A Stitch in Haste

Reason’s Matt Welch cites favorably to this Sullivan piece about the Warren pick:

And this Rick Warren flap at its core, I think, is about the difference between those who see a civil rights movement as a means to wield power and those who see it as a means to spread freedom.
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I want to live in a free society alongside people who genuinely believe I am a sinner destined for hell — and I want to get along with them. I am concerned (but not obsessed) with changing their minds, but totally repelled by the idea of coercing or pressuring them to do so.
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I support the right of the most fanatical Christianist to spread the most defamatory stuff about me and the right of the most persuasive Christianist to teach me the error of my ways.

I have no idea what a president-elect’s one-time choice, fleeting but highly symbolic, of an invocation speaker has to do with “the difference between those who see a civil rights movement as a means to wield power and those who see it as a means to spread freedom.” But I’ll grab the baton and run with it anyway, via this comment at the Reason post:

Besides the whole church-and-state thing (you can thank radical right-wing theocrat FDR for that), the point for most gays who are indignant about the Warren pick has nothing to do with any right/left/libertarian purity/impurity test. Few if any gays would give much of a dang if Obama were, say, to have Warren lead the first presidential prayer breakfast.

The indignation comes from other observations:

–As Hitchens (no theocrat) notes, the only feasible justification for a religious invocation is because an inauguration is a special event intended to unite all Americans in a brief moment of national solemnity. But its special nature in turn demands that the least divisive figures possible be selected for the invocation and benediction. Billy Graham was no supporter of gay marriage, but he achieved the status he did precisely because of his ability to dilute his faith-in-the-public-square sermons to lowest-common-denominator milquetoast drivel. Warren is as far from that as is Louis Farrakhan.

–Warren, and most of the MSM, are distorting the issue by suggesting that this is only about Warren’s role in Prop 8. It’s more than that. As recently as one week ago, Warren equated gay marriage with incest and pedophilia. Call us perverts (wrongly) and we call you bigots (rightly). It’s that simple.

–Many are reaching the increasingly undeniable conclusion that the pick was politically based. Typical Clinton-Rove maneuver: How can we milk this apolitical event for maximum political points? (Or, if you prefer: This is a bleeping valuable thing! You don’t just give something like this away for bleeping nothing!) Obama simply miscalculated how it would play out.

–Finally, there is the lie that Warren is a different kind of right-wing theocrat. Gays cannot join Saddleback Church, but gays are expected to “reach out to him”? Warren has stated publicly that Jews cannot get into heaven, that Mormonism is a cult, and that it is a sin to vote for an atheist. Etc. (But don’t you dare call him “homophobic,” because he gives us doughnuts and stands vigil over dying gay AIDS patients — so he can assure them, as Pat Boone does, that God forgives them for their sinful lifestyle.)

With all due respect to Sullivan, publicly shaming and shunning people for their misconduct is a long-standing, revered tool of dogmatic Christianity. Gays are finally figuring that out and using it against the bigots. “Can’t we all just get along?” has given way to “No more Mister Nice Gay.” Enough is enough.

As for what the “civil rights movement” means in the context of gay equality, my long-standing position is somewhat more sophisticated and refined than Sullivan’s: The proper analytical framework must be Bayesian. Given, as an immutable political fact, that anti-discrimination and public accommodation laws exist and apply to private actors, then logic, equity and equal protection demand that they extend to all politically disadvantaged groups with a history of facing deep-seated and irrational hostility from the majority. That means gays.

If you want to sit in a room with a lock on the door, with your maps and your medals — and your proposal to repeal the Civil Rights Act — laid out on the floor, then do so with my blessing. But don’t pretend that your asymptotic dream helps advance pragmatic, real-world libertarianism.

Previously:
–On the Rick Warren Invocation Selection

Filed under: Gay Rights and Issues, Politics, Society, Religion, Culture Wars, Updates