Obama Nets Political Capital by Honoring Rick Warren

At OnTop Magazine this morning, Carlos Santoscoy points out that President-elect Obama is reaping political capital for picking an anti-gay pastor to deliver the inaugural invocation on Jan. 20.

Santoscoy explains:

‘“While the pro-gay left media has been busy pointing out the inconsistencies of choosing Saddleback megachurch leader Rev. Rick Warren – he likened gay marriage to polygamy and an incestuous relationship, while Obama says he is a ‘fierce advocate of equality for gay and lesbian Americans’ – social conservatives, particularly the evangelical left, has been heaping praise on Obama – effectively canceling out any loss of political capital he may have otherwise suffered.”’

Santoscoy concludes his post: “Favoring a homophobic pastor to such an honorable position and gaining political traction from that misstep can only spell trouble for gay rights activists who had viewed the election of Obama as the silver lining of an otherwise somber Election Day.”

I noted in a previous post that the ugly misogyny endured by both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin in 2008 has encouraged other cultures to continue their barbaric treatment of women, e.g., the stoning to death of a 13-year-old Somali girl who had been brutally raped by three men and the brutal exploitation of teenage girls in Cambodia described in a recent column by Nicholas Kristof.

In a related matter, we need also to examine the harmful effect of disrespecting gay rights inherent in Obama’s politically profitable decision to honor Rick Warren at his inauguration.

Already reeling from the passage of California’s Proposition 8, actively supported by Pastor Warren, the GLBT community has recently been jolted by news accounts of the gang rape of a lesbian in San Francisco.

The Associated Press reported today, Jan. 2:

“Two men and two teens have been arrested on suspicion of gang-raping a woman last month in the San Francisco Bay area while allegedly taunting her for being a lesbian, police said Thursday.

“Officers arrested Humberto Hernandez Salvador at his Richmond home Wednesday night, Richmond police Lt. Mark Gagan said. The 31-year-old is being held without bail on gang rape, kidnapping and carjacking charges.

“Police on Wednesday also arrested a 15-year-old Richmond boy and a 16-year-old Hercules boy, who were being held at a juvenile detention center on similar charges. Their names were not released.

“The 45-minute attack started when one of the men approached the woman in the street, struck her with a blunt object, ordered her to disrobe and sexually assaulted her with the help of the others, according to detectives.

“When the group saw another person approaching, they forced the victim back into her car and took her to a burned-out apartment building. She was raped again inside and outside the vehicle and left naked outside the building while the alleged assailants took her wallet and drove off in her car, police said.”

Our nation’s leaders, including our soon-to-be president, and our media are urged to open their eyes to the real world consequences of their careless disregard for the rights of women and gays both here and elsewhere in the world.

The question arises: Is the political power won by trashing our most prominent female political leaders and honoring a homophobic pastor worth the unspeakable abuse of innocent people?

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.

Rev. Joseph Lowery: “They’ve {homosexuals} never been enslaved and declared less than human"

Leading conservative pundit Bill Kristol is saluting Barack Obama for inviting Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. Kristol’s column in the Dec. 29 edition of the Weekly Standard is titled A President-Elect's Progress: From Rev. Wright to Rev. Warren. Those who have watched Obama’s evolution from the time he was handed the nomination by the DNC and the party’s superdelegates ought not be surprised at Kristol’s support. The minute he became the presumptive nominee, Obama took a dive to the right.

Kristol neglects to mention that although Rev. Wright is described by some as an aggressively progressive preacher and Rev. Warren is beloved among conservative Christians, the two men do have something in common. Rev. Wright’s rant – actually several rants - against Hillary Clinton from the Trinity UCC pulpit betrayed the pastor’s hatred of women, especially a powerful white woman.

Religious conservative Rick Warren’s stance on reproductive rights places him among those males in prominent positions who will never personally have to face the abortion issue, e.g., the pope and his army of priests, but who nevertheless claim the power to deny women the right to make a major decision in consultation with their doctors that affects their own bodies.

In debating the moral equivalence of discrimination against gays and women as civil rights issues, Kristol inadvertently calls into question Obama's selection of both Rick Warren and Joseph Lowery to pray at his inauguration. Kristol quotes Lowery, Obama’s pick to give the benediction: "Homosexuals as a people have never been enslaved because of their sexual orientation," he {Lowery} told the Associated Press. "They may have been scorned; they may have been discriminated against. But they've never been enslaved and declared less than human."

Never been declared less than human? There are obvious gaps in both Kristol’s and Rev. Lowery’s knowledge of history. According to the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum:

“The Nazi campaign against homosexuality targeted the more than one million German men who, the state asserted, carried a "degeneracy" that threatened the "disciplined masculinity" of Germany. Denounced as "antisocial parasites" and as "enemies of the state," more than 100,000 men were arrested under a broadly interpreted law against homosexuality. Approximately 50,000 men served prison terms as convicted homosexuals, while an unknown number were institutionalized in mental hospitals. Others—perhaps hundreds—were castrated under court order or coercion. Analyses of fragmentary records suggest that between 5,000 and 15,000 homosexual men were imprisoned in concentration camps, where many died from starvation, disease, exhaustion, beatings, and murder.

“In the racist practice of Nazi eugenics, women were valued primarily for their ability to bear children. The state presumed that women homosexuals were still capable of reproducing. Lesbians were not systematically persecuted under Nazi rule, but they nonetheless did suffer the loss of their own gathering places and associations.

“Nazi Germany did not seek to kill all homosexuals. Nevertheless, the Nazi state, through active persecution, attempted to terrorize German homosexuals into sexual and social conformity, leaving thousands dead and shattering the lives of many more.”

It’s beyond the scope of this post to comment on all of the widespread enslavement and horrible abuse endured by gays and women throughout history that continues to this day around the globe.

I’ll conclude with these words by former slave Frederick Douglas that the Obama team in its refusal to take seriously the rights of any group other than African-Americans would do well to ponder: “Until we are all free, we are none free.”