotry targeting women or gays of any race or religion ranks between a 0 and 1.

The popular use of the above scale explains why hanging Sarah Palin in effigy during the general election was not considered a hate crime, although hanging Barack Obama in effigy resulted in the immediate apprehension of the college students responsible for the act.

America’s promise of Liberty and justice for all must include citizens of every race, gender, religion, age, sexual preference, and ethnic origin. When President-elect Obama opens his eyes and provides the leadership in human rights our world so sorely needs, other domestic and foreign policy concerns will fall rapidly into place.

Let me repeat: respect for human rights is the one and only key to global peace and prosperity and by the way, Rev. Warren, Jesus would probably agree.