Lawrence.com

Posted by April Fleming December 24, 2008 at 9:06 p.m.

Can we just not do this thing?

The feelers have been picking up serious ire about Rick Warren giving Obama's inauguration invocation everywhere I go internet and tv-wise. Dan Savage is pissed, Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann are pissed, as is Ron Reagan and seemingly every single blogger on Kos and the other progressive sites. And it's not like they're wrong to be - Rick Warren's an asshole who believes that homosexuality is a disorder akin to bestiality and pedophilia. Then there was that painful interview he did with Ann Curry on the NBC Nightly News, where he said that he has to repress his urges to have sex with every beautiful woman that he sees, so essentially gay people (and I assume child predators and... animal predators?) should resist their bad urges as well. As he is saying the stuff about his own urges, the shot is edited to the look on Curry's face - it is something.So yes, his views on this are completely ignorant and I think that gay rights groups should continue to be loud about this. I keep reading and hearing that it's a slap in the face so soon after the passage of Prop 8 to have invited someone who holds these beliefs to do Obama's "kickoff prayer". And it is. It's ridiculous. Gay people should be fed up. Buuut, just one thing. This is no excuse for his beliefs - but is he not the rule rather than the exception? I grew up Catholic. Catholics on paper believe the same thing Warren does, even if they don't believe it individually... same goes for Jews, far as I know. It's a no on gays for Muslims as well (again, on paper for everybody). Forget Baptists. Mormons and Evangelicals, well, that's Rick Warren's line right there. Excepting a small handful of Protestant groups and Unitarians, is there anyone in the average American house of God that thinks being gay is a biological condition or whatever it is - basically that believes that in the end it is totally not a big deal? Anyway, point I'm interested in is that I think that if you were to gather up all of the preachers, pastors, rabbis, priests and other heads of houses of worship in this country, I'm afraid that the group that I agree with on marriage equality and equal civil rights would be quite small in comparison with those I disagree with. And that's really sad - but also just makes me reluctant to hate on Warren more quickly than the others, of which there are many, that share his views. I don't agree with any of them and none of them represent me or my ideas about faith. As an additional complication, I'm an atheist, so surely according to Warren or any other religious leader I'm going to hell as quickly as the rest. Or perhaps faster. As a member of the least trusted group out there, ranking "below several other minority groups, including immigrants, gays and lesbians, conservative Christians, Jews and Muslims, as "least likely to share everyday Americans' vision of society," can I suggest that maybe we could all be spared and that there be no religious invocation at all? Apparently you don't trust me, but would that be so bad for all of us just to skip the God thing before the public office inauguration?