On the issue of Rick Warren speaking at Obama's inauguration

[pegkerr]

I agree with bekkio and choralreef: of all of the commentary I've seen on Obama's choice to have Rick Warren give the invocation at his inauguration, this dovetails with my own thinking the most. Yes, I understand why some people are smarting over Proposition 8 and are angry over this. I'm hurting over Proposition 8, too. But I agree: Obama understands that we need to build upon our common ground, rather than exacerbating our wounds.

Comments

[daharyn.livejournal.com]

Gosh, kinda easy for you to say, don'cha think?

It's bigoted bullshit, and a slap in the face to every queer person who supported the guy.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Don't make assumptions. No, it's not easy for me to say. No, no, no. I am really, really angry about Proposition 8. I won't assume you've read my second novel, but I have been doing some extremely extensive thinking for years about the intersection of gay civil rights and religion in American culture. Frankly, I'm too fucking depressed tonight to thrash it all out in a reply comment here, so I'm not gonna even try. choralreef said it better than I could at this point anyway. Just . . . I'm thinking about what Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."

[folk.livejournal.com]

Wow. Don't be a dick.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry for your loss, that you don't know Peg well enough to know how wrong you are.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Thank you. It means a lot to me to hear you say this.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

You're welcome.

[folk.livejournal.com]

At the moment, I'm more in the camp that's incredibly frustrated and disappointed. I am, quite simply, not okay with gay rights being a civil right that it's okay for folks to disagree about.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

My reply to this may be disjointed; I am REALLY not at my best tonight; sorry.

I seem to remember hearing something today, in all my omnivorous scarfing down of articles about this controversy, that there really is a somewhat more established friendship there than many people realize. I think I heard somewhere today that Rick Warren actually provided Obama with some editorial feedback on a draft of The Audacity of Hope, but if that is true, I cannot find the reference now. Certainly, Obama did offer some words of praise of Warren in that book. I haven't yet read The Audacity of Hope (maybe he was referring to Warren's stance on various AIDS issues?), although I've put it on my wish list for Christmas. But in my attempts to hunt down that half-remembered reference, I ran across this review of The Audacity of Hope, from the New York Review of Books, which is extremely interesting to read in light of this controversy, and may offer a clue to Obama's thinking in extending the invitation to Warren:

. . . the main reason for his success surely has to do with the central theme of his rhetoric. In the convention speech, as in all his major speeches, Obama aimed far higher than the usual uninspiring Democratic laundry list of health care, good jobs, devotion to Roe v. Wade, and the rest. His subject is our shared civic culture, which he sees as under threat—mostly from the right but also from the left. He believes our red-versus-blue politics of today is positively toxic, and he thinks that our only hope is to rise above it. The theme of The Audacity of Hope is not how the Democrats can win more elections, or how a certain liberal policy goal can be attained; it is, he writes in the book's early pages, "how we might begin the process of changing our politics and our civic life." He wants a political culture that is, to be sure, liberal in its outlook but does the difficult work of trying to speak to people who don't share liberalism's assumptions (without being accommodationist to conservatives in power; Obama is no Joe Lieberman). . . The Audacity of Hope confirms what many have suspected about Obama since he made his impressive entrance on the scene. He feels himself a man in a bubble—trapped inside political and ideological systems that are at once too small for him in their poverty of spirit and too large for him in their power to make everyone succumb to their rules. He wants to smash the bubble and assemble from the shards something dynamic and new. He believes that he is the one who can replace those "shared assumptions." But he may need a platform larger than the Senate from which to do it.

[Note: this review was written in 2006] Read the whole review to get the whole gist.

And there's something else I want to say to tie it back to making his invitation to Warren if not defensible or less hurtful, perhaps more understandable, in line with reaching toward a long-term goal that we can agree with, but honestly, I'm much too fried, John, to tackle it tonight. Just pretend, for the sake of our long friendship, that I'm displaying more eloquence than I'm capable of managing here. Forgive me my inadequacy.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

It is interesting, by the way, to compare this to the heat and flack Rick Warren received from the Right, when he extended an invitation to Obama in 2006, since Obama is pro-choice.

[nmsunbear.livejournal.com]

That is really interesting. The first sentence or so of that article could be about Obama's recent choice, not Warren's then.

Thanks for posting this. I tend not to believe it of myself, but I tend - like so many Americans today - to stick to my "side" without a whole lot of thought as to what the other "side" is thinking. It is easy to forget that finding common ground is something that needs to be done from both sides.

(Disclaimer, in case it's necessary: I too was horrified that Prop 8 passed, and cannot comprehend it. The people who passed it are wrong. But I also deeply admire people who can see past their differences to learn from one another. I would not have picked Rick Warren, ever. But I am not Barack Obama. And I would also make a terrible president.)

[dreamflower]

I just think he's keeping his promise to be *everyone's* president. Yes, there will be people he disagrees with--he's not willing to consign anyone to the sidelines if there is any common ground at all to be found.

The real solution to the problem is to take government out of the marriage business completely: *all* unions should be civil unions if they are sanctioned by the gov't. And marriage should be a private matter decided by the people involved and their own preferences.

But I suppose that idea is too radical for *either* side.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

See my comment here.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

That seems to be the norm in the rest of the world; I'd be happy to see it here.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

As has been noted elsewhere (e.g., http://www.electoral-vote.com/) Rick Warren has been active in positive ways on issues such as AIDS and poverty. Reaching out to people, including people, with whom we share some values, even if we disagree on other issues, is the ONLY way anything will be accomplished.

There is hardly anyone--hardly any one of us--who has no blind spots at all when it comes to issues of justice and equality. Rick Warren has his, but he also has done some real good according to my values.

I'll bet there are a lot of people who said, "Just because Obama attends his church doesn't mean he accepts everything Rev. Wright says" who are now unwilling to take that same viewpoint toward his friendship (yes, I think it is) with Rick Warren. But the wisest people I have ever known have been those who took what lessons resonated with them, from any source they found.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I see this choice as exacerbating our wounds. I do not see any room for the kinds of bigotry that Warren has built his career on in the big tent; it's big, but it's still flammable.

[magicwoman.livejournal.com]

I think he could have made a less inflammatory choice. I think it's Obama's right to pick the person he wants to do the innvocation, but I (and this is my opinion only) think it's a less than ideal choice.

[schnoogle.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that the main issue isn't that Rick Warren is against same-sex marriage, it's that he was actively campaigning against established marriage rights just weeks ago, and lying in the course of doing so. "Reaching across the aisle", so to speak, is certainly an honorable goal, but srely Obama could have found someone of similar views but without the recent political activity against Prop 8 to invite?