It was hard to read.

Pop star Melissa Etheridge wrote a column in the Huffington Post defending pastor Rick Warren. Warren complimented her music and then she swooned – giving him a pass on his anti-gay rhetoric. The cunning preacher flattered her, she thought, but really flattened her – and the poor crooner had no idea what hit her.

In reading her well intentioned piece, I was most troubled that Melissa had not heard of Rick Warren before this dust up. He had only been on the cover of every major US news magazine. A forest worth of news stories have been written. He has been featured on every major TV show. His book has sold 20 million copies. This is not exactly a mystery man.

In her own way, she seems as out of touch as George W. Bush. Someone really ought to buy her a subscription to The New York Times for Christmas. Such ignorance from a public figure supposedly tuned into the issues of the day is rather shocking, and a bit depressing. It might explain why she came across as so naive and got rolled, simply because Warren likes to hum, “Come To My Window.”

I know Melissa means well, and I respect her. I applaud her for coming out and sharing her story. Her courage has saved lives and has brought our movement increased visibility. For this we owe her our gratitude. Plus, I enjoy her music too – and she puts on an amazing concert.

Still, I’d feel a bit better if she were more informed about the most famous author/preacher of the 21st century before she opined on the matter. The rest of us bother to do research before we open our mouths to represent the community. I expect the same level of commitment from pop stars who fancy themselves activists.

It could be that Barack Obama is simply smarter than the rest of us. The first black president of the Harvard Law Review has made a career of turning conventional wisdom on its head.

When people said that America was not ready for an African American president, he ran anyway — and won. He was counseled by countless talking heads to “go negative” against Hillary Clinton in the primaries and then John McCain — but he largely stuck to his strategy of staying positive — and won. In the middle of the campaign, Obama hit an iceberg named Rev. Jeremiah Wright, injecting race into a campaign that had desperately tried to shy away from this explosive issue. Obama discarded advice to spin the crisis and instead delivered a lecture on race relations that has gone down as one of the greatest speeches in the history of American politics — not to mention it saved his campaign. So, at this point in his rocket-propelled career, it is unwise to bet against the political instincts of Barack Obama.

Still, choosing pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration seemed like a gaffe that has served, if nothing else, as a distraction to Obama’ central message of unifying America. This olive branch to evangelical Christians, who largely supported John McCain, felt more like poison ivy to gay and lesbian voters, who overwhelmingly cast ballots for Obama.

After all, Warren has a program to “help” homosexuals “pray away the gay” and played a prominent role in passing Proposition 8, which prohibits same-sex couples from marrying in California. He has even compared same-sex couples marrying to incest and child abuse.

Even if scientists find that homosexuality is genetic, Warren would still counsel gay people to fight their “sin,” reducing our love to nothing more than perverted impulses. While Warren presumably gets his basic needs met by his wife, he expects gay people to abandon fulfilling relationships for dour lives of loneliness, severe depression and suicidal thoughts.

Obama can talk about unity all he wants, but what he is really doing is upholding the “Great Gay Exception. Obama would never have an anti-Semite on stage in the name of common ground. If so, why did he distance himself from fellow Chicagoan Louis Farrakhan during his campaign? Obama would also never dream of giving a platform to an open racist. But, Obama seems to think we should not object to him elevating Warren, who we find deeply offensive.

My hope is that Obama’ plan is to offer heavy doses of symbolism and style to power hungry preachers, like Warren — while delivering substantive policy achievements to the gay and lesbian community. When gay and lesbian leaders reacted with understandable indignation, Obama’ rebuttal was, people need to “learn to agree to disagree without being disagreeable.”

This phrase, that many Evangelicals are nodding their heads to in agreement, is a rhetorical trap. If they agree to this principle over the Warren flap, they have essentially forfeited their moral high ground if they get “disagreeable” when Congress passes a law that prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

The only flaw in this logic is that social conservatives rarely play by the same rules because they think they represent God. It is possible that Obama may have outsmarted himself by appealing to his sanctimonious enemies, who will never return the favor, while forfeiting support among his closest friends.

But, then again, maybe he really can buy goodwill by stroking the egos of narcissistic holy men. Rick Warren begins his best selling book The Purpose Driven Life with the refrain, “this is not about you.” Of course not! It’ always been about Rick Warren — whose camera-ready compassion is legendary.

If any good can come from this controversy, it is that many Americans now realize that Warren is masquerading as a moderate and posing as a pragmatist. Many Americans — who previously respected Warren — now view him as a poll-tested Pat Robertson who hides hate behind a Hawaiian shirt. He seemed arrogant and out of touch on NBC’ Dateline when he told Ann Curry that he wasn’t homophobic because he provided protesters outside his church with doughnuts. Gee, thanks, maybe next time you take away our rights we’ll get ice cream from His holiness.

The alternative storyline is really unthinkable.

In this version, Obama cynically used gay and lesbian people for money, votes and volunteers. Then before he is sworn in, he swears off equality. This plot was certainly advanced when not a single openly gay person was appointed to a high-level cabinet position.

Within a year, we will learn whether Obama’ decision to choose Warren was cagey, careless or cruel. If it is the former, we will soon view this cultural flashpoint as a flash in the pan. If it is the latter, it will cause an explosion of gay activism, giving many people who were previously apolitical, purpose driven lives — protesting Barack Obama.

Bishop John Bryson Chane says:

Mr. Warren has been rightly praised for his efforts to deepen the engagement of evangelical Christians with impoverished Africans. He has been justifiably lauded for putting the AIDS epidemic and global warming on the political agenda of the Christian right. Yet extravagant compassion toward some of God’s people does not justify the repression of others. Jesus came to save all of humankind, and as Archbishop Desmond Tutu has pointed out, “All means all.” But rather than embrace the wisdom of Archbishop Tutu, Mr. Warren has allied himself with men such as Archbishop Henry Orombi of Uganda who seek to “purify” the Anglican Communion, of which my Church is a member, by driving out gay and lesbian Christians and their supporters.

In choosing Mr. Warren, the president-elect has sent a distressing message internationally as well. In a recent television interview, Mr. Warren voiced his support for the assassination of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. These bizarre and regrettable remarks come at a time when much of the Muslim world already fears a Christian crusade against Islamic countries. Imagine our justifiable outrage if an Iranian cleric who advocated the assassination of President Bush had been selected to offer prayers when Ahmadinejad was sworn in.

At Andrew Sullivan’s blog, an ex-gay survivor discusses his first-hand experience with emotional damage at evangelist Rick Warren’s ex-gay program, Celebrate Recovery.

The survivor recalls Warren’s phony 12-step program damaging the lives of married men and their wives.

Addendum: The PFLAG Blog responds:

Rev. Warren needs to clarify … if he disagrees with President-Elect Obama’s belief that there should be no place for these insidious practices in true communities of faith.

There should be no room at the inaugural pulpit for a pastor who would put young people’s well-being at risk. There is nothing to “celebrate” about endangering the lives of those we love.

Murder and felony violence against gay and Latino Americans are on the rise — while the religious right trivializes the issue of violent hate crimes and airs false and unfounded allegations of violence at peaceful gay protests in defense of the freedom to marry.

According to the Associated Press (Dec. 16),

FBI statistics show there were 830 Hispanic victims of hate crimes last year, up from 819 the previous year and 595 in 2003.

According to another AP article (Dec. 15),

A rash of attacks against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people across the country – including the severe beating of a New York man whose attackers believed he was gay – suggests the number of reported assaults could rise in 2008, an advocacy group said.

The number of reported attacks against LGBT people increased 24 percent in 2007 over 2006, and they were expected to jump in 2008, said Sharon Stapel, executive director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project.

Officials were still crunching the 2008 figures, which will be released next spring, Stapel said.

An attack in Brooklyn last week united gay and Latino groups in demanding a federal response, as attackers killed Ecuadorian Jose Osvaldo Sucuzha?±ay, who was mistakenly thought by the killers to be gay. (Read More)

Box Turtle Bulletin says:

It is indeed possible to support Prop 8 civilly. But [Rick] Warren did not do that. Instead, he not only lied about what it would do, but he further insulted his “many gay friends” — and the rest of us — when he described their relationships as being on par with the lowest form of criminals. Even the most vile criminals — convicted rapists of old ladies, serial killers of defenseless orphans, and baby torturers — they all look down on child molesters, and they don’t think twice about killing them in the most sadistic way. But Warren thinks that the deeply held relationships among his “many gay friends” are no better than child rape. Or incest. Or polygamy.

That is the outrage. Maybe some day Rick Warren will see the need to apologize deeply for that offense. But it won’t happen until everyone ‚Äî including the mainstream media ‚Äî calls him on it. It’ not just about Prop 8. It goes much, much deeper, to that “model of civility” that Warren lacks.

The Family Research Council declared this afternoon that religious and political critics of Rick Warren are seeking to “silence” all of Christianity by denying this one superficial, controversial, and sectarian pastor the privilege of serving the inaugural invocation for President Obama:

[The Human Rights Campaign's] desire to exclude Pastor Warren from the inaugural, based upon his religious convictions, proves the validity of the concerns over the homosexual desire to silence the Church.

According to that logic, FRC and Rick Warren are seeking to “silence” the entire Roman Catholic Church, all of Judaism, and all the world’s atheists, by denying them a spot in the invocation.

According to Warren:

It’ interesting, the mainline [Christian churches] died. It’ an irrelevant word. The mainline is sidelined. There are more Muslims in America than there are Episcopalians. There’ less than two million of “em. We’ve had a 40 year decline in all the mainline denominations while the independent and charismatic and the evangelicals kept growing and growing.

Warren’s contempt for mainline Christianity may be, by itself, sufficient reason to oppose a role for him in inaugural prayer ceremonies that are intended to unite U.S. religious communities.

Addendum:

Pastor Dan observes:

Nobody likes Warren. The Religious Right think he’s a flake because he’s too liberal, and everybody else thinks he’s a flake because he’s a shallow idiot. From where I’m sitting, as the victim of an extremely expensive and extremely rigorous theological education, Obama could have gotten a better invocation from Stuart Smalley. It would have as much depth, and at least it would be doing a Democrat a favor. …

Mainline Protestant pastors are opinion leaders in their communities, and they tend to appreciate their GLBT friends and not appreciate slick weasels like Rick Warren.

Addendum II:

Focus on the Family avoids FRC’s foot-in-mouth disease.

U.S. President-Elect Barack Obama promised throughout his presidential campaign that, if elected, he would unite Americans and affirm a role for religion in public life. He cemented that vow with an assurance that he would expand President Bush’s “faith-based initiatives.”

The decision today by congressional Democrats to have evangelist Rick Warren give the inaugural invocation is the latest signal that the Democratic Party is friendly to evangelical Christians — even if that means slapping American religious minorities in the face.

First, I want to be clear: I believe that evangelical Christians deserve the same opportunities and freedoms as anyone else. And yet the notion of equal time for conservative Christians does not entitle a celebrity to serve as the sole official prayer-giver for all Americans at a signature federal event.

As Steven Waldman details for BeliefNet:

• Warren is the type of Christian who calls socially responsible Christians closet Marxists.
• Warren is the type of Christian who asserts that Christians cannot be free so long as gay couples are free, and then he rallies throngs of followers to deny to gays the very freedoms that he falsely claims are threatened by the existence of married gay couples. His admission that divorce is a more serious threat to “traditional marriage” is unconvincing — he made no effort and rallied no souls to enact a constitutional ban upon divorce.
• Warren is the type of Christian who claims to oppose abortion — but calls efforts by liberals to help women avoid abortion a “charade.”
• Warren is the type of Christian who worships a god of war and assassination instead of the Prince of Peace.
• Warren is the type of Christian who points to antigay religious activists and ex-gay pundits Tim Wilkins and Chad Thompson as experts on HIV/AIDS
• And Warren is the type of Christian who revises the Bible when it seems convenient to oneself or damaging to one’s supposed enemies. (Worthy of note: Chad Thompson agrees that Warren is a Bible-verse cherry-picker.)

But Warren is not all bad.

Warren says he supports hospital visitation and private insurance-sharing for couples — provided these freedoms are not packaged as civil unions. He condemns torture (though he does little to stop it). And Warren doesn’t damn non-evangelicals to hell.

(Correction, Dec. 21: Warren damns Jews to hell.)

Warren is not as intemperate, sadistic, tyrannical, greedy, or emotionally disturbed as Donnie McClurkin or James Dobson, or a racist like Tony Perkins — but he claims to be different from Dobson only in tone, not substance.

I am troubled by his selection to give a presidential, inaugural invocation. Warren’s frequent use of strawman arguments against rival religious and atheist communities, his willingness to assassinate foreign leaders on the basis of religion, and his smug judgmentalism make him a poor choice to be granted such an honor.

Presentation of the inaugural invocation is a privilege, not a right.

If America has matured enough to elect an African-American as president, then surely it has matured enough to select a Reform rabbi, a Quaker, or a Unitarian to give the invocation:

Someone, in other words, who is:

1. loyal to the central tenets of one’s own religion, and yet
2. fully affirming of American families from other religious or secular backgrounds

Warren, unfortunately, seems to be neither.