Greetings from Flyover Country Thoughts from the American Midwest

Rick Warren and Why This is a Big Deal

There’s been a lot of media discussion of President-Elect Obama’s pick of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the Inauguration January 20th. I’ve seen the conservatives praise the choice as an outreach of support from “the other side”, or call it pandering to the evangelical base. I’ve seen the left questions why Obama would pick such a divisive figure, and from that same left-of-center group, most of the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender (GLBT) community have lambasted the selection of Warren given his track record of not being very friendly towards “the gays”.

The NBC newsmagazine Dateline interviewed with Rick Warren last week. You can see Ann Curry’s interview at dateline.msnbc.com. Rachel Maddow has mentioned “Pastor Rick” several times on her show as new developments to this scandal come in. (One clip, from her December 19th show, is included after the jump.) The first part of my thoughts that follow was written in response to the Dateline interview, with a tangent to rail against Al Rantel, one of Warren’s “gay friends”. As I come back to finish this after the holidays, more “fun” has come out of the woodwork, this time from Warren himself.

With all this negative press and backlash, is it still okay to let this guy be part of a historical inauguration? I, for one, am getting sick of the commentary telling the angered gay community/liberals/progressives that it isn’t a big deal and we should just hush up. That this invocation is meaningless and that Obama is doing so many more things that are good and appease us. I’ll get to Obama’s policies later, likely closer to 2009 or the Inauguration, because what I’m currently worried about is that the outrage of Warren’s views seems to only come from the left and gay community. From Ann Curry’s Dateline interview:

[Curry:] Many of these gay people want to be married because they want to create families. They want to adopt children, they want to create a life together that isn’t about multiple partners but about one. There is this specter of pain that your position will undoubtedly cause. And I wonder how you reconcile yourself with that?

[Warren:] For five-thousand years, every single culture and every single religion has defined marriage as a man and a woman, not just Christianity [but also] Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism. Every single religion and every single culture has defined marriage between a man and a woman. Why take that word… I mean I even have gay friends like Al Rantel at KABC who is opposed to using the word “marriage” for gay relationships. Use another term. I am opposed to marriage being used for a relationship between a sister and a brother. I would oppose that. I would oppose the term marriage being used for an older man and a baby girl. I would oppose that. I would be opposed for the word marriage being used for one man and six wives. Or one wife and six husbands. I think… God says, it’s not my issue… God said in Genesis 1 a man and a woman should cling to each other for life. Now I’m in favor of human rights for everybody…everybody. I’m against redefining marriage historically 5,000 years… because then it’ll be re-defined. What if it’s between a brother and a sister?

President-Elect Obama with Rick Warren

Five thousand years? Unless calendar math works differently than I think it does, that would be roughly 3000 BCE. Circa 3000 BCE, the city of Troy was founded. Yes, the Troy made famous by the poet Homer. Stonehenge was also built, and this was the period of the Pharaohs of the First dynasty of Egypt. It’s a large assumption to make that for that long every culture and every religion has defined marriage in the same way. The very institution of marriage pre-dates recorded history, and the methods of the ceremony and the very concept itself has changed over the many thousands of years of recorded history. For most of European history, marriage was little more than a business arrangement with marriages between families a common way of strengthening power and improving social class. Romance, love, or even affection weren’t essential to these “contractual” arrangements. The Ancient Greeks had men in their 30s marry girls in their early teens, as by that age the men were finished with military service and their wives still virginal. Wives in that society had little if any rights other than to have children and keep house for their husbands. No specific civil or religious ceremony was involved, much like later Roman marriages. Marriage (and divorce) were simple agreements between the two parties. Roman culture also divided marriage into conventio in manum and sine manu. Conventio in manum meant the wife was stripped of her family rights and inheritance from her old family and gained them from the one of her husband as if she were property. Sine manu was a “free marriage” where the wife remained under the authority of her father and existing family, rather than her new husband and family. Interestingly, during this time the Roman Empire was home to the first recorded use of the word marriage for the union of same-sex couples. The usage was rare, despite such relationships being common.

Those examples of what we would now look at as unconventional marriage too ancient and before Christianity? Okay, fair. But they illustrate that the five-thousand year argument is about as thin as Rick Warren’s hair. Let’s look at Christian marriages, then. Marriages in the early Common Era (AD, if you prefer) were private, with no requirements of a religious ceremony. In fact, Christian marriages in Europe until 1545 were by a mutual consent, declaration of intent to marry, and physical union of the parties. Churches in the Middle Ages registered marriages, though such action was not mandatory. If 1545 sounds familiar, it’s when the Council of Trent happened as part of the “Counter-Reformation (Catholic Revival)” in response to a rise in Protestantism. Part of it decreed that a Roman Catholic marriage would only be recognized if officiated by a priest with two witnesses. The Council in 1566 defined marriage as “the conjugal union of man and woman, contracted between two qualified persons, which obliges them to live together throughout life”. In Protestant states, marriage was still by consent until the 1600s, when most Protestant European countries had state involvement in some way with marriages. Rounding out his every-religion every-culture argument is that while it is true religious traditions throughout the world hold the word marriage to heterosexual unions, there are a growing number of exceptions, including Unitarian Universalist, Metropolitan Community Church, Quaker, United Church of Canada, and Reform Judaism congregations. Warren takes a viewpoint that is narrow-minded and only includes his personal views or the views of his specific religious beliefs. (Culturally, there are examples throughout history and regions of cultures that accepted homosexuality. Just because they weren’t mainstream, or were oppressed in history by Euro-centric explorers and authors, or even assimilated by zealot missionaries under the banner of Christianity doesn’t make them any less real.)

[Warren:] Why take that word… I mean I even have gay friends like Al Rantel at KABC who is opposed to using the word “marriage” for gay relationships. Use another term.

I love when this argument is made. I really do. From a equality under the law standpoint, it shouldn’t hold water. Using another word, like civil unions, goes against some of the fundamentals of what modern rights in the country are. Equality. Don’t give heterosexuals marriage and gays civil unions. Even if you give them every single legal right and they are identical in the eyes of the government and of lady justice, they are still not the same on a fundamental level. In one of the landmark cases of the civil rights movement that brought down school segregation, the Supreme Court ruled, essentially, that separate but equal are not equal. It still draws a distinction. And really, that’s all there is to it. If you’re going to give them the same rights, just put it all together as what it really is: the same word. We don’t have interracial marriages called something other than marriage, so why relegate same-sex marriage to second-class status? As for Al Rantel at KABC, I couldn’t imagine that Rick Warren had gay friends. And I don’t mean “oh, this friend of a friend is gay” kind of friend. I’m talking someone who would willingly admit to being Warren’s friend, to the point that Warren would say so on the record. So Al Rantel is gay, that’s true. And I can imagine that he and Warren would be friends, especially since he is opposed to using the word “marriage” for gay unions. I’d never heard of Mr. Rantel, to be honest. Not surprising, actually, as he’s a conservative talk-radio guy from, as mentioned above, KABC-AM in Los Angeles. At the risk of offending those with similar ideological views as Mr. Rantel who are also gay, how is someone gay and a supporter of the conservative ideals? Nothing about the Reagan-era policies and conservative views on the role of the Judiciary strike me as being in-line someone who is openly gay. This will be my aforementioned tangent on Mr. Rantel, as I feel he deserves some criticism for his open opposition of gay marriage.

Al Rantel, conservative radio talk show host from KABC-AM.

In his article, Rantel writes that the ruling of the Massachusetts Supreme Court that the state must allow gay marriages “raises a myriad of questions that some are afraid to ask in this time of political correctness run amok” (Rantel opposes political correctness, too). The first of these questions, he says, is “who said gays want to get married in the first place”, citing that the highest number of same-sex households in the country is “ironically” in Massachusetts, but account less than two percent of all households in the state. “If gays make up five to ten percent of the population as is often claimed,” he says, “one would expect this number to be five times larger”. (I fail to see how this answered the question of gays wanting to get married in the first place. We also have to remember that the household statistic is from openly gay couples and doesn’t count those who are single/unmarried/not-living-together, closeted, or in denial that would otherwise accumulate towards the five-to-ten percent number.)

Rantel goes on to assert that family situations are in a bad state in the modern American family, but are “far less stable among gays”:

As distressing as the state of the American family is today with the high rate of divorce and adultery, the situation is far less stable among gays. This is not a slur against gays as individuals, but rather the reality of what occurs when you have what I call the all gas and no brake environment of male/male sexuality. I should know. I am a gay male.

To say that unfortunately the gay world is in a general state of hyper-sexuality that is not conducive to relationships which marriage was intended to foster is to put it mildly. Further, almost all of the issues the gay left claims it is justifiably concerned about like property, health, and financial partnership issues have already been dealt with by many states and can be dealt with through further legislation as needed. Such legal changes would encounter far less political opposition.

Rantel’s assertion that “male/male sexuality” is comprised of sex-crazed individuals is tangoing close to being libelous. But it’s not a slur against them, oh no, because Rantel is gay. Right. That’s like saying I can speak for every 20-something white male because I am one. Or that because a criminal is of a certain ethnicity means that group is violent as a whole. It’s stereotyping and insulting, and is tinged with the false view that gay men are all about sex 24/7. He goes on to claim that gay marriage is pointless because “almost all of the issues the gay left claims it is … concerned about … have already been dealt with by many states and can be dealt with through further legislation as needed.” Really now. What states? Vermont, California, New Jersey, and New Hampshire laws for domestic partnership explicitly define said unions as having the same rights and responsibilities of marriage, as applicable to state law. Mane, Hawaii, D.C., Oregon, and Washington laws offer varying “subsets” of the rights and responsibilities of marriage. That’s less than a quarter of the Union. How is that “many”? And it’s completely state-level. Federal-level rights and benefits are not conferred to gay unions at all. Further legislating this on a state-by-state basis takes time and requires the majority of a legislative body to be in agreement for it at a time when many won’t touch the issue at all. The states that are going to give gays rights by civil unions have already done so. And what of on the federal level? Are we ignoring that you can’t just delegate this issue to the states? You leave all of these legally married gay couples in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and the 18,000 pre-Prop-Eight marriages in California a distinctly different class when they go to file federal income tax, among other things. In fact, the federal government doesn’t even recognize them as married when it takes the census for 2010.

Reading the rest of Rantel’s piece, he says that the “gay left” wants to force others to accept their social view, and rants against gay pride parades that “remind everyone else of what some people like to do in their private bedrooms while in the same breath demanding to be left alone.” Gays (and lesbians, he mentions for the first time) are a group that “has offered no indication that most [of them] even desire to enter into the kind of commitments that marriage ideally entails, or that serves the real purpose of marriage. Marriage exists in order to create a stable and structured environment for couples to reproduce and raise their offspring.” There are tens of thousands of gay and lesbian couples in stable, committed relationships that desire the same legal recognition as any two drunk heterosexuals in Las Vegas. I could go down to the city clerk’s office and get married tomorrow if I wanted to and had a willing female co-conspirator. His definition of marriage is archaic and flawed. Reproduction exists for couples to have offspring. Marriage and children are not mutually exclusive. There are plenty of unwed couples with children, either by choice or that abstinence-only sexual education doesn’t work. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines marriage as:

mar•riage
noun
the formal union of a man and a woman, typically recognized by law, by which they become husband and wife.

• a similar long-term relationship between partners of the same sex.
• a relationship between married people or the period for which it lasts: a happy marriage | the children from his first marriage.
• (figurative) a combination or mixture of two or more elements: a marriage of jazz, pop, blues, and gospel.

(in pinochle and other card games) a combination of a king and queen of the same suit

I don’t see anything about reproduction there (or religion for that matter, Mr. Warren). So if reproduction is ignored, or we remember that gay couples can have children by sperm donor, surrogacy, or adoption, it seems that marriage is intended to be a “stable and structured environment for couples” to raise their children. So, a family. A stable, loving family. To close Rantel’s article, he presents the question of whether allowing gay marriage “seem[s] like a wise and prudent choice for America to make at the wish of a handful of judges, and at the behest of those whose real goals are more political than anything else?” Yes, it does. It’s not a handful of judges. It’s the people and families behind the cases before those “activist judges” (the right wing is still using that term, no?), the emotional toll and fighting that they take on so that they can be the same as any other family, and to ensure that future gay and lesbian families don’t have to struggle with the same inheritance/benefit/visitation rights that they’re undoubtedly dealing with. They, Mr. Rantel, those families and their allies, are the real face of gays and lesbians in this country. They aren’t pushing an agenda, they’re pushing for respect. For rights. For love and equality. It is disgusting that you speak so vehemently against those rights while at the same time proclaiming yourself gay. You represent a small minority of the community that feels being gay or lesbian is a choice (and, I can only imagine, struggle with it). You argue that you shouldn’t get the same rights as heterosexuals. Agree with the institution or concept of marriage or don’t, but do not for one second think that your opposition is grounds for denying this to others. But gay marriage isn’t an issue that should be left to the American people to decide in a popular vote. (I’m also disheartened that it has to come to legal challenges, as those take time and have so many more roadblocks of interpretation, legal precedent and jurisdiction. But I also see that it’s the best road the gay rights movement can take on a myriad of issues, just as segregation and interracial marriage did the same in the middle of the last century.) We can clearly see what that causes in the wake of California’s Proposition Eight. It was, as far as I can recall, the first time predetermined rights (as established by the California Supreme Court allowing gay marriage) were taken away from a group of people by the direct popular vote of the citizens. Democracy does not exist so that the majority can define the rights of the minority. Democracy exists to preserve the rights of all citizens, especially those in the minority.

[Warren:] I am opposed to marriage being used for a relationship between a sister and a brother. I would oppose that. I would oppose the term marriage being used for an older man and a baby girl. I would oppose that. I would be opposed for the word marriage being used for one man and six wives. Or one wife and six husbands. I think… God says, it’s not my issue… God said in Genesis 1 a man and a woman should cling to each other for life. Now I’m in favor of human rights for everybody…everybody. I’m against redefining marriage historically 5,000 years… because then it’ll be re-defined. What if it’s between a brother and a sister?

(I’d like to point out that Warren can’t even quote the Bible correctly. Upon watching clips of the Warren interview, it was pointed out to me that “a man and a woman should cling to each other for life” isn’t in Genesis 1. It’s in Genesis 2:24 in the King James version: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”)

Except no one is arguing that a brother and sister should get married. There’s scientific evidence that there can be genetic issues if relatives that close together were to have children. Same thing with pedophiles. No sane person is arguing that we should let them marry younger partners. For one, there’s emotional development in the younger party that can equate to child abuse because they aren’t capable of dealing with adult relationships or the physical/emotional ability to stand up to abuse of power by the older party. That’s why it’s illegal and we have age-of-consent laws for sex and marriage. Polygamy is tricky, and really requires more space than I feel I can give it at this point. I, personally, don’t agree with polygamy. I can see it being used as a “loophole” in monogamy when there was a large imbalance between the sexes (after a time of war, for example), but those days have long passed with the growth of the human population and advancements in science. I think there is far too great a risk of emotional abuse and forced marriages as was the case with the fundamentalist sect of the LDS that was in the news recently. No one is arguing that these relationships should be codified in law on the same level as marriage. That’s not the issue. What is the issue is Warren relating gay relationships with polygamy, incest, and pedophilia.

Since doing the Dateline interview, Warren has said in a video from his Church that he did no such thing. Except, we’ve got you on tape more than once saying it. His church’s web site did, for a time, have language that restricted homosexuals from membership unless they were willing to repent their “homosexual lifestyle”. That language was pulled from the site, and then said they pulled it to “repurpose it for clarity, but the policy still stands”. The 22-minute video from Warren is an unscripted message from him to his church, and doesn’t do anything but escalate the uproar over Obama picking Warren. “Free speech has to be free speech for everybody, even if I don’t like it”, Warren says in the video. “It’s in our Constitution”. He also says that “some people today believe that if you disagree with them, then that’s hate speech. That if you disagree with them, you either hate them or you’re afraid of them. I’m neither afraid of gays, nor do I hate gays. In fact, I love them.” But only if they don’t disagree with you, don’t want to get married, or repent for their “sin”. He goes on to call all the fuss about him “false accusations”, attacks, “outright lies and hateful slander”, and–wait for it–”really a lot of hate speech”. It’s what he would call “Christophobia”: people who are afraid of any Christian. Because somehow being against Rick Warren’s distorted views is being afraid of Christ/religion? His church isn’t even part of a denomination. And there are plenty of people who are Christian and are gay or supportive of gay rights. And let’s leave Christ out of it and go beyond Christianity. Reform Judaism has become open to gay marriages and openly gay rabbis. There are also plenty of gays who are not in the least “afraid” of Christians. But Rick Warren is stuck in this mega-church bubble of his where everyone needs to agree with his brand of Christianity and that they are the real Christians. Mega-churches are more like a cult than anything else. Tens of thousands of members that all share the same view and band together in mammoth concert-hall-like structures so that they can feel better about their life. Rachel Maddow brought up that those people Warren calls “Christophobes” are maybe just “Rick Warren -phobes”. You know, people who are afraid of Rick Warren and his anti-gay, anti-abortion (comparing abortion to the Holocaust, and that’s not even the whole of it), abuse-isn’t-a-reason-for-divorce views. The guest on the linked Rachel Maddow segment said that everyone should spend time on the Saddleback Church web site, and it lets you see just what all Rick Warren honestly believes.

To say that Rick Warren delivering the invocation isn’t a big deal is to ignore all of the things he has said against gay people, against a woman’s right to choose, among other things. Obama’s first “pastor problem” with Jeremiah Wright was tame in comparison. Because Wright wasn’t a national figure. Rick Warren has been a figure in political support, hosting his “civil forum” at his church where both McCain and Obama were guests. And for all of the things Wright said, Obama distanced himself. Yet he isn’t doing so with Warren. He’s telling people that he’s been an advocate for GLBT rights, as if that makes it all better. What Obama’s policies are and what he does with them (as I’ll discuss at another point in time) are not the same as giving Warren this position of publicity and importance in what will be a large part of American history in the years to come. We’re coming off of eight years of backwards policies, lack of respect in the world, and pandering to the evangelical right-wing conservatives to win votes. (Seriously. How much crap was put out there in 2004 about gay marriage bans and flag burning? State amendments to their constitutions banning gay marriage were hot issues that brought out the GOP base in droves and left many in the gay community scarred for what would come next. But like flag burning amendments, they fizzled after the Republicans kept control of the White House and Congress.) If this is a time to move forward as a nation, to rebuild our beacon of freedom and democracy for the wold, to inspire hope in the body politic, are we really going to start with such a stark reminder that there is still a struggle in this nation for citizens to be given the same legal rights as heterosexuals?