You know, I hate Rick Warren. I hate everything he stands for: his bigotry, his mega-church, his shitty books that unfailingly show up at any event considered remotely milestone-ish, his fat neck, and his religion. But the more I think about him speaking at the inauguration, the less I care.

When we were in the thick of the election, and there was all that business about Obama and Reverend Wright, and Bill Ayers, and the “clinging to guns and religion” comment, we liberals (I still have a bit of trouble calling myself that) got together and said “Listen, here is a guy who has some shady associations, and may have made some divisive, if not hateful remarks, but he can do some good, so let’s get behind him.” We did, and we asked his detractors to do the same. And now that guy is going to be the president.

But, as much as I hate Rick Warren, he is exactly that kind of person. He has Christianists eating out of his hand, and I think we can put aside the ideological differences long enough to let him have this speech. The unifying potential here is too great not to make the compromise.

I am anticipating that my 1.5 frequent commenters may say that we can’t negotiate with hate, but let me point out that we are not electing this scumbag as president. We are letting him make a speech. Believe me, if Warren were ever up for any position of authority, I would be right there with you protesting it every step of the way.

I will probably plug my ears when he gets up there and starts in with “Purpose Driven Life for the President,” and gets all mushy-wushy about the sky god, but you can’t win ‘em all. The important part is, I really don’t think there is anything to be gained on the secularization front, or on the gay rights front from making a row about this speech.

Stewart takes on Huckabee

Huckabee still gripes me a bit, but I dig his borderline anarchism. Plus, this episode is nice, because it has two people really drilling down to the core of their arguments for/against gay marriage. Civilly.

However, someday, I want to see a conservative sit down with a liberal to discuss gay marriage, and say “I won’t use the word ‘definition’ if you don’t use the term ’segregation’,” and see the debate go from there. Both sides get hung up on these token arguments, and they never get anywhere.

Rich Ford makes the following argument:

…[T]raditional marriage isn’t just analogous to sex discrimination—it is sex discrimination: Only men may marry women, and only women may marry men. Same-sex marriage would transform an institution that currently defines two distinctive sex roles—husband and wife—by replacing those different halves with one sex-neutral role—spouse. Sure, we could call two married men “husbands” and two married women “wives,” but the specific role for each sex that now defines marriage would be lost. Widespread opposition to same-sex marriage might reflect a desire to hang on to these distinctive sex roles rather than vicious anti-gay bigotry.

I doubt that people reach this level of complexity and analysis in their primary reaction to gay marriage. Sure, it is a quandry they are presented with, but this is a feeble attempt at a kind of Freudian explanation which assumes too much subconscious sophistication.

But I can only speak from my experience, and as someone who used to oppose same-sex marriage in favor of civil unions, I can say with certainty that my objection arose from a feeling of being challenged. Not a challenge of having to reformulate my own sexuality as a result of the dissolution of clearly-delineated sex-roles, but a challenge to my morality.

People hate being wrong, and if someone is entitled to rights that I have previously been content to deny them, then I have done wrong.

On the whole, though, I do agree with the majority of Rich’s article, in which he says it’s tempting but erroneous to analogize same-sex marriage to racism. I reason that the process by which the majority came to grant civil rights to blacks is fundamentally different from that by which they will come to grant civil rights to gays.

In the case of blacks, the the driving force for equality was by nature empathetic. However, sex roles are much more entrenched than race roles, and so forging empathy may be more difficult. I think we should make an appeal to respect and the golden rule, while highlighting parellels to which heterosexuals will relate, namely that gays love too.

In so doing, we can assuage their fears of being forced to understand homosexuality, which they will probably never be able to do anyway.

As always, we should sidestep the issue of the bedroom, and we should find some common ground in love and commitment, by which we can reframe the issue.

h/t Ta-Nehisi

E.J. Graff, author of What is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution, makes a very original and compelling argument in favor of gay marriage.

I have heard a few different same sex marriage proponents reference the way “straight people already redefined marriage,” but I didn’t grasp the significance of that argument until now.

Graff convincingly makes the case that during the industrial revolution, between 1850 and 1950, heterosexuals began to question the tradition of marrying for property, economic status, familial alliance, business partnership etc., and started marrying for love. This shift was the most significant ‘redefinition’ of marriage in it’s millennia old history, and it was carried out by straight people.

She goes on to claim that homosexuals’ desire to take part in this new kind of marriage is a direct result of the spread of this novel concept of marriage.

Therefore, same sex marriage is not the cause of marriage redefinition, it is the result.

Give it to ‘em.