Would a bigot help?
That's an important question in thinking about Rick Warren. He has been as harmful to gay equality as any religious figure on the right, particularly for his role in urging his parishioners - and everyone else who "believes what the Bible says" - to vote against marriage equality in California -- all the while denying he had done any such thing.
He has also played a starring role in stirring up the pot in Uganda against homosexuals. Which is why his strong and explicit statement against the anti-homosexuality bill there is so important. As Rachel Maddow says, "better late than never."
So is he a bigot? The epithet is potent enough to do to our opponents what they do to us - charge them with a fundamental lack of humanity or decency. Warren's statement is a firm assertion of both, and does him credit.
But Warren is all over the map on gay equality. On her show last night, Maddow clearly nailed Warren's incoherence, both on Prop. 8 and on his role in Uganda. But that is where I think a bit of empathy may be in order (and I know this will be controversial).
Like so many other heterosexuals of his age and older, Warren is caught in a bind. He believed the lies and misperceptions about homosexuality that history, particularly as embodied in his religion, have taught him. He relied on those distortions, and built his belief system around them.
For many years, we did too. It was hard to realize and then live out the truth about our own lives against those perversions of truth. But as the Catholic church learns daily, you cannot deny nature long without paying a price. Sex and intimacy are fundamental to human beings, and cannot be either renounced or faked. We learned that the hard way, and are trying to correct the record so it doesn't happen again.
Warren is obviously struggling with that. His conversation after Prop. 8 with Melissa Etheridge may have been a turning point. But his loyalty to the lies history taught him about us still permits him to blind himself to the lies he tells himself. And no lies are more persuasive then those.
No one should go easy on Warren. It is the relentlessness of Maddow and Andrew Sullivan and particularly Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin that has put the pressure on him to correct the problem he was complicit in in Uganda. The fact he has done so can make an enormous difference.
But he lives here, and is accountable here. The inconsistency of his position on homosexuality is more apparent with each passing day. A bigot, I think, would refuse to face that. I'm not sure whether Warren is a bigot in that sense. But his action now should give us reason to hope. He can be a powerful ally.
One Comment for “Non-bigotry (Cont.): Rick Warren”
posted by Yeek on
“A bigot, I think, would refuse to face that.”
Warren HAS refused to face the facts. He is only addressing them now because he has been forced to do so. A bigot is simply someone who believes that certain groups of people are not as good as the group he belongs to, and holds this belief in spite of evidence to the contrary. Rick Warren fits that description quite nicely.
Warren could be a powerful ally, but he is much more valuable as a discredited public spectacle of dishonorable piety. He is also much more deserving of this designation, which makes it a win-win.