Another Rick Warren Debate

My, my, my.  The Obamessiah is not making his subjects happy.  He asked mega-church pastor Rick Warren to speak at his inauguration despite the fact that Warren supported Prop 8 (the anti-gay marriage bill), thus angering his gay rights base.  Mary Katherine Ham makes this very poignant observation regarding religious leaders:

Let me get this straight:

A 20-year association with a radically leftist, anti-American, racist preacher whom Obama referred to as a spiritual adviser meant absolutely nothing about Obama's judgment or philosophy, and illustrated only the bigotry of those who dared criticize it.

A 20-minute association with one of the country's most well-liked, mainstream evangelical preachers who happens to support traditional marriage cannot be countenanced and illustrates only the bigotry of those who would dare allow it.

Got it.

Something worth thinking about, don't you agree?  Anyway, let's look at Warren in particular, this gay marriage dispute, and how it factors into Obama's decision:

Rick Warren is the kind of man the Left loved until Obama made him an inauguration speaker in the wake of his support for Prop. 8. He confounded stereotypes, speaking frequently and acting generously on behalf of AIDS patients. He made all the right people mad, breaking with the old guard of the National Association of Evangelicals in 2006 by endorsing an official global warming position for the NAE.

The press saw Warren standing for social justice and the impoverished, but it was not that that earned him credit. Plenty of unsung pastors and churches stand up for the impoverished and sick every day. More important to the press was not what he stood for, but who he stood against. Chuck Colson, James Dobson, and the like.

The New Yorker praised him in 2008 as a new kind of evangelical "presenting a challenge to the religious right." The New York Times gave the "Evangelical Climate Initiative," the evangelical coalition borned of the global-warming argument with NAE, enough ink and paper to undo any evironmental strides the group might have made. Warren, playing the role of the wholesome, reasonable Dorothy to the press' conception of the Christian Coalition's flying monkeys, was named one of Time's 100 most influential in 2005, U.S. News and World Report's Best American Leaders the same year, and No. 6 on Newsweek's "People Who Make America Great" in 2006.

Remember that when the press starts calling him a bigot in light of his support of Prop. 8. They were more than happy to accept his social conservative views as long as he didn't say anything about them and lobbied for global-warming initiatives.

So, as is typical with the Left, Warren is praised as long as he takes their side, but the moment he stands against one of their core principles (gay marriage) they crank up the trash factory.  That's not at all unusual, nor unexpected, and Warren is more than ready to take the heat - he didn't get to where he is today without having some significant savvy to go along with his beliefs.  But, the real issue on display here is the hypocrisy of the Left, because Warren and Obama actually appear to be on the same side of this issue, since Obama supported Prop 8, too.  Bet you didn't know that, did you?  Nope; the media doesn't think that's worth reporting.  Of course, they may be right on this one because Obama's actual position never really matters to Obots:

Rick Warren may occasionally sound more open-minded than Jerry Falwell, another plump Evangelical who once played a prominent role in U.S. politics. But he's not. Gays and lesbians are angry that Barack Obama has honored Warren, but they shouldn't be surprised. Obama has proved himself repeatedly to be a very tolerant, very rational-sounding sort of bigot.

How's that for a turn of phrase?  A 'very tolerant, very rational-sounding sort of bigot'.  Neat.  Of course, they probably know the truth - that Obama really does support gay marriage:

Defenders of marriage shouldn't be conned by President-elect Obama's selection of evangelical pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the inauguration. Although Obama claims to be against same-sex marriage, his opposition to California's Proposition 8—which overturned the California supreme court's invention of a state constitutional right to same-sex marriage—shows that he is content to acquiesce in judicial imposition of same-sex marriage. Further, it's a safe bet that Obama's appointees to the Supreme Court will support the invention of a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage. (As illustrations, consider the records of two of the leading contenders for appointment, Harold Koh and Deval Patrick.)

 

So Obama isn't against same-sex marriage. Rather, he's against incurring the political costs of being candid about his support for (or non-opposition to) same-sex marriage.  On marriage as on many other issues, Obama, as an ardent supporter of liberal judicial activism, will look for his judicial appointees to impose illegitimately the policy preferences of the Left that he doesn't have the courage (or foolhardiness) to pursue through the proper channels of representative government.

Obama probably tapped Warren to shore up his flimsy evangelical support.  He knows he's going to need that support in the next four years, but his radical Left positions make evangelicals distinctly uncomfortable.  Having Warren publicly appear with him will do much to ease those concerns, at least for the time being.

The real reason I wanted to pass this along, though, is to illustrate the opportunism of Obama and the hypocrisy of liberalism.  The Left says Warren is a great man when he is disagreeing with arch-conservative Dobson, but when he has the gall to stand against gay marriage on the grounds of his faith, well, that's just eeeeeevil, and he should be trashed.  That's standard practice for the Left, but it's sad that so many people still don't see it.

In regard to Obama, in particular, we have another level of hypocrisy with his stance on gay marriage.  This tactic of taking both sides of the issue is what got him elected by a largely uninformed American public, and it's a giant, blinking, neon sign of the fact that Obama either has no core principles to stand on or that he is simply unwilling to stand on them.  He will say anything to anyone at any time if it serves his current purpose, and it doesn't matter if it contradicts what he said yesterday.  With the media having fully descended into their Kool-Aid induced stupor over the past two years, he can get away with it; even when the odd authentic reporter asks a legitimate question, he just avoids it.

Obama is not a new kind of politician.  He is simply better at saying the same old things than anyone we've seen for a long time.  But that doesn't give him principles, nor the spine to stand firm on anything.

There's my two cents.



Sources:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/12/warren_turns_the_language_of_t.asp
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1867664,00.html
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/12/liberal_logic_wright_vs_warren.asp
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzQ5ZWQ0OTU3YzE0OGYxZmMwYWE1ZWM2N2ZhNDk2MzQ=