The question is right there in my title, but I'm going to repeat it: What would Obama do if Obama was mad at Obama about Rick Warren?
Warren is the anti-gay-marriage pastor who Obama picked to lead a prayer at the presidential inauguration. People are pissed. People I know. People I respect. People I love.
So recently I've spent a lot of time arguing -- mostly with myself -- about what tactics and strategies make the most sense for the people who feel they've been slapped in the face by the Warren pick.
There are sensible people who look at Warren and see a man who belittled their marriages, lied about the perils California faced if it didn't pass Proposition 8, and -- in helping get gay marriage repealed -- thwarted their deepest aspirations for equality. Imagine that there was someone who'd belittled Obama, lied about him, and tried to thwart his most high-stakes aspirations. Would Obama invite that person to lead a prayer at the inauguration? The answer is no. Absolutely not. Because the Secretary of State doesn't lead inaugural prayers.
A refresher ...
Which brings us to Lesson One of what Obama would do if Obama was mad at Obama about Rick Warren. He'd move on. He'd refuse to be distracted. He'd brush the dirt off his shoulder and immediately return his focus to winning. Winning, lest we forget, has nothing to do with dictating when and where Rick Warren gets to lead prayers. Winning is about achieving durable equality for gay and lesbian couples who want the law to recognize that their bonds are every bit as legitimate as my bond with my wife.
Victory -- durable, lasting victory -- is the most powerful answer to Warren. Victory is the most powerful answer to a slap in the face from the president-elect.
Meanwhile, if Obama was mad at Obama about Rick Warren, he would be pouring huge energy into trying to solve a mystery: What in the world does the president-elect see in Rick Warren? Obama would buy a copy of The Audacity of Hope and read the long, ruthlessly introspective chapter our next president wrote about faith. In doing so, he'd come to a sentence on page 216: "Megachurch pastors like Rick Warren and T.D. Jakes are wielding their enormous influence to confront AIDS, Third World debt relief, and the genocide in Darfur."
Rick Warren! Right there. In the book. Out in the open. At bookstores all over America. For years. Not hiding. Not tucked away in some footnote.
After picking The Audacity of Hope -- and his own jaw -- off the ground, Obama would flip to the front of the book and confirm the copyright date.
2006.
Long before the first presidential primaries.
Obama would remind himself that this book was a best-seller, that lots of people bought it, that some of those buyers presumably read the book, that some of the people who read it were gays, lesbians, and straight supporters of gay rights. He'd wonder how he and all those other people managed to miss the fact that the President-Elect sees some real good in Rick Warren. He'd demand more of himself next time. He'd vow to do his homework from here on out.
Reading on in The Audacity of Hope, Obama would find these words:
"... no matter how much Christians who oppose homosexuality may claim that they hate the sin but love the sinner, such a judgment inflicts pain on good people -- people who are made in the image of God, and who are often truer to Christ's message than those who condemn them. And I was reminded that it is my obligation, not only as an elected official in a pluralistic society but also as a Christian, to remain open to the possibility that my unwillingness to support gay marriage is misguided, just as I cannot claim infallibility in my support of abortion rights. I must admit that I may have been infected with society's prejudices and predilections and attributed them to God; that Jesus' call to love one another might demand a different conclusion; and that in the years hence I may be seen as someone who was on the wrong side of history."
Obama would read those words. He'd read those words again and think about them.
Obama might conclude that those words are damning evidence that our next president is "a very tolerant, very rational-sounding sort of bigot," as recently alleged in a Time column. If so, Obama might savage the president-elect with all the tactics he picked up during his time as a community organizer. He'd refer to his old copy of Rules For Radicals by Saul Alinsky. He might heed the book's call to polarize and personalize, racheting up the rhetoric, ridiculing the president-elect, and attempting to make him and his inauguration the face of anti-gay bigotry in America.
Or instead, Obama might re-read those words in The Audacity of Hope, might think about that phrase "remain open to the possibility that my unwillingness to support gay marriage is misguided," and might ask himself a shrewd, pragmatic question: Could a president capable of expressing such doubt and self-scrutiny end up being more useful to the marriage-equality movement than a president who reflexively scolds the American people for being a bunch of homophobic jerks?
In answering that question, Obama would need to assess whether acceptance of marriage equality is more likely to come when average Americans get yelled at enough or whether equality is more likely to come as more and more average Americans are calmly made to realize that some of their relatives, their neighbors, their business contacts, their kids' teachers, their sports heroes are gays and lesbians.
Obama would suddenly think of a passage in his old copy of Rules For Radicals, a war story told by Alinsky himself:
"I have always believed that birth control and abortion are personal rights to be exercised by the individual. If, in my early days when I organized the Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago, which was 95 percent Roman Catholic, I had tried to communicate this, even through the experience of the residents, whose economic plight was aggravated by large families, that would have been the end of my relationship with the community. That instant I would have been stamped as an enemy of the church and all communication would have ceased. Some years later, after establishing solid relationships, I was free to talk about anything, including birth control. I remember discussing it with the then Catholic Chancellor. ... I remember seeing five priests in the waiting room who wanted to see the chancellor, and knowing his contempt for each one of them, I ... opened the door saying, 'Take a look out there. Can you look at them and tell me you oppose birth control?' He cracked up and said, 'That's an unfair argument and you know it,' but the subject and nature of the discussion would have been unthinkable without that solid relationship."
Obama might find himself hoping that our next president is trying to cultivate just that sort of solid relationship with Rick Warren. Still, he'd also consider Frank Rich's caution this morning that our new president "may not only overestimate his ability to bridge some of our fundamental differences but also underestimate how persistent some of those differences are." But Obama would question whether such naivete is really plausible, given another fact detailed in the same Rich column: "There is comparable anger and fear on the right. David Brody, a political correspondent with the Christian Broadcasting Network, was flooded with e-mails from religious conservatives chastising Warren for accepting the invitation to the inaugural. They vilified (the president-elect) as 'pro-death' and worse because of his support for abortion rights."
Obama would welcome the information in Rich's column, remembering another pillar of Rules For Radicals: "The basic requirement for the understanding of the politics of change is to recognize the world as it is. We must work with it on its terms if we are to change it to the kind of world we would like it to be."
Obama wouldn't -- and couldn't -- know immediately what to make of Warren's willingness to stand with our "pro-death" president-elect. He'd puzzle over whether Warren and his congregants show a relative reasonableness that might eventually be cultivated into acceptance of marriage equality or whether Warren is merely the polite, presentable face of intractable bigotry.
There's no answer. Not yet. And maybe not for years.
So Obama wouldn't hope. He'd organize. He'd lead. He might use his side's most potent advantage -- sheer numbers -- by urging gays and lesbians to come out to everyone they know, so that more and more Americans would know the face of a person marginalized by gay-marriage bans. He'd innovate. He'd learn from the ingenuity of the president-elect's winning campaign. He'd re-read Rules For Radicals in its entirety.
Read.
Not skim.
Because how can you even consider skimming a primer on activism that includes a thorough consideration of the merits of feeding baked beans to a group of oppressed people and sending them to the symphony to inflict the stank and cacophony of their baked-bean flatulence on the affluent concert-goers?
Obama, meanwhile, would stay mindful of a central idea in Rules For Radicals: "Compromise is another word that carries shades of weakness, vacillation, betrayal of ideals, surrender of moral principles. ... But to the organizer, compromise is a key and beautiful word. ... If you start with nothing, demand 100 percent, then compromise for 30 percent, you're 30 percent ahead."
Those of us whose sense of justice cries out for marriage equality may need to compromise to achieve it. But we won't need to settle for 30 percent. Nowhere close.
The tide is with us. Unless we get distracted.
We've seen what that's like.
Rick Warren's inaugural prayer is the central front in the struggle for marriage equality in the same way that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was the central front in the War on Terror.
Focus.
Huffington Post blogger David Quigg lives in Seattle. Click here to visit the blog where he's gradually posting his entire first novel. Click here for an archive of his previous HuffPost work.
As background, for those who didn't see it, I tried to explain the depth of my feeling about marriage equality in this recent post ...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-quigg/save-my-marriage-from-irr_b_151215.html
Obama knows there is more than one way to skin a cat...and by putting Warren in the spotlight for the next 22 days, Warren has to defend and explain and possibly learn that his way is outworn and interferes with the civil rights of gays. We wouldn't be having this national discussion if he had chosen some oh so acceptable prayer-giver.
I am not telling you what to do. Criticize, don't criticize. Protest, don't protest. But I would appreciate it if you would not tell me what to do, either.
As an aside, I wouldn't have been for Gene Robinson because that choice also would have detracted from the event due to controversy. I just don't think it was important for Obama to inject controversy into this at all. There were plenty of people who would have been acceptable to both sides of this issue. I would've preferred Joel Osteen. He doesn't support gay marriage, but he isn't a lightening rod either.
Imagine that McCain won. Imagine that McCain invited Robinson to say a prayer at the inauguration. Imagine that the Religious Right was fuming about McCain's pick.
Would we think they were overreacting?
Would we see the Robinson invitation as a hopeful sign that McCain/Palin would govern in a way that would help gays and lesbians or would we see it as a conciliatory -- but ultimately meaningless -- bit of symbolism?
Just curious what you think. Thanks for putting so much energy into thinking about these issues and commenting here.
And thanks for the advice to focus. Focus on a full-fledged all-enlightening anti-mobbing law should solve the problem and many related ones for good.
Can't anybody argue abstractly anymore? Call me ignorant or retarded or unaware, but methinks that the core of this problem has very little if anything to do with the notion or wording of marriage contracts.
It's about the good old bigotry of the petit bourgeois and the many sleazy advantages he thinks he can earn by conformism - and for that to work a perpetual effort has to be carried out to tarnish otherwise good reputations.
This is a mobbing problem, not a marriage problem, if you ask me. (Taking the equal rights that Obama already endorses as a given background.)
1) It's not Obama being the object of bigotry here. There is one insulting and condescending blog post and comment after another insisting that the gay community accept what people of color, women and Jews would never be expected to accept if a newly elected President had picked a racist/segregationist, a misogynist or an antisemitic minister to participate in the inaugaration.
2) This isn't just about gay marriage. As heinous and immoral as Warren's support for the Yes on 8 campaign was, he goes much farther than that, comparing gay relationships to incest and pedophilia, and denying the legitimacy of our existence, believing we can be "cured" if we only "repent". Warren is nothing more than Jerry Falwell in a Hawaiin shirt and he's going to have to do a lot more than sweet talk Melissa Etheridge to prove he's not still the bigot he always ways.
3) Obama is the one who deliberate chose the Warren pick in part because he knew it would cause outrage in the gay community, and he would benefit with the large anti-gay population, as his poll numbers go ever higher in part because he stuck it to those uppity gays. Obama is not a saint or a political messiah. He's nothing more than another well-spoken, triangulating politician who's wrapped a DLC agenda in a new package branded as "new politics".
Instead of looking to Obama for guidance, look to Harvey Milk instead.
2) Most major religions teach that homosexuality is wrong, so I take it you would also object to a Catholic priest, Jewish rabbi or Muslim imam saying a prayer.
3) Spin much?
I'm not going to be quiet, stand by, and say nothing about the choice of Warren. To do so, would be to acquiesce to the evil that Warren represents.
We should tolerate bigots, and not tolerate bigotry. This means allowing them to have there bigoted beliefs, their lives their own, but not giving them a platform, either to propagate bigotry or to validate it, especially not at the inauguration of a president ostensibly against it.
By the way, he is a "fierce advocate" for what now? equivocation?
1. Are you saying you believe the treatment being received by GLBT citizens of Africa as condoned by Rick Warren is OK?
As reported by Bruce Wilson
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/12/19/untold-consequences-rick-warrens-aids-activism
The Kampala Monitor reports:
Dr Warren said that homosexuality is not a natural way of life and thus not a human right. "We shall not tolerate this aspect at all," Dr Warren said.
Warren was speaking in support of Ugandan Anglicans who intend to boycott the forthcoming Lambeth Conference, and this harsh rejection of tolerance for gays and lesbians may have serious consequences in a country where homosexuals face harassment and and the threat of imprisonment.
2. Are you saying you believe that it is OK for Warren's African church protege's to tell women who are beaten by their husbands that they should "try harder to please them" - as referenced here in this article?:
Untold Consequences: Rick Warren's AIDS Activism
Kathryn Joyce December 19, 2008
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/8/7/4/8/p87480_index.html
(snip)
Other PEPFAR grantees, as Jacobson's colleagues in the global AIDS movement have witnessed, use their funds to promote fundamentalist interpretations of marital roles, advising women that if their husbands beat them, they should try harder to please them.
.
I believe the Warren choice is saying to the nation - It is OK for us to go along with Warren's views!
Obama's a smart, savvy politician. He knew ane welcomes the outrage this pick has caused. This amoral pick by Obama was cynical "two-fer". He gets points for reaching out to evangelicals and points from the large anti-gay population for sticking it to those gays. The sad but not unexpected thing is that this cynical ploy no doubt worked as we are a hated and despised minority.
But at least we know where we really stand with him beyond the speeches.
No gays in the cabinet, just a token appointment for the lowest white house post.
No promise to sign the U.S. up to the UN bill to decriminalize homosexuality worldwide.
No statement from Team Obama acknowledging the outrage within the gay community, and certainly no expression of surprise, let alone apology, proving this was a cynical "poke-the-gays-with-a-stick" choice all along.
No doubt we will be told that the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and DOMA and federally recognized civil unions will be pushed back into a theoretical second term, and it will never be the right time to stand up for us because there is too much political advantage to be had by triangulating against us.
And we can look forward to years of Obama-apologists giving us insulting and condescending lectures about inclusiveness and forever telling us "the time isn't right", and we should just "trust" their political hero.
Tell me, who's going to win the World Series next year?
Civil rights are gained by vociferously and articulately asserting and defending one's equality. Of course I will "move on from this." But I think dwelling for a bit on Warren's intolerant attitudes--completely undeserving of the honor of speaking at the inaugural, is also necessary.
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/12/19/untold-consequences-rick-warrens-aids-activism
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-wilson/warren-endorsed-nigerian_b_153412.html
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1830147,00.html
Warren likens gay marriage to pedophilia and incest. He also believes that women should be subservient to men and that legalized abortion is like the Holocaust. The other people you mention do not share these views. If you don't think this is an important distinction, then there is nothing more to say.
-Coretta Scott King
Source: Chicago Sun Times, April 1, 1998, p.18.
Look, I am all for reaching out, seeing what you have in common with your opposition, etc., but reaching out is NOT the same as honoring as BO is doing to Warren. I assure BO never intended to reach out to Warrren on gay rights issues and remember gays aren't the ones who invite Warren so everyone please cut the crap that this all about "reaching out".
Since he can't walk back on the invite without doing political damage, he is going to move forward and try to put a positive spin on the invitation claiming, inclusions and "reaching out" but we all know it's BS damage control. He has to do it, but don't start excusing it and telling gays to "get over it".
Gays, as any group should, should speak up loudly anytime their civil rights are being damaged and in this case anytime someone who worked to deny them civil rights is being honored.
2. The inaugural prayer is an honor and anyone who works to deny civil rights (as Warren did with prop 8 and then further insulted gays by making disparaging comments) should not be honored. Doing so, says one can still insult and work to deny civil rights and be honored by this country. Nope.
3. The battle is important because gays right to marry will be decided in the SC via the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The SC hears cases that are of high controversy and in the national dialogue. You have to make noise and make the legal argument to make change. Sorry if you don't like the noise, but this is the USA and that is part of our system.
No one group has the authority on discrimination and bigotry. Barack wouldn't invite a person who's made those statements about AA's and he shouldn't have invited Warren for a similar reason.
I wonder why that has changed? Back in 1940... my 15 year old grandmother married my 21 year old grandfather... and it was perfectly legal. Now... my grandfather would be considered a pedophile. Weird.