Some gays are in a tissy over President-elect Obama selecting Saddleback minister Rick Warren to read his invocation. Pastor Warren, they say, is the wrong choice because of his opposition to gay marriage.
Attention gay community: Barack Obama said HE’S against gay marriage. Here’s the video. Look for yourself:
Here is another video where he goes deeper into defining his opposition to gay marriage, and it comes surprisingly close to my position on the subject:
As I told a friend of mine at church yesterday, marriage should not even be a concern of the government. “Marriage” is a religious ceremony. As far as the government is concerned, they can recognize that two consenting adults have entered into a contractual agreement on certain issues, but recognizing a religious ceremony really isn’t their place.
Two grown men or women should not be prohibited from entering into a legal, binding contract together, for whatever reason.
With that being said, I don’t think the LGBT community is the one that should be really upset here. It should be the religious community that is upset with Pastor Rick Warren for accepting the offer.
Rick Warren is anti-abortion. He has spoken out about it time and time again. Yet when confronted with the fact that Obama is the most radical pro-abortion President ever to win election, Saddleback put the AIDS/HIV pandemic above the right to life:
Saddleback responded with a statement acknowledging “strong opposition” to Obama’s participation. The church said participants were invited because of their knowledge of HIV/AIDS and that Warren, author of “The Purpose Driven Life,” opposes Obama’s position on abortion and other issues.
“Our goal has been to put people together who normally won’t even speak to each other,” the Saddleback statement said. “We do not expect all participants in the summit discussion to agree with all of our evangelical beliefs. However, the HIV/AIDS pandemic cannot be fought by evangelicals alone. It will take the cooperation of all — government, business, NGOs and the church.”
It is more important for more money to be spent on HIV/AIDS than it is to take a stand against abortion? Do you know how many people have died from AIDS worldwide? 22 million. Do you know how many abortions have taken place just in America since Roe v. Wade in 1973?
Obama said at a Planned Parenthood conference prior to his election that the first thing he would do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act:
For those who don’t know about the Freedom of Choice Act, here is an idea of what would do:
FOCA provides that “[i]t is the policy of the United States that every woman has the fundamental right to choose to bear a child, to terminate a pregnancy prior to fetal viability, or to terminate a pregnancy after fetal viability when necessary to protect the life or health of the woman.”
Further, FOCA would specifically invalidate any “statute, ordinance, regulation, administrative order, decision, policy, practice, or other action” of any federal, state, or local government or governmental official (or any person acting under government authority) that would “deny or interfere with a woman’s right to choose” abortion, or that would “discriminate against the exercise of the right . . . in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services, or information.”
Clearly, its reach is very broad. This single piece of legislation would apply to any federal or state law “enacted, adopted, or implemented before, on, or after the date of [its] enactment.”
Before you say that is just propaganda from
a pro-life organization, please look at this from Sen. Barbara Boxer’s website:
The Freedom of Choice Act of 2004 would establish a statutory right to choose within the same parameters articulated by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade.
That means women would have the absolute right to choose whether to continue or terminate their pregnancies before fetal viability, and that right would be protected by this legislation.
The Freedom of Choice Act also supersedes any law, regulation or local ordinance that impinges on a woman’s right to choose.
Barack Obama’s position on abortion is that it should be available to any mother at any time during the pregnancy, and supports the Freedom of Choice Act, a bill so radical, the Catholic Church vows “war” (h/t Weasel Zippers) if Obama signs the bill into law:
Mr. Obama signing the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) “would be the equivalent of a war,” a senior Vatican official told Time magazine last week.“It would be like saying, ‘We’ve heard the Catholic Church and we have no interest in their concerns.’ ” At a recent Baltimore meeting, the U.S. Catholic bishops pledged to challenge Mr. Obama on his defense of abortion rights.
It could also result in the closing of Catholic Hospitals across America. From Slate (h/t Stop the ACLU):
While there is strenuous debate among legal experts on the matter, many believe the act would invalidate the freedom-of-conscience laws on the books in 46 states. These are the laws that allow Catholic hospitals and health providers that receive public funds through Medicaid and Medicare to opt out of performing abortions. Without public funds, these health centers couldn’t stay open; if forced to do abortions, they would sooner close their doors. Even the prospect of selling the institutions to other providers wouldn’t be an option, the bishops have said, because that would constitute “material cooperation with an intrinsic evil.”
The bishops are not bluffing when they say they’d turn out the lights rather than comply. Nor is Auxiliary Bishop Robert Hermann of St. Louis exaggerating, I don’t think, in vowing that “any one of us would consider it a privilege to die tomorrow—to die tomorrow—to bring about the end of abortion.”
Whatever your view on the legality and morality of abortion, there is another important question to be considered here: Could we even begin to reform our already overburdened health care system without these Catholic institutions? I don’t see how.
Catholic hospitals make up one third of America’s hospitals. This bill would result in the closure of all of them.
So, are the gays and lesbians really the ones who should be outraged? Not at all. They know Obama’s position on the matter of gay marriage before the election. The real outrage should be in the evangelical community, aimed at Pastor Rick Warren, for allowing himself to be used by the Obama campaign to solidify the image as a centrist. When it comes down to it, that’s the only reason why he chose Pastor Warren, and the only reason he does any number of things.
Appearances.
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