Finally...I can breathe. That is really how it feels. Bush is gone.
It was hard to grasp that Bush was really going to be gone and there was going to be someone with real intelligence back in the White House. Possibly one of the most ironic sights was Vice President Dick Cheney having to show up in a wheelchair because of a back injury while moving boxes. Oh how the mighty have fallen.
AP Photo/Saul Loeb, Pool
Oh Rick Warren. All that controversy and over what. I felt nothing when he spoke. If that is America's preacher then Lord help us all. He had no connection and was completely false. If his invocation moved anyone or even held anyone's attention I'd be shocked.
It moved quickly Biden in, Cheney out. Then Obama in and Bush out. That was it. Then the speech. Here is the swearing in and President Obama's Inaugural speech.
It was considered a peace offering to the gays to have Bishop Gene Robinson to give the Invocation at a concert yesterday. After inviting Rick Warren to speak at the innauguration the LGBT community was outraged. This then seemed like a step towards balancing things out.
But then on the televised even Bishop Robinson was nowhere to be seen. The immediate reaction was to say that HBO put Robinson in the closet. However AfterElton.com is reporting that HBO is blaming the inaugural team.
Contacted Sunday night by AfterElton.com concerning the exclusion of Robinson's prayer, HBO said via email, "The Producer of the concert has said that the Presidential Inaugural Committee made the decision to keep the invocation as part of the pre-show." Uncertain as to whether or not that meant that HBO was contractually prevented from airing the pre-show, we followed up, but none of the spokespeople available Sunday night could answer that question with absolute certainly. However, it does seem that the network's postition is that they had nothing to do with the decision.
Well I gotta say as prayers go I thought Bishop Robinson's was right up there with the best. I think it deserves to be seen. We all know Obama needs all the prayers he can get to clean up the mess he has been given.
By The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire
Opening Inaugural Event
Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC
January 18, 2009
Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God’s blessing upon our nation and our next president.
O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…
Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.
Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.
Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.
Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.
Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.
Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.
And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.
Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.
Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.
Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.
Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.
Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.
Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.
And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.
AMEN.
Updated
Statement from the Presidential Inauguration Committee
We had always intended and planned for Rt. Rev. Robinson's invocation to be included in the televised portion of yesterday's program. We regret the error in executing this plan - but are gratified that hundreds of thousands of people who gathered on the mall heard his eloquent prayer for our nation that was a fitting start to our event.
Melissa Etheridge performed the other night at an event for the Muslim Public Affairs Council. It just so happened that Pastor Rick Warren was scheduled to speak at the same event. Melissa asked to speak to Warren and a surprising thing happened. Melissa came away feeling good. She seems to think there is hope in bringing different sides together through Warren. In fact she wrote quite an amazing endorsement of him for the Huffington Post.
While I am still skeptical she is one of my favorite people and she was on one of my favorite radio shows talking about it. So any excuse to put Melissa with Thom Hartmann on my blog is a good one.
Time will tell just how good Melissa's read on Warren is...
On Friday this screen shot from the Saddleback Church website really got the gays angry
And now it's gone. Apparently after all the heat put on him for comparing homosexuality to incest and pedophilia he has decided to take a look at exactly what it is he is saying. This weekend both he and Melissa Etheridge were an event for the Muslim Public Affairs Council. According to Etheridge in her piece at the Huffington Post Warren had this to say,
He said he regretted his choice of words in his video message to his congregation about proposition 8 when he mentioned pedophiles and those who commit incest. He said that in no way, is that how he thought about gays.
Ok so it appears that progress is being made. However, many gays are still upset that he didn't take the opportunity to say that in a public statement to just to a famous gay person while getting an autograph. Whatever his motive is at least it's out there and there is a chance that the shift has begun.
So then why is this what they are teaching. Below is a clip from the Saddleback website under sexual purity.
Don't you know that those doing such things have no share in the Kingdom of God? Don't fool yourselves. Those who live immoral lives, who are idol worshippers, adulterers, or homosexuals will have no share in His Kingdom. Neither will thieves or greedy people, drunkards, slanderers, or robbers. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 TLB
The King James wording is
"Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God."
But is it really so clear that 1 Cor 6:9 is about “homoerotic practice” and is it really so clear who is excluded from being heirs of God’s kingdom? I suggest that there is actually a lack of clarity. The lack of clarity shows up in several ways. One is in the variety among translations. Another is the difficulty we have in making direct correlations between biblical texts and the way we construe reality today. Most importantly, however, the argument about clarity does not adequately consider the context in 1 Corinthians 6, and this context is eye-opening with respect to how Paul deals with sexual behavior among the Corinthians.
Translations. Though malakoi literally means soft, it is often used in Greek to describe effeminate men, and many interpreters suggest that this identifies receptive partners in same-sex erotic behavior among males. One would be hard pressed to deduce anything about a receptive partner from the King James translation which simply says “effeminate” or from Luther’s translation quite literally as “weakling.” The Revised Standard Version combines the two terms malakoi and arsenokoitai into one translation as “sexual perverts,” a questionable move in translating, which the New Revised Standard Version tries to “correct” by reverting to two terms. With respect to malakoi the NRSV translation is “male prostitutes.” When the translation tradition moves between the extremes of “weakling” and “male prostitutes,” this indicates lack of clarity in our understanding of the term. Simply the variety in translations is one indication that the church has no sustained tradition of clarity about the meaning of malakoi in 1 Cor 6:9.
The problem of clarity is perhaps even more difficult with arsenokoitai. 1 Cor 6:9 is the first place we know of in all of Greek literature in which this term is used. Paul apparently coined it. So how does one know what a word means the first time it ever appears? Granted, we know some things from the formation of the word. It is compounded from a term for “bed” and a term for “male” with an agency ending—implicitly one who beds a male. Again, a quick review of
translations shows the uncertainty in the meaning. The King James Version has “abusers of themselves with mankind”; Luther has an equivalent of “violators of boys,” perhaps implying pederasty; and the NRSV introduces “sodomites,” an astonishing innovation in the translation tradition.
Although "homosexual" is a very common translation, it is almost certain to be inaccurate:
If Paul wanted to refer to homosexual behavior, he would have used the word "paiderasste." That was the standard Greek term at the time for sexual behavior between males.
There are many more places that say the use of homosexual in this passage is incorrect. So if Pastor Warren is so progressive and as he says "loves gays and straights" then why not choose to use a more correct and up to date translation on his site? I am starting to like this pick of Obama more and more. If Warren really is interested in being "America's Pastor" and he truely feels he helps gays by all the work he does with HIV/AIDS then maybe he can learn how the words he chooses are more important than ever at this time.
Hopefully, he'll also start to make his appologies and changes more public instead of just to the rich and famous.
Ever since Barack Obama announced that Pastor Rick Warren would be giving the invocation at the Inauguration I have been on edge about the decision. My first thought was
"Gee it's been about a month and a half - I guess it is time for us to get slapped in the face."
In case you're wondering what the big deal is and why the gay community would be offended by Rick Warren being asked to have such a high profile moment check out Warren's little video here
I love how he says,
"If you believe what the bible says about marriage you need to support Proposition 8."
Oh really. So then I should look at Deuteronomy 21:15
"A man might have two wives. And he might love one wife more than the other. Both wives might have children for him. And the first child might be the child of the wife he does not love."
Or how about Matthew 19:8-9
8 Jesus answered, "Moses allowed you to divorce your wives because you refused to accept God's teaching. But divorce was not allowed in the beginning. 9 I tell you that any person that divorces his wife and marries another woman is guilty of the sin of adultery. The only reason for a person to divorce and marry again is if his first wife had sexual relations with another man."
Interesting isn't it. Let's hear what Pastor Warren had to say in an interview with Beliefnet about divorce and if it is a big problem today.
I love how he basically says that the reason we make such a big deal about gay marriage is because of "ratings." This is ok to turn the gays into the BIG sinners and second class citizens because the other stuff is too close to home so no one will listen (come to church - or give money).
It's this attitude that keeps suicide amongst gay teens and young adults so high. All because it's easier to vilify such a small minority than deal with real problems, like divorce, that are really hurting families and kids all across this country. Warren and others like him don't want to "redefine marriage". Yet marriage has changed so much over the course of time. Wives used to considered more property than anything. Marriage was a business transaction done by the patriach of the family. Not so long ago bi-racial couples could not marry in this country. Warren says over and over that marriage has been the same for 5,000 years. I wonder if he meant this example from the The Sex Atlas written by Erwin J. Haeberle, Ph.D., Ed.D.,
"The English Puritans in the 17th century even passed an Act of Parliament asserting "marriage to be no sacrament" and soon thereafter made marriage purely secular. It was no longer to be performed by a minister, but by a justice of the peace. The Restoration abolished this law and reverted to the old system, but the Puritans brought their concept of marriage to America where it survived."
Marriage is not a sacrament but secular - well isn't that interesting.
Apparently I am supposed to be ok with Warren because he's not homophobic because he funds AIDS projects. Gee that's about the only good thing President Bush did too. Not the kind of company I'd want to be in.
But wait there's more
I am amazed he can laugh off being homophobic when he compares gay marriage to incest and pedophilia but it's ok because he will talk to gay people and give them water and donuts.
So again I'm back to why did Obama go there. I agree with the reporter in the video. This is political. But I'll let Obama speak first.
So is this a payback? The comment Obama says about Warren having him come speak to his church he considered a big opportunity. So is this his thank you for helping him with some of the religious groups that Obama needed to reach. I can't say for sure. I do believe that Obama is trying to e inclusive and bring people together. I also think that there are those that are not promoting hate and equating LGBT people to pedophiles that can have this kind of a spotlight.
So I know it seems us gays have been yelling a lot lately and this isn't going to help calm us down.
I heard a woman on the radio today and she has given me reason to pause and try to move from this in a different direction.
Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, an African-American pro-gay minister will be giving the benediction. The woman on the radio commented that these two choices were symbolic.
"Pastor Warren represents where we are now. That's why he is going first. Rev. Lowery represents where this country is going.
Like the inauguration will show the journey of change.
This caller saved the day for me. To me it sounds like Obama's thought process and diligent planning. I'm trying hard to buy into it.
