President-Elect Barack Obama has incurred a lot of hostility to his decision to have Rev. Rick Warren, a well-known televangelist, lead a prayer at the presidential inauguration. The principal reason for the opposition is that Rev. Warren is believed to be anti-gay, and that giving him the honor of leading a prayer at the inauguration is a huge insult to a group of Americans that strongly supported Obama in the election.
Rev. Warren would not have been my choice, but I think the hostile reaction is excessive. Personally, I never pay any attention to what any preacher says at a presidential inauguration. The one exception I recall is when Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. gave a rousing speech at the inauguration of President Jimmy Carter. Other than that, I do not know who the preachers are, or what they say. It is just part of a ceremony. To me, objecting to the presence of Rev. Warren is like being a guest at somebody’s wedding and complaining about the couple’s choice of music being used in the ceremony. Rev. Warren is not my proverbial cup of tea, but I fail to see that it is an important issue.
Is Rev. Warren really anti-gay, as his accusers suggest? The accusers certainly have a basis to believe that he is. He has said that anybody (gays included) are welcome to attend his church, but that gays who do not renounce their “lifestyle” cannot be members of his church. And of course, he was strongly in favor of California’s (his home state’s) Proposition 8, which would have the effect of prohibiting and invalidating same-sex marriages in that state. On the other hand, his record suggests that he is not infected with the same kind of ugly bigotry that characterizes some other celebrated TV preachers.
My own position on same-sex marriage is basically the same as that of President-Elect Obama. I am open to persuasion to the contrary, but it seems to me that civil unions (marriage in everything but name) plus protection against discrimination should be sufficient to address the legitimate civil rights issues, regarding gay rights. Social acceptance cannot be legislated; it takes time and patience. I think that most people can accept the idea of civil unions, and maybe after several years and we find that the sky is not falling, same-sex marriage by name will also gain wider acceptance. If I lived in California, I would have voted against Proposition 8. While I am not really an advocate of same-sex marriage, I believe that it is a mistake to make them constitutionally prohibited, which Proposition 8 does at the state level. On the other hand, there is too widespread a tendency to label people as bigots if they disagree with us on this or some other issue.
Think of the major civil rights legislation from the 1960’s. While it is probably fair to say that nearly all bigots opposed those civil rights measures, it is not fair to say that bigotry was a motivation for everybody who opposed those laws. There were principled conservatives who were personally against discrimination but who also believed that it was not the business of the federal government to prohibit what was admittedly obnoxious behavior. Their reasoning was wrong, of course. Before the passage of those laws, a significant segment of the American population was effectively denied many basic rights, including: the right to vote, job opportunities, decent education, and availability of housing and public accommodations. The federal government had a legitimate interest in safeguarding the rights of citizens whose civil rights were otherwise denied. The fact that the principled conservatives were allied with the bigots in opposing the civil right laws – although for different reasons – did not make them bigots themselves, even though they were (by any reasonable person’s reckoning today) on the wrong side of the issue.
In a similar way, I think that the people who voted in favor of Proposition 8 were mistaken, but it is too simple just to label everybody who voted for it (and those in other states who cheered it on) as bigots. Some of those who voted for it probably thought, rather than voting for same-sex marriage to be permanently prohibited in California, that civil unions are okay but they did not want to have same-sex marriage recognized immediately. That would be a misunderstanding of the wording of the proposition, but the point is that many of those who voted in favor of Proposition 8 are not really “anti-gay.” Others who voted for it undoubtedly feel that – as I suggested above – civil unions and anti-discrimination laws (regarding jobs, housing, etc.) are sufficient in meeting the legitimate civil rights issues regarding gays. Reasonable people can disagree over that issue, but I cannot accept the notion that all of those who believe that the word “marriage” should apply specifically to a union of one man and one woman are “anti-gay.”
To those who are upset about Rev. Warren having a high profile role at the inauguration of Barack Obama, I suggest that they accept – at least for now – the notion that President-Elect Obama just wants to reach out to a wide variety of Americans, including groups that did not support him in the election campaign. Watch what he does as president. I think he will satisfy most people who might be suspicious about his commitment to civil rights. The selection of Rev. Warren is a symbolic gesture to the evangelicals, and it has no other practical significance.
