Officially among the pissed

I guess you can now officially rank me among the pissed over this whole Rick Warren invocation thing. Yesterday, NBC aired part of a new interview with Rick Warren where he addresses the issue of whether homosexuality is biological. He basically says that even if it is, it doesn’t change his position. He says we all have biological predisposition…such as anger, fear, shyness, or promiscuity. He says he should reign in his natural impulses to have sex with every beautiful woman he sees, so a gay person should have to reign in his desires for the same sex. To do otherwise would be immature!

The difference between your desire to have extramarital sex and a gay persons desire to be married to the person he loves is that you are allowed to get married and your desire for sex is no longer sinful as long as you are faithful to your spouse, but a gay person is not allowed to get married and so can never, in your eyes, be without sin in his relationship with his partner.

I’m sure Rick Warren and others of like mind would say a man and women getting married is “natural.” So even if being gay is proven to be natural for some people, they should still not be allowed to do what’s natural? We aren’t talking about the choice to have sex with multiple partners. We are talking about the choice for a person to marry someone that they love. Being gay isn’t about reigning in sexual desire. It isn’t the same as learning to deal with anger or shyness. Being gay is about choosing to be with someone that you love and that person happening to be of the same sex. End of story.

As far as Obama’s decision to have Warren off the invocation, just because he invited you to speak at his church doesn’t mean you owe him something. Obama made a serious symbolic mistake here and has really damaged the support from a major segment of his base. These are people who fervently supported his candidacy. They gave time and money because they believe Obama is on their side. Giving the stage to a bigot like Rick Warren on the first day of your presidency doesn’t start you out on the right foot. Now, instead of this day being about change and hope, it is about Rick Warren. It just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me for him to bring this kind of cloud over a day that millions of people are looking forward to. My only hope is that the uproar from the progressive movement about this issue will force Obama to be accountable on this issue. He now has a lot to prove to make up for this kick in the gut to the gay community. I really hope he backs up what he says and that having Warren speak isn’t a sign that he wont.