Rick Warren works to calm gay marriage controversy

Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren continues to be haunted by past statements on gay marriage, and tried to soften his anti-gay marriage posture last week onLarry King‘s show. Warren stood by his belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman, but said he’s never been an activist on the issue.

Part of what’s gotten him into hot water was a video-taped interview, available on the Internet, done before the Nov. 4 vote to implement the Proposition 8 gay marriage ban. In it, Warren seemed to liken gay marriage to incest, pedophilia and polygamy.

“I’m opposed to having a brother and sister together and calling that marriage. I’m opposed to having an older guy marrying a child and calling that marriage. I’m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.”

The interviewer then asks, “Do you think those are equivalent to gays getting married?

“Oh, I do,” responded the megachurch leader, whose subsequent selection to give Barack Obama’s inaugural invocation stirred controversy.

Warren later posted a video on his Web site to try to clarify his view. But there was still more clarifying going on with Larry King last week.

“I am not an anti-gay or anti-marriage activist. Never have been, never will be,” he said. “During the whole Proposition 8 thing, I never once went to a meeting, never once issued a statement.

“The week before the vote, somebody in my church said, ‘Pastor Rick, what do you think about this?’ And I sent a note to my own members that said, ‘I actually believe that marriage really should be defined – that that definition should be saved between a man and a woman.’ And then all of a suddenly out of it they made me, you know something that I really wasn’t. …

“I wrote to all my gay friends, the leaders that I knew and actually apologized to them. That never got out. There were some things said – everybody should have 10% grace when they say public statements 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.”

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Rick Warren works to calm gay marriage controversy

The interviewer then asks, “Do you think those are equivalent to gays getting married?

“Oh, I do,” responded the megachurch leader, whose subsequent selection to give Barack Obama’s inaugural invocation stirred controversy.

Warren later posted a video on his Web site to try to clarify his view. But there was still more clarifying going on with Larry King last week.

“I am not an anti-gay or anti-marriage activist. Never have been, never will be,” he said. “During the whole Proposition 8 thing, I never once went to a meeting, never once issued a statement.

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Prayers, protests in lead up to Inauguration

(Washington) LGBT activists demonstrated Monday at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, protesting the appearance of Pastor Rick Warren at Martin Luther King Day observances.

Warren was invited to give the keynote address at the church, but gay rights advocates said he belied King’s message of inclusiveness. His participation at the event and …

Gay Bishop Gene Robinson Left Out Of HBO Concert Coverage

Sunday’s big Lincoln Memorial show was billed as the “We Are One” concert, intended to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama with a spirit of unity. But for those of us watching at home, one participant was excluded — Gene Robinson, the “first openly gay, non-celibate priest to be ordained a bishop in a major Christian denomination.” Robinson was on hand to deliver an opening prayer to the event, but this prayer went unseen by anyone watching on HBO, who provided and sponsored the coverage.

Reached for comment, a spokesperson for HBO stated that decisions regarding the timing and presentation of Robinson’s remarks were made by the Presidential Inaugural Committee, and that Robinson was “not a part of our show from the start.” Indeed, Robinson appeared minutes before the 2:30pm start time of the concert coverage. HBO’s response to the matter has been uniform. A spokeperson offered AfterElton.com much the same response: “The producer of the concert has said that the Presidential Inaugural Committee made the decision to keep the invocation as part of the pre-show.”

HBO comes to this controversy without any sort of significant reputation for being a network or a workplace hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. In fact, the network is responsible for airing the drama Six Feet Under, which depicted gays in complex relationships unflinchingly. The Obama camp, on the other hand, has courted controversy already with the decision to include in the inauguration Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren, a supporter of Proposition 8 in California. The appearance of a snub in the case of Bishop Robinson has successfully raised the temperature among Democratic activists and in the liberal blogosphere, where outrage is being pointed mostly at the incoming administration and the Presidential Inaugural Committee.

Watch the prayer here: Gay Bishop Gene Robinson Left Out Of HBO Concert Coverage

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Lowery’s Preaching, Not Warren’s, Will Illuminate Inaugural Day The Nation.

No one should be surprised that President-elect Barack Obama would choose self-promoting Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inaugural. Warren has been hustling for years to make himself the “new Billy Graham” — seeking to fill the vacating role of spiritual adviser to presidents, be they born-again Republicans or born-right-the-first-time Democrats.

Obama, always on the watch for ways to broaden his base of support, has been developing a relationship with Warren for many years, as he has with other fundamentalist preachers who try to put a smile on their intolerance.

Back in December 2006, when he was merely a senator with unannounced presidential ambitions, Obama delivered a smart, sensitive address at Warren’s “2006 Global Summit on AIDS and the Church,” a high-profile event on the pastor’s Saddleback Church campus in Lake Forest, Calif.

Twenty months later, as the soon-to-be Democratic presidential nominee, Obama went back to Saddleback for an unfortunate joint appearance with Republican John McCain — the last major misstep of the senator’s bid for the nation’s top job.

Past is prologue, and Obama’s dalliances with Warren, for better or worse, always pointed to the placement of this particular pastor on the inaugural stage.

What will be significant about Warren’s remarks, however, is that they will be so insignificant.

Warren’s invocation will be forgotten five minutes after it is finished.

Indeed, the only “news” that will come from his appearance at the inaugural is the controversy surrounding it — and the protests that controversy may spark.

Far more significant, and encouraging, than his off-putting selection of Warren to deliver the invocation is Obama’s choice of a genuine spiritual progressive to deliver the benediction.

It is the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery who will present the far more uplifting and meaningful religious message on Inauguration Day. And in his appealing selection of the 87-year-old Lowery, Obama has made a choice that is far more adventurous — even, dare we say, radical — than his unappealing designation of Warren.

Lowery was the longtime president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which he co-founded in 1957, before Obama was born, with the Revs. Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph David Abernathy and Fred Shuttlesworth. An essential player in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, Lowery was sent by King to deliver the demands of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march to Alabama’s segregationist governor, George Wallace, and it was to Lowery that Wallace apologized three decades later.

Long after King and most of the other founding fathers of the civil rights movement had been buried, Lowery carried on the struggle. He led the 1982 drive to extend the federal Voting Rights Act. In 2005, when it came time to renew the act once more, Lowery famously cornered Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at a memorial service for Rosa Parks to ask for maintaining voting rights protections. Why did Lowery choose so somber a setting to make his appeal to the most prominent African-American member of President Bush’s Cabinet? “Because I knew she could not move,” he explained.

See Lowery’s Preaching, Not Warren’s, Will Illuminate Inaugural Day The Nation.

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Gene Robinson: Gay Bishop Giving Obama Inauguration Prayer

New Hampshire Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, a vocal gay rights leader, will open President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration with a prayer on Sunday’s kick-off event at the Lincoln Memorial.

“I am writing to tell you that President-Elect Obama and the Inaugural Committee have invited me to give the invocation at the opening event of the Inaugural Week activities, We are One, to be held at the Lincoln Memorial,” Robinson wrote in an email to friends.

The announcement comes after weeks of outcry from the gay community over Obama’s choice of evangelical, anti-gay pastor Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation.

“It’s important for any minority to see themselves represented in some way,” Robinson said in an interview with the Concord Monitor. “Whether it be a racial minority, an ethnic minority or, in our case, a sexual minority. Just seeing someone like you up front matters.”

Robinson is the first openly gay diocesan bishop in the Anglican Communion. “God never gets it wrong. The church often takes a long time to get it right. It is a human institution, but one capable of self-correction,” Robinson told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “I believe in my heart that the church got it wrong about homosexuality. There is great excitement in my heart to be living in a time when the church is starting to get it right.”

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Black gay activists: Ebenezer should dump Warren as MLK Day speaker

The Atlanta Black LGBT Coalition last week called on Ebenezer Baptist Church, the historic church where Dr. Martin Luther King served as pastor, to remove Pastor Rick Warren as the keynote speaker for its upcoming MLK Day service.

“Rev. Warren’s hateful opposition to civil rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and reproductive rights for women, and his intolerance of diversity contradict the values of freedom and equality that this day represents,” the group said in a Dec. 24 press release.

The coalition called on Ebenezer’s pastor, Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, to rescind the invitation to Warren to speak at the Jan. 19 service.

The church did not respond to an interview request by press time.

“Bestowing Rev. Warren such a prominent role does not foster greater understanding between divided communities. Instead it drives more wedges between disenfranchised communities that are continually pitted against each other by the agents of racism and homophobia,” the gay coalition said.
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Pastor Warren: I love gays

(Long Beach, California) Under fire for opposing gay marriage, influential evangelical pastor Rick Warren says that he loves Muslims, people of other religions, Republicans and Democrats, and he also loves “gays and straights.”

The 54-year-old pastor and founder of Saddleback Church in Southern California told the crowd of 500 on the …

Pastor Warren: I love gays

The 54-year-old pastor and founder of Saddleback Church in Southern California told the crowd of 500 on the …

Warren: Gay people are immature.

Today, NBC’s Ann Curry aired a new portion of her recent interview with pastor Rick Warren, whom President-elect Obama selected to deliver the invocation at his inauguration. During the interview, Warren said that “it doesn’t matter” whether or not homosexuality is “part of your biology”; it’s still wrong. Attempting to explain himself, he compared accepting one’s homosexuality to being “naturally inclined to have sex with every beautiful woman I see.” Resisting homosexuality is about “maturity,” he concluded:

CURRY: If science finds that this is biological, indisputably…would you change your position?

WARREN: No. … We all have biological predispositions. … You say because I have natural impulses to the same sex, I shouldn’t have to reign them in. Well I disagree. I think that’s part of maturity, I think that’s part of delayed gratification, I think that’s part of character.

Watch it:

Warren: Gay people are immature.
Think Progress, DC