Rick Warren is over the top

Monday, December 22, 2008 by Dave Winer.

Thanks to David Weinberger for offering a foil for me to argue with on the case of Rick Warren giving the invocation at the Obama inaugural. I posted a rough version of this in a comment on Doc Searls' blog, in response to a piece Weinberger wrote on the NPR site. I just did a little editing and reposted here. 

I've been preaching the stuff that Weinberger is saying for a long time, but... 

I think he's wrong, and Obama is wrong, and the people who say this is over the line are right. This isn't a conference at the White House we're talking about, this is the inaugural.  

Weinberger doesn't say where his limit is. Who or what would be unacceptable for giving the inaugural invocation? Suppose Warren was a white supremicist who said that Negroes are property. He's entitled to his opinion I suppose. But should that be on stage when we inaugurate the first black President?  

Is Obama actually that open minded? I've read his book and I honestly don't know the answer, the book doesn't give me enough info.  

What if we were talking about a Neo-Nazi who said all Jews should be deported? Obviously, we can't have that, right Dave? That would be about you and me, and we've been there before or more accurately our parents have. I don't want to stand alone and explain why we can't let Jews be singled out that way. 

Warren has some very bad ideas about gays. Do they really have to stand alone Dave and say no this is too much? 

Obama makes a big point about not being an ideologue, about being a pragmatist, and I'm with him, up to a point. The United States is an ideology, not just pragmatics. We've been too pragmatic the last eight years, we've turned the other way while the rule of law was trampled along with the Constitution. Enough. I heard Obama say that in Denver, and it was right on. Enough. Warren is too much. I think the only correct answer is to boycott the inaugural. Sorry, no party. This is outrageous Dave.  

This isn't just Obama's homecoming, it's our country's. If we don't stand against this, we're going to get four more years of pragmatics. We won't survive that. At the end you won't recognize the United States. We've got to come back from the last eight years. Putting Warren on stage is not coming home, not when it leaves the gays so out there. But I won't let them be out there alone, just as I wouldn't expect for Jews to be out there alone if we were the ones being singled out. Or blacks. 

I'm also horrified that you used left-right tactics to argue your case. Very bad. I don't happen to be a liberal Dave. But I am an American and I believe in equal protection. How do you explain where you come from, and I don't care if you drive a Volvo or a Prius. Honestly, I think any American with any pride, especially blacks and Jews and gays, must stand against this. 

Update: Melissa Etheridge is a Rick Warren fan and is going to the inauguration (she's gay). 

Update: Barney Frank, a Congressman from Massachusetts, explains precisely why it is wrong for Warren to be given the honor of delivering the inaugural invocation. (Frank is gay.) 

Update: Rick Warren pulled the anti-gay language from his site.