The Divisiveness Of the Rick Warren Choice

Note:  I’ll be on CNN at 3:10 with Rick Sanchez to discuss Rick Warren.  If I do half as good as Hilary Rosen did last night on Anderson Cooper, I’ll be delighted — jh

Sarah Posner on Rick Warren:

Warren protests that he’s not a homophobe; it’s just that two dudes marrying, in his mind, is indistinguishable from an adult marrying a child, a brother marrying his sister, or polygamy. He thinks his AIDS relief efforts represent an elevated form of Christianity over those non-evangelical do-gooders whom he compares to "Marxists" because they’re more interested in good works than salvation. The rejection of the "social justice" gospel in favor of the salvation-focused evangelicalism that has come to dominate the definition of "Christian" lies at the heart of the religious right agenda to marginalize liberalism and harness its political power.

Warren represents the absolute worst of the Democrats’ religious outreach, a right-winger masquerading as a do-gooder anointed as the arbiter of what it means to be faithful. Obama’s religious outreach was intended, supposedly, to make religious voters more comfortable with him and feel included in the Democratic Party. But that outreach now has come at the expense of other people’s comfort and inclusion, at an event meant to mark a turning point away from divisive politics.

It was a very divisive choice, as Team Obama knew it would be after their Donnie McClurkin experience.  "Inclusiveness" does not meaning putting whatever hatemonger you can find onto the program, if it did we’d have the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan delivering the invocation.

As Ed Kilgore notes, the people for whom election day this year was not a joy were those whose lives were affected by the passage of Prop 8.  Given the role Rick Warren had in spreading the lies that helped it to pass, his high profile role at the innauguration will just pour salt into that wound.

And no, the LGTB marching band does not make up for that.

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