Rick Warren is an insulting choice

[IndianaGreen]

The author was Rachel Maddow's guest tonight.

Rick Warren is an insulting choice

Preacher Rick Warren's views are simply too extreme for Obama's supporters.
By Katha Pollitt
December 22, 2008

To understand how angry and disappointed many Democrats are that Barack Obama has invited evangelical preacher Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inaugural, imagine if a President-elect John McCain had offered this unique honor to the Rev. Al Sharpton -- or the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. I know, it's hard to picture: John McCain would never do that in a million years. Republicans respect their base even when, as in McCain's case, it doesn't really return the favor.

Only Democrats, it seems, reward their most loyal supporters -- feminists, gays, liberals, opponents of the war, members of the reality-based community -- by elbowing them aside to embrace their opponents instead.

Most Americans who've heard of Warren know him as the teddy-bearish, Hawaiian-shirted head of the Saddleback megachurch in Orange County and the author of "The Purpose Driven Life." Perhaps they also know he's the rare right-wing Christian pastor who sometimes talks about poverty and global warming and HIV. His concern for those issues has given him a reputation as a moderate and has made him the darling of Democratic Party think tanks, ever hoping to break the Republican lock on the white evangelical vote.

But on the signal issues of the religious right he is, as he himself has said, as orthodox as James Dobson.

And as inflammatory. Warren doesn't just oppose gay marriage, he's compared it to incest and pedophilia. He doesn't just want to ban abortion, he's compared women who terminate pregnancies to Nazis and the pro-choice position to Holocaust denial. (Hmmm ... If a fertilized egg is as precious as a born Jewish human being, does that mean a born Jewish human being is only as valuable as a fertilized egg?)


Speaking of Jews, Warren has publicly stated his belief that they will burn in hell, presumably along with everyone else who hasn't accepted his particular brand of Christianity (i.e., the vast majority of people in the world). And forget about evolution -- the existence of homosexuals, he's argued, disproves Darwin. And while we may not know how old the Earth is, the Saddleback website assures us that dinosaurs and humans coexisted.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-pollitt22-2008dec22,0,4243781.story

[madeline_con]

1. "the existence of homosexuals, he's argued, disproves Darwin."

:wtf:

Any further info on this little piece of turd he's produced?

[Hydra]

2. Don't bother

A good DUer decided to look into his HIV/Poverty crusades to see if they held up- they didn't. He was looking for converts.

Warren is nothing but a fraud, and in good company with people like the late Falwell and the lamentably still alive Dobson. I suppose he'll be the next to carry the torch of false preaching, fleecing of the flock and encouraging hate.

[bluedawg12]

6. Warren HIV crusade has been critized for prevention failures

he is another abstinence advocate and he is only about treatment and not prevention, while new cases emerge every day.

[MNBrewer]

3. He certainly has an un-nuanced understanding of "Darwin"

[smokey nj]

4. The Rick Warren choice is more than insulting, it's cruel.

Talk about kicking people when they're down.

[xchrom]

5. and it isn't an accidental insulting choice. nt

[bluedawg12]

7. Warren is now attached to Obama's coat-tails and riding the crest

The Rick problem will not go away - Rick will see to that.

[katanalori]

8. Not only his views on gay marriage......

Warren is wrong about everything, from torture to stem cells to women's rights to AIDS to assassinating foreign leaders to Iraq. Everything.