What do you think of Rick Warren?

Two thumbs very far down. The outrage across all the gay blogs really speaks to my personal feelings about the decision.

From Pam’s House Blend:
First of all, Warren was Barack Obama’s selection. While it was announced by an inaugural committee, the buck stops with the man at the top of the food chain. He wouldn’t have the anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-science, church-and-state-merging Warren up there if he didn’t think it was a good idea.

And Queerty:
“without a single LGBT person in the Cabinet, it seems that while Barack Obama’s America includes Rick Warren, gays and lesbians are conspicuously absent”

And one final snip from Good As You:
But there is a difference in (a) bringing a representative of anti-gay politicking to the table to hash things out and (b) bringing a representative of anti-gay politicking to a prized soiree so that he can lead America in prayer! For those Americans who were THRILLED with Obama’s victory yet put into AN UNSHAKABLE FUNK by Prop 8’s unreasoned passage, this is a major affront.

Also, one of my favorite people, John Hodgman, wrote a twitter-essay about it:

Really? Rick Warren at the inauguration? That is a major withdrawal from the first bank of benefit of the doubt. I find it very depressing. I’ve nothing against Warren per se. And I am all for inclusiveness. But it’s a pretty hard pill for those of us who opposed Prop 8. But that doesn’t mean we’re obliged to give RW the big megaphone on day 1. In the wake of Prop 8, it just feels needlessly provocative.

I’m sorry if it seems like I don’t have my own views. Professional writers just articulate it better than i do.

I have been to his church several times and I went to the Civil Forum he hosted. At first I thought he was going to have the stature of Billy Graham and really try to rise above politics and be non-partisan. I think that is what he would really like to do. The problem is he has been so indoctrinated by the right wing that when his colors show they show red.

I think he IS sick of the mean spirited-ness that Christians have displayed and also of the way that the political right has taken the Christian voting block for granted. I think that it pisses him off that because the Republicans have carried the anti abortion banner they think that Christians will follow them on every issue from war to compassion to taxes, not all of which are so easily defined in spiritual terms and many of which can be debated in Christian circles.

I think that deep down he wants to heal the divide that has defined “Republicans” as the only true Christians, but when he goes to the ballot box he just can’t let go. He has said that Christians are not a one issue voting block, and he really does want Christians to look at other issues as well when they vote.
As far as Obama asking him to give the invocation at his inaugural, I think it was a courageous move on his part. He has always expressed a willingness to hear out people he disagrees with and I think Rick Warren respects that in him and is like minded on that point.
It is all part of not being a red America or a blue America but the UNITED States of America.
Once again am proud of Obama for reaching out and trying to unite us.

I think its fine…thats all ;)

It seems to me as a far left liberal that most of the things that are really pissing off the far left liberals have more to do with the far left liberals’ expectataions than the President Elect’s actions. I think the expectations have been fostered by 8 years of having everything we value shot down in flames by a my way or the highway administration with views antithetical to our own. So, I believe now that liberals have someone closer to their own ideology, they are expecting him to govern from the left.

But I think Obama has made it very clear from day one that though he sees the world from the left, he governs from the center. And the reason for this is because what we’ve really seen under Bush is this never ending back and forth that is dividing us further and further apart. 8 years ago, most Democrats and Republicans could be friends with each other and agree to disagree, now far too often people on the left villify those on the right and vice versa. It is a symptom of both Bush’s tough handed ideology, and the right wing media noise machine perpetrated on talk radio and Fox News. We no longer engage in debate, much less conversation, we seek to shut people up if we don’t agree with them.

Re Warren, I hate what he stands for on certain issues. But I think at his core, it doesn’t make him a bad person. He’s not a Jerry Fallwell or a Ted Haggard or a Pat Robertson. He is someone who is ideologically right, who is actually making the effort to reach out to the left and the center. He broke with the church in regards to being lock step with the Republican party, basically telling his Congregation and followers that they should no longer be a one issue religion, that they should vote on things OTHER than just abortion and homosexuality, that there is more to the world than this.

Warren is not perfect, he’s certainly not someone the left is ever going to completely understand and embrace. But put this into perspective….Obama doesn’t NEED to gain the trust of those of us on the left, but he DOES need to gain the trust of those on the far right. He said in his victory speech that not everyone voted for him, but he will be their President too, and this is a part of it…rising above the bitter partisan divides.

It’s not as though he is having Warren set policy for the US. He is simply letting the guy speak at the innauguration. If we as liberals start to say, uh uh, you CAN’T allow people we don’t agree with have any voice in anything, then we’re as bad as Bush and the people who supported him. Chillax, no big deal.

@Dale, I’m going to have to disagree. Gay people have been trampled for decades by the Democratic party that they have loyally and unwaveringly supported. I understand how important it is for Obama to gain the support of the center-right, but just as you said, “He’s simply letting the guy speak at the election.” That’s not going to change any legislators’ opinions or make them more supportive of his policies. The act is purely symbolic.

And the symbol is that Barack Obama endorses a hatemongering homophobe as his ‘spiritual representation’ for his official coming out party.

And maybe it’s not a big deal, and everything that I’m saying is completely irrational and born of fear and anger toward those who would oppress me. As a strategic move, it might have been advantageous. But throwing your constituency under the bus by essentially endorsing this guy? It’s going to piss more than a few people off.

Many figured that Obama would try to govern from the center. Looks like a centrist move to me.

You cannot heal division by governing from the left or the right.

Many excellent answers here, particularly Judi’s and dalepetrie’s. Though the idea of choosing Rick Warren was initially upsetting to me, I see Obama as a consensus builder, and that is something I really like about him.

George W. Bush and his cronies split the country so badly that I think it’s especially important for us to look for common ground wherever possible. Most of us are not wholly red or blue, but some shade of purple. (I will admit to being more blue than red, but it’s certainly not a pure blue.)

I agree with Obama that it’s time we stopped thinking in terms of reds and blues and start thinking of ourselves as the United States of America, and I applaud him regularly for making that statement.

Hey tonedef, I respect your position. I’m very much for complete and total marraige equality now. I don’t like civil unions because that’s separate but equal. But I realize that Obama knows if he tries to go too quickly in one direction, everything then the roadblocks come from the other side and NOTHING gets done. Part of me wishes Obama would be more vigilant in trying to to the RIGHT thing, but I think he is smart enough to realize that if he tried too hard to push for the RIGHT thing, NOTHING will get done. So I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I won’t begrudge you for being mad.

Thanks for the support and acknowledgement, big D.

I think the real issue for me is that it’s getting sort of difficult to keep accepting the winks and nudges from democrats. “Obama is just SAYING he opposes gay marriage so that he can get elected.” “The DOMA HAS to pass so that we can build a consensus with conservatives.” “DADT is an unsuitable compromise, but it’s a great starting point.” “We HAVE to let transgendered people sit this round of the ENDA out!”

The issue of gay equality hinges on public opinion, and how will that ever change if our leaders place people like Rick Warren in highly visible roles? I’m tired of the winking and the nudging. I think that there’s such a huge outrage over this because progressive people are sick of their representatives, Barack Obama included, making concessions to bigots and bible thumping assholes for the promise of equality at an undisclosed point down the line. It’s never going to happen if we—if I—just sit back and accept routine disenfranchisement and compromises with my oppressors.

This makes me skeptical about the kind of change we are getting. Warren stands for everthing that progressives are against. WTF? I hope this is not a glimpse of the next 4 years, with right wing nuts setting the agenda and controling the context of discourse. Gates stays in, Jones in, Clinton in, the financial folks Obama have chosen are NOT progressives, the all come from Citi and Goldman—like the Bush Appointees.

I am ill.

Remember it’s just an invocation on one day. Obama’s got 8 years to actually do something. It won’t amount to an additional roadblock…if anything, I believe it will make people who have completely shut what Obama has to say out, you know the types that only believe it if Limbaugh or Hannity says it, and otherwise plug their ears and say lalalalalalala…I can’t HEAR you. I think this is sort of an olive branch…a ceremonial olive branch only however. It builds trust among those for whom this is the only single solitary way such trust can be built. You can’t reason with people who don’t listen, and I suspect he will reason with these people, because like it or not, you’ve got to get them to listen too.

I’ve actually changed minds on the topic in ways that people who have said, “I’m sick of your thinking” have not. I’ve been in online debates where it started with one “absolutely no gay marriage” and one “gay marraige, no compromises” person, and they just degenerated into shouting matches and no one was moved. I came into the conversation and basically said this:

First off, I don’t care what you call it, but I’m not advocating that we force your church to recognize somethign it sees as wrong. I am not seeking to take a church institution and redefine it. But the problem is, the law co-opted the term marriage, which really is a religious/ceremonial term. Just like you don’t HAVE to be married IN a church to actually BE married (I wasn’t), you don’t have to call it marriage to sign that contrat that allows you to share certain parenting, property and survivorship rights with whomever you want. I say, come up with another name and reclassify all legal marriages as that, and leave the term marriage to the domain of the religious. Because if we don’t we’re going to have people who can’t get health insurance and die because they can’t get on their partner’s plan. Or we’re going to have people who can’t visit the person they spent their life with when that person gets sick and has to be hospitalized. Or we’re going to have people who share a life, raise a child and one dies, and then some 15th cousin is going to come out of the woodwork, take that person’s home, propery and even child away, even though they have zero right to it, because they are the closest blood relative. It’s not right, it’s not humane and we shouldn’t let ideology and symantics deny people basic human rights.

I know Obama agrees with most of that, he just prefers the civil union approach because he thinks it’s more do-able. But he can’t push it down the throats of people who follow people like Warren. He has to be more nuanced, like I was above. And I’ve had more than one person who started out with the “no gay marriage, no way, never” point of view who actually read what I had to say and said, yeah, I’m OK with that.

So, it’s all about the soft sell and the trying to win friends who would otherwise seek to destroy you. It doesn’t mean he’s going to turn his back on gays like Clinton did with Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and DOMA.

So Dale—after the Dems win 2 elections in a row, we still have to accomodate the radical right wing, and cow tow to them, and govern from the right?

When Republicans win, they talk about political capital and they ram their agenda down our throats.

Obama wins, and becomes a Republican Lite. We’ve got to bring Limbaugh and Hannnity over to our side to be successful? Guarenteed, there will be no universal health care, no meaningful energy policy change, no meaningful departure from Bush’s economic policy or foriegn policy. We’ve got a Black George W Bush here it looks to me like. Let’s face it, Fox Noise is never going to support Obama, regardless.

Obama is acting like Dick Cheney’s cousin, WTF?

What a disappointment this is! Impeachment anyone?

I think that’s a bit premature, Mizuki, as he hasn’t even gotten to spend one day in office. And while I hope otherwise, I am just afraid that Obama will not shed his “electable” attitudes that I defended for two years :(.

I hope I am wrong…..

Mizuki – before you damn the man, look at this:

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/religion/post/2008/12/60178434/1

Second, it’s not about cow towing to the crazy fringe right. It’s about being inclusive. Hence you have two pastors from VERY different points of view.

Indeed, as someone who strongly believes in separating church and state, I don’t think there should even be an invocation or a benediction.

But you’re looking at a President who says he wants to be the President for EVERYBODY. You don’t do that by shutting people out just because you don’t agree with them.

I really think you’re being very shrill and pessimistic by taking the action of allowing a religious man to do a freaking prayer at a ceremony, a meaningless speaking of some words that in my opinion are completely unnecessary anyway, and using that to decide that suddenly this means that Obama is going to turn his back on health care and energy policy and foreign policy? I mean, this is guilt by association. You are behaving no more honorably that those idiotic fuckwads who tried to demonize Obama for Pastor Wright. An invocation is NOT governance, and letting someone speak at a ceremony in your honor is not lawmaking.

If we took your modus operandi and put it into place, I guaran-goddamn-tee you that what would happen is you would ALIENATE not just the Limbaughs and the Hannitys and the O’Reillys and the Coulters, but you would foster an impression among HALF THE COUNTRY that our leader does not give ANY regard to ANYTHING they have to say…JUST LIKE BUSH!!! If you actually occassionally put out a good faith gesture, particualrly in a ceremonial setting where it just plain doesn’t matter and won’t change a single damn thing, then what you are doing is you are fostering an impression among those who are resistant to Obama.

If however you throw them a bone, not “accomodate” their craziness, but just throw them a bone, don’t make them feel like “you neocons can suck it” (tempting though that may be), they may warm at least a bit to you…at least enough of them to start building some concensus. Because what happens is this…they feel he will listen to them and understand their points of view and consider what they have to say. And let’s say that some of their concerns are valid…like I explained above for example, it’s valid to say that they don’t want the government changing their church traditions…that’s fair. OK, that can be accomodated. But if they take a hard line, say on gay unions in that it’s wrong and we can’t accept it, if Obama goes, well…too bad, cuz we’re fuckin’ doin’ it, then they will put up every roadblock you can imagine. But the problem is, when you get to the point where you can sit down at the table, what you really need to do is ask, OK, what are your objections, what is your REAL issue, and you say, becuase here’s mine…here’s why it’s a humanitarian issue and here’s why we have to work out our differences on this one. Then you get co-operation. But we’ll never even GET to sit down at that table if we start to demonize everyone who’s ever taken a position we think is faulty.

We must seek to understand and correct the misconceptions…if we try to just go over their heads, OK, maybe it works in the short term, but what about 8 years from now, when the Rethuglicans regroup and say, that fuckin’ Obama just did whatever the hell he wanted to and didn’t ever even hear us out, fuck him, we’re going to destroy EVERYTHING he did. Which is what YOU’RE advocating we do NOW.

One last point, consider this….you are trying to fight hate with hate. When you do that you just grow to hate each other more. And it’s easier to talk to someone you distrust than it is to talk to someone you hate. I think that’s all Obama is doing, trying to convert hate to distrust and distrust to skepticism.

One of the reasons that the people of this country are so divided is that we are so quick to crucify anyone we don’t agree with.

I guess things really don’t ever change.

@steelmarket – EXACTLY…I think this is what Obama is trying to turn around!

And how exactly are we supposed to teach these people that it’s wrong to hate, by hating them?

dale….hope you are right

Mizuki – give him a chance, you’ll see I am. No, it’s to going to convert everyone, but it will work. I used to actually think a lot like you…this isn’t a situation where I’m a moderate who just hasn’t figured out the score yet. I’m a liberal who HATES politics…I HATE that we can’t just do what is right and be done with it. But I spent the last 8 years awakening to the realization that when I spewed forth all the things I hated about those who disagreed with me, I did nothing but preach to the choir. But when I sought out middle ground, even where it was scarce, and treated people with civility, even when I personally thought the world would be a better place without them, I actually got people who would have NEVER listed to the old, bitter about the stolen election me in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005, but come about 2006, when I realized that there was some wisdom to the adages about loving your enemies, killing them with kindness and keeping your friends close and your enemies closer, I actually got people to listen and respond to me in ways I NEVER expected. I think Obama is awesomely wise…and I understand why this would piss you off…it would have pissed me off two years ago, but the Bush years have taught me that anger is a path to self destruction and nothing more. Have faith, see how he GOVERNS before you call for his head on a platter, that’s all I ask!

Here’s another good article. It talks about how he’s been a moderate on other issues, how he was the one who worked to expand the evangelical agenda to include more than just anti-abortion, and Obama’s comment about how 2 years ago, even though Warren knew Obama held different positions than he did on social issues, Warren invited Obama to speak at his church, and how we need to, as I’ve been arguing, foster an environment where we can disagree without being disagreeable….again something WHOLLY consistent with Obama’s position all along.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/18/rick.warren/

Here's another good article about why Rick Warren's selection is an outrage: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1867664,00.html

And one about the distinction between “Christian” and “moderate”:
http://www.areasofmyexpertise.com/2008/12/everything-i-have-to-say-about-rick-warren/

And here’s an interesting article on why it’s not so bad (written by a gay man, btw):

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-ostertag/why-gay-marriage-is-the-w_b_152717.html

The MOST interesting thing I took out of this article is that after pointing out that Warren likened giving marriage rights to gays to giving them to polygamists and incestuous relationships (you know the drill), it points out the media is pretty much parsing that one quote without providing the rest of the interview (if you’ll care to notice, both articles tonedef posted point to Warren’s likening of gay marriage to pedophilia and polygamy, but neither mentions this follow up):

Q: Which do you think is a greater threat to the American family – divorce or gay marriage?

A: [laughs] That’s a no brainer. Divorce. There’s no doubt about it.

Q: So why do we hear so much more – especially from religious conservatives – about gay marriage than about divorce?

A: Oh we always love to talk about other sins more than ours. Why do we hear more about drug use than about being overweight? [Note: Warren is quite overweight.]

Q: Just to clarify, do you support civil unions or domestic partnerships?

A: I don’t know if I’d use the term there but I support full equal rights for everybody in America. I don’t believe we should have unequal rights depending on particular lifestyles so I fully support equal rights.

Q: What about partnership benefits in terms of insurance or hospital visitation?

A: You know, not a problem with me.

So clearly, he’s not about discriminating against people, he just doesn’t want marriage, which to him is a religious concept, not a legal one, to be co-opted by something he doesn’t believe is right. BUT he also does not seem to “hate” gays, nor does he wish them to be denied the same rights as everyone else.

Far as I can tell, that’s the EXACT same position Obama was very clear about holding all along. Sorry, it ain’t perfect, and I know it’s easy for me to talk being a straight man, but try to find a religious official who believes that God defines marraige as between two people and not just between one man and one woman. Has any pastor in the history of Presidential innaugurations ever been pro gay marriage? Though I simpathize with your cause, I think you’re trying to create a standard which would be impossible for ANYONE to live up to.

Now I can understand why the second article, which is essentially someone’s opinion parsed out via blog post, can question how a person can supposedly support equal rights for gays, but be against gay marriage, and to that I have to say that it’s because in their mind, it’s little more than an issue of symantics. To religious folk, marriage is an institution that pre-dates any laws put around it, their ceremonial aspects of the whole thing to them are the important part, and to them, the law should not re-define it.

And what I think WOULD change a LOT of minds even among the faithful would be if we’d just rename the legal equivalent of marriage for ALL PEOPLE, not just for gays, but for straights as well. I don’t care what we call it. I’m no less married to my wife because we didn’t marry in a church, we didn’t have a religious-ceremonial aspect…we had our own ceremony, but there was no “God” involved, period. When you get married, really when you sign that certificate, you’re married, the ceremony is the show, the party. What I put the greatest importance on is your legal right to sign that certificate…that allows you property sharing, survivorship, parenting, visitation and a whole myriad of other rights which can not be obtained either in a package deal or in such a concrete and uncontestable manner unless you are of the opposite sex, and that is what is wrong…that is discrimination written into the laws.

But churches really are supposed to be separate from the state, so the whole idea that we would just take the name marriage and bend its definition to fit the laws of man, well I can see how that’s just as offensive to a religious nut as not giving those rights to gays is to a gay activist. So I say the issue is, call all civil unions something other than marriage, if people want to get “married” at the same time so their marriage is valid in the eyes of their God, more power to them, but there is no requirement. We don’t require everyone signing that certificate to have a ceremony, so why should we require that everyone who signs that certificate meets the qualifications set up by the churches to qualify for that ceremony?

If we did that, I don’t think guys like Warren would give a rats ass what gays did in their bedrooms…he understands there are bigger issues out there, and seriously, we are at a crossroads here. We could let the evangelicals snap back into their liberal hating, cloistered existences where they dream up all manner of ways to roadblock progress because it’s more important to them what others do in their bedrooms than it is whether we save the fucking planet, or we can welcome guys like Warren, who do have some pretty fucking weird ideas, into the fold, because he can actually get the people who follow him to see the big picture and to realize that faith is not a discriminatory thing.

So again, I understand the alarm, I just think it’s shrill and unfounded and myopic and if we push too hard, y’all are just going to shoot yourself in the foot, so I say, with all due respect, kick back, relax, stfu about it, and let the man show you that one speech is not going to set back your cause to the stone age…it’s just not going to happen.

Instead of “stfu“ing, I’m going to post one last time. I completely agree that Rick Warren has a huge following, and promotes humanitarian causes. I completely disagree that Rick Warren believes in full equality for LGBT people, and I’d put a large sum of money down to suggest that he completely opposes adoption by gay couples and the repeal of DADT.

Barack Obama can’t disinvite Warren, and I honestly hope that this brings those middle-of-the-road members of his church to our side, but don’t have any high hopes there. This is not about a guy giving a speech at an inauguration. In fact, I seriously doubt that any mention of LGBT issues will even occur in the speech. It’s more about Mr. Obama. LGBT people have espoused that his attitudes were pre-election posturing, and carried on fundraising and campaigning. This is just the first post-election hint that maybe, after all, he doesn’t believe in equal protection.

You understand my alarm, and it’s shrill, unfounded, and myopic. I understand your dismissal, and it’s deluded, apologist, and enabling.

Now, I’ll stfu, and hopefully in six months, the president will have made me look like a complete ass. I’ve never wanted that so bad.

Your first paragraph may be right, but who gets to decide whether or not gays can addopt or whether DADT gets repealed? Warren? I think not.

I think you miss the big picture is all. A LOT of people have accused Obama of pre-election posturing, and now that he’s actually making decisions in the lead up to his innauguration, everyone and his brother has an opinion about how he promised change and isn’t bringing it. But the thing is, if you actually paid attention to what he said and didn’t just assume that “if he means it, then he’ll do it this way, period” which is what a LOT of people seem to be expecting (i.e. because he’s not going about bringing the change in the WAY they want him to, they’ve decided he’s abandoned the change altogether). I certainly don’t think that it’s deluded to think that when Obama has so far, from my point of view, been 100% consistent in everything he’s said vs. everything he’s done, to think that people are just trying to micromanage too much and dictate the methods and not the outcome. I also don’t think I’m a warren apologist, I disagree with many of the things he says, but I firmly believe that the word marriage should just be given to the church…it’s their word, and I don’t think our insisting that we give gays the rights AND the word is going to every lead anywhere. I also don’t think including your enemies in the discussion is enabling, I think it’s common sense, the President is the Decider, inputs can come from anywhere…and here’s the $64,000 question as I see it…how can we overcome this lock step, staunch resistance to an issue that to the more enlightened among us is a no brainer? I don’t think the answer is shutting them out…I think the answer is bringing them close, understanding in greater detail what their hangups are, and addressing each small piece of it in the proper way. I think the TRUE Christians among his followers COULD be persuaded by the humanitarian arguments, it’s just that when all they ever see of gays is loud, gaudy displays at parades and in your face activists demanding something which they see as a requirement for them to give up certain rights they hold dear, then you can never penetrate that surface and get through to them and say, LOOK, you’re missing the point.

You have hopes that in 6 months you’ll be proven wrong…I don’t know if the change that we need will happen in 6 months, that’s a pretty tall order, but I am confident you will see progress. My problem though is with this attitude that “The Time Has Come®” you are basically saying that we’re going to steamroll cultural norms, and as with any civil rights issue, it just don’t work that way. That sucks. It’s not fair. It’s not right. But as you would stake a large sum of money on Warren not being for gay adoption, I’d similarly stake a large sum of money that change comes faster in the long run if you guide it along the right path than if you try to force it down a path where it doesn’t fit. Because even if you do force progress, there is always a backlash. Just think back to the Civil Rights movement (and let’s face it, this is a Civil Rights issue), it took about 11 years and countless deaths to forcibly integrate the public school system. I’m sure in 1953 there were people who could no longer stand the oppression, and I feel for them the way I feel for gays today. But I might suggest that if instead of forcing the issue, leadership had guided America to integrated schools in a more considered and deliberate manner, it might have taken 5 or 6 years and no one would have died for it. Now that’s just a guesstimate, but that’s what I’m talking about here.

It’s easy for a person who is not personally affected (other than via friends and family who are being discriminated against) to say “be patient”...yes, you’ve been patient your whole life, now is the time…you’re so close you can taste it. What I fear here is that this rhetoric, where we’re going to say that certain people just aren’t acceptable for the President to look to for ANYTHING because they hold positions I find repulsive is an exclusionary and in the end, counterproductive way of doing things. It will always be a lot easier to bring friends to your side than enemies, and therefore I think we should make nice, because if we don’t, they SURE as hell aren’t going to. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Oh and btw tonedef, just lest there be any hard feelings, my stfu was directed moreso at the media which only reports the part of the story they want you to see and ends up whipping up dissent where it’s both unnecessary and destructive. I do think everyone should be able to speak their minds and justify their opinions, I just think the people who are out there saying, “this is UNACCEPTABLE, because Warren said [item a]” need to stfu unless they are going to point out that Warren ALSO said item b and c. I don’t think it’s being an apologist to ask to present all sides of the story.

Hate to keep even posting here, as it feels like beating a dead horse, but yet again, Nate Silver over at 538 has posted something that cuts to the heart of it in a way my incessant rambling never could:

I think the Warren dust-up reveals is that the left is now willing to raise at least as much ruckus about the issue as the right. The left, of course, has always had its own moral compass, but it’s now beginning to convert that into more focused, overtly political action. If John Kerry had won four years ago, and invited Warren or some analogous pastor to give his invocation, would there have been this much debate about it? It’s hard to say for sure, but I don’t think we would have heard very much about it at all. This all feels very recent, stemming from a renewed self-confidence on the part of the left, coupled in this particular instance with the aftermath of Proposition 8.

I say this as someone, by the way, who buys into the “Can’t we all just get along?” side of the argument. There’s a difference between feeling as though you have superior morals and feeling morally superior, and some of the discussion has veered toward the wrong side of that equation.

In short, I think he views the renewed passion as a good thing (I do too), but he views some of the rhetoric which ends up being divisive and not productive as being a case of confusing one’s superior moral argument with one’s personal moral superiority (which is very much like what I was trying to say).

I’m willing to bet Mr. Silver would agree with me that were Obama not someone who plays well with others, even others who don’t share his values, he would not have won this election, and it would be destructive to his future and the future of the Democratic party to seek to squash dissent, which seems to be the crux of many of the arguments put forth by the left leaning individuals who aren’t happy with some of his cabinet appointments and his choice of invocation giver.

OK, I’ll leave it alone now unless I happen upon something else I think is extremely germane to the issue.

Why don’t you listen to His answer.

Here’s his view on Civil Rights