Many of you might have read Juan Cole's account of Rick Warren's appearance this weekend at the annual conference of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). Cole describes MPAC as follows:
This is the American Muslim community at its best-- socially and spiritually active, deeply interested in civil rights, and insisting on reclaiming their religion from extremists. Many of them are religious and social liberals who dislike fundamentalism.
Also in attendance at the conference was Melissa Etheridge, who many of you already know is gay and partnered with actress Tammy Lynn Michaels, with whom she has two children and had hoped to legally marry before Prop 8 was passed in California. Cole recounts that MPAC members urged Warren to call Etheridge before his appearance, which he did on Friday night. They talked for about 30 minutes. In addition, when he addressed the conference, Warren tried to dispel the notion that he was bigoted by claiming, "Let me just get this over very quickly. I love Muslims. And for the media's purpose, I happen to love gays and straights." Warren went on to claim he was a long time Etheridge fan, owning all her albums dating back to her 1988 debut album and going so far as exclaiming, "I'm enough of a groupie that I got her autograph on the Christmas album."
Many of you probably reacted to his effusive comments the same way I did: dismissing them as further CYA protestations of a man who doesn't want to be seen as a bigot after having offensively compared gay marriage to incest, pedophilia, and polygamy. Nevertheless, Etheridge was impressed enough by her conversations with Warren that she went before cameras following the conference and urged GLBT leaders to reach out to Warren. Here is part of clip that ran on the local news that night:
Etheridge's partner, Tammy Lynnn, followed up with a (not very well written but earnest and effective enough) blog post which also urged gays and lesbians to reach out to Warren:
so honey met rick warren last night. well, she spoke to him on the phone beforehand, giving us insight into the man the media has made our latest "HE HATES YOU!" target. if i sit real still and think about it.. it's almost like reverse smear-the-queer. remember that recess game in second grade...when one kid had the ball, and all the other kids had to chase and kick the shit out of said person, hence "smearing" him? well, at times, it seems that the media presents us with target after target to smear, as if to say to us, "THIS IS THE GUY HOLDING YOU BACK!! GO GIT 'IM!!!" and it does seem that my lovely gay family is so bruised and bettered (sic) and ready to fight back (myself included), that we attack and deem someone ANTI-GAY, and ready to SMEAR, simply when they don't want the word "marriage" brought into our gay ceremonies. now, if the person doesn't want gays AT ALL, then i'm gonna chase that one down. but, i'm starting to think that there are indeed some people... some well-meaning and loving people... who are not at all ANTI-GAY, that's not why they don't want the word marriage used... they are merely RELIGIOUS. and for religious (archaic) reasons, they want to stay safe and respectful to WHAT THEY'VE BEEN TAUGHT....
rick is not a televangelist. rick is not falwell. rick spoke of some "stupid" things he's said (his word, not mine), some missquotes that were given, and lots of ammunition from the media. all excellent points. (we're all war-minded right now, you know. it's easy for the media to distract us by throwing us into our own verbal wars here at home.) ) what to do, what to do.... the rest of the public is given an animation of rick warren... and then my wife meets the man behind the projections, the quotes, the "OTHER SIDE". and he is warm, caring, effusive, and LOVES gays. since he nearly swallowed honey when he hugged her, i tend to believe him. he wants our gay marriages to be just as respected and embraced as the straight marriages. he just wants to wear his yamaka, and me wear my hat.
anway (sic). hath hell frozenth over? rick warren was humble and kind. honey and i are to go to his church sometime soon. and honey invited him to our house for an afternoon, to be with our family. (w.t.f.)
open minds hearts hands
differences fade.
Taking the temperature of DailyKos from the latest Recommended diaries and the heated discussions within other diaries, I take it that many of my fellow Kossacks are not in the mood for the "kumbaya/give-peace-a-chance" message of Melissa Etheridge and Tammy Lynn Michaels. Right now it seems many of us in a "I'm mad as hell and not going to take it anymore!" state of mind. It's probably a good place to be. There are stages to how we deal with hurt and loss and a sense of betrayal. Nevertheless, I would hope in time we could eventually see Obama's choice of Warren and the focus the media has given to the subsequent uproar as an opportunity to move ahead by having the courage to not just let everyone understand our hurt and anger and disappointment but to know that what we as gays and lesbians want is just what everyone else wants - that our plight is really not about sex (well, not just about sex) but about love and companionship and the desire to live our lives with dignity and security and the knowledge that our government provides us the same protections under the law to live out our lives without fear - just as other heterosexuals and married couples have hoped and prayed for for thousands of years. I would hope we could make clear that this is not a battle about whether it is "natural" for certain reproductive body parts go together but that it is natural and understandable for two hearts to want to come together and stay together.
Many would think that Melissa Etheridge and Tammy Lynn Michaels would be particularly bitter that their fellow Americans have not understood what is at stake for them. They have two children they want to raise to be happy and feel secure. Not having the legal protections marriage would provide them makes their work that much more difficult. Hell, Etheridge was so mad that at one point she even claimed she wasn't going to pay her state taxes if California continued to treat her as a second class citizen. Nevertheless, instead of merely pounding their chests and raging, raging against the injustice, Etheridge and Michaels have asked us to reach out with civility. This is not the first time Etheridge has shown a willingness to do so, as this clip from the View illustrates, when she politely but firmly challenges Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the resident Republican:
These are the sort of conversations and debates we should be having with each other, not just among the hermetically sealed echo chambers of blogs like DailyKos. This here choir is already on our side. We need to get others on our side. We need to find a way to reach out and get others to want to join our ranks of understanding. Why do you think evangelicals Christians are so powerful? It goes right back to the very heart of what it means to be evangelical: these are Christians whose mission is to go out and convert others to their cause. Of course, despite what some fundamentalists say, we gays and lesbians know that this is not about recruiting heterosexuals to homosexuality. It can't be done. Just as you can't recruit a white person to have black skin, you're either gay or you're not. But we can open other's hearts and minds about what we want and need. And maybe, just maybe, Rick Warren and his followers are a good place to start.
Update [2008-12-22 18:15:31 by John Campanelli]: I don't mean to make more of this than it may actually mean, but this might, just might, be a sign of progress: according to John Aravois at AmericaBlog, Saddleback Church has removed the anti-gay language from its website that demanded gays and lesbians repent before they can become members of his church:
Deny me three times, Rick?
So Rick Warren pulled the anti-gay language from his church Web site. The site used to explicitly ban gays from membership in the church...
So does Rick Warren now welcome gays, all gays, as members of his church? Or is he simply embarrassed of his views - embarrassed of God's views, per Warren's own admission? And if Warren is embarrassed of God's views, then what is he doing as a public spokesman on religion?
And whose idea was it to remove the anti-gay language? Warren's, or Obama's?
In addition, I have to confess to feeling quite beat up from many of the comments in this diary. I realize that comes with the territory. Nevertheless, I want to link to a comment I left at AntonBursch 's Recommended diary and quote part of it here:
Several people have commented in that diary that somehow I believe we gays and lesbians shouldn't be angry and hurt by what Warren said. Well, just the opposite. The first thing I would do if I got the chance to talk to Warren is to express how degrading and dehumanizing his statements and policies toward gays and lesbians are.
I also realize that people are angry at Obama for giving him such a position of honor at the Inauguration. Somehow people think that because I urge our reaching out and expressing our anger and concerns to Warren I somehow condone Obama's choice. Instead, I just think that, now that we have the media's and Warren's attention as a result of this uproar, we should use this opportunity to our advantage.
The rest of the comment is quite long, so I won't post the full thing here. I hope you read the rest of it. I explain why I urgently want to take advantage of the Rick Warren controversy.
Update [2008-12-22 18:15:31 by John Campanelli]: Melissa Etheridge has posted at Huffington Post. Here is the most promising part of the post:
I hadn't heard of Pastor Rick Warren before all of this. When I heard the news, in its neat little sound bite form that we are so accustomed to, it painted the picture for me. This Pastor Rick must surely be one hate spouting, money grabbing, bad hair televangelist like all the others. He probably has his own gay little secret bathroom stall somewhere, you know. One more hater working up his congregation to hate the gays, comparing us to pedophiles and those who commit incest, blah blah blah. Same 'ole thing. Would I be boycotting the inauguration? Would we be marching again?
Well, I have to tell you my friends, the universe has a sense of humor and indeed works in mysterious ways. As I was winding down the promotion for my Christmas album I had one more stop last night. I'd agreed to play a song I'd written with my friend Salman Ahmed, a Sufi Muslim from Pakistan. The song is called "Ring The Bells," and it's a call for peace and unity in our world. We were going to perform our song for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a group of Muslim Americans that tries to raise awareness in this country, and the world, about the majority of good, loving, Muslims. I was honored, considering some in the Muslim religion consider singing to be against God, while other Muslim countries have harsh penalties, even death for homosexuals. I felt it was a very brave gesture for them to make. I received a call the day before to inform me of the keynote speaker that night... Pastor Rick Warren. I was stunned. My fight or flight instinct took over, should I cancel? Then a calm voice inside me said, "Are you really about peace or not?"
I told my manager to reach out to Pastor Warren and say "In the spirit of unity I would like to talk to him." They gave him my phone number. On the day of the conference I received a call from Pastor Rick, and before I could say anything, he told me what a fan he was. He had most of my albums from the very first one. What? This didn't sound like a gay hater, much less a preacher. He explained in very thoughtful words that as a Christian he believed in equal rights for everyone. He believed every loving relationship should have equal protection. He struggled with proposition 8 because he didn't want to see marriage redefined as anything other than between a man and a woman. He said he regretted his choice of words in his video message to his congregation about proposition 8 when he mentioned pedophiles and those who commit incest. He said that in no way, is that how he thought about gays. He invited me to his church, I invited him to my home to meet my wife and kids. He told me of his wife's struggle with breast cancer just a year before mine.