Rick Warren a no-show on This Week .... Spokesperson cites "exhaustion."
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Rick Warren’s spokesperson has sent a letter to Shuck & Jive blogger John Shuck, a progressive Presbyterian minister here in Tennessee who supports marriage equality and who rightfully called Warren on his “I never campaigned for Prop 8” lie.
Apparently some other folks got the letter too (I didn't), so it seems Warren’s spokesperson is doing a little damage control in the wake of that Larry King Live appearance. Warren, it appears, was against Prop. 8 before he was against Prop. 8 before he was for gays before he was against them .... or somethin'.
She actually thinks folks will buy this nonsense:
When Dr. Warren told Larry King that he never campaigned for California's Proposition 8, he was referring to not participating in the official two-year organized advocacy effort specific to the ballot initiative in that state, based on his focus and leadership on other compassion issues. Because he's a pastor, not an activist, in response to inquiries from church members, he issued an email and video message to his congregation days before the election confirming where he and Saddleback Church stood on this issue.
This is really rich. I’ve never seen someone in such deep denial about the craven ambition of their client. Rick Warren is just a simple pastor, not a limelight-seeking celebrity with a coterie of media handlers. A guy whose video messages to his congregation are inconsequential little things that go completely unnoticed by anyone outside his small little church community. Right.
Shuck rightfully calls him on this little BS, too, and the rant is awesome:
He thinks that somehow having "gay friends" absolves him from actively working to pass Proposition 8. Yes, he actively worked to pass Proposition 8. He didn't stuff envelopes. He didn't go to meetings. He didn't knock on doors. He didn't make telephone calls. He helped the cause of Proposition 8 more than thousands of hours of activism by those who did those things.Do go over to Shuck & Jive and read the rest of the post. Let me say, as a progressive Presbyterian myself, Pastor Shuck rawks.
He did it with a two minute fifteen second video. Care to see it again?
I just don't get this fence-riding by Warren. I guess he wants everyone to love him, from conservative evangelicals to the gays he claims as friends. But when you take a public stand on someone's civil rights, and classify certain people as more equal than others, you're gonna piss folks off.
Here a lesbian woman is about to get deported because she can’t legally wed her partner of 23 years, the woman with whom she has two children. She is not a U.S. citizen but her partner is; if she were straight she could wed and be a citizen. She’s not straight, she’s gay, and the federal government won’t recognize her relationship because of ignorant people like Rick Warren who have taken certain passages of the Bible as the inerrant word of God, while completely ignoring others. What they end up with is a world view that discriminates and destroys families.
Here’s a reminder for Rick Warren: people used the Bible to justify slavery, Jim Crow, anti-miscegenation laws, the slaughter of Native Americans, the oppression of women, and a host of other atrocities. Those people were wrong then, and you are wrong now.
