For those of you not up-to-date on the latest controversies, President-elect Barack Obama recently decided to have Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church do his invocation (an opening prayer to the ceremony) during the January 20th inauguration. Sadly, this decision has been relentlessly criticized by many Democrats without cause, and such criticisms have been reduced primarily to ad hominem attacks on Warren himself.

The first question asks whether Obama’s decision was “wrong”. I would argue, No. Rick Warren is not a fundamentalist. In fact, he remains one of the most moderate and open-minded individuals within popular Christianity; even hosting a fair forum with both 2008 general election candidates without ever taking sides. Any remarks of extremism and/or comparisons to the likes of Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson shows simple ignorance.

This takes us to some of Warren’s infamous quotes: Did you hear that Warren called homosexuality equal to incest and pedophilia? Actually he didn’t. Provided below is a full transcript of this popularly taken-out-of-context interview.

Steven Waldman: Which do you think is a greater threat to the American family? Divorce or gay marriage?

Rick Warren: Haha! That’s a no-brainer. Divorce. There’s no doubt about it. Here’s an interesting thing. The divorce statistics are quite bandied around. People say, well half of marriages end in divorce. That’s just not true. Forty percent of first-time marriages end in divorce. Forty percent. About 61% of second-time marriages end in divorce, and almost 75% of third-time marriages end in divorce. So the odds get worse, and what’s balancing this out when you hear 50% ends in divorce, it’s just not true. The majority of marriages do last. But what you have is these people who are second, third, fourth time, who are getting married again and so the divorces keep coming in to equal the marriages.

Steven Waldman: So why do we hear so much more, especially from religious conservatives, about gay marriage than about divorce?

Rick Warren: Oh, we always love to talk about others’ sins more than ours. You know, why do we hear more about, you know, drug use than being overweight. Okay, why do we hear more about, you know, anything else besides wasting time? Or gossip? We want to point out… my sins are perfectly acceptable. Your sins are hideous and evil. [laughs]

Steven Waldman: Now you, one controversial moment for you in the last election was your support for proposition 8 in California. A couple of questions about that. First, to clarify, do you support civil unions or domestic partnerships?

Rick Warren: I don’t know if I use the term there, but I support full equal rights for everybody in America. I don’t believe that we should have unequal rights depending on particular lifestyles or whatever stuff like that. So I fully support equal rights.

Steven Waldman: But what about, like, partnership benefits in terms of insurance or hospital visitation?

Rick Warren: You know, to me, not a problem with me. But the issue to me is, I’m not opposed to that as much as I’m opposed to the redefinition of a 5,000-year definition of marriage. I’m opposed to having a brother and sister be together and call that marriage. I’m opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that a marriage. I’m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.

Steven Waldman: Do you think, though, that they are equivalent to having gays getting married?

Rick Warren: Oh I do. I just… For five thousand years, marriage has been defined by every single culture and every single religion — this is not a Christian issue. Buddhists, Muslims, the Jews, historically marriage is a man and a woman. And so I’m opposed to that. And the reason I supported Prop 8 really, was a free speech issue. Because if it had…. First, the court overid the will of the people. But second, is, there were all kinds of threats that if you… that did not pass, then any pastor could be considered doing hate speech if he shared his views that he didn’t think homosexuality was the most natural way for relationships. And that would be hate speech. To me, we should have freedom of speech. And you should be able to have freedom of speech to make your position, and I should be able to have freedom of speech to make my position. And can we do this in a civil way?

Most people, you know… I have many gay friends, I’ve eaten dinner in gay homes, no church has probably done more for people with AIDS than Saddleback Church. Kay and I have given millions of dollars out of “A Purpose-Driven Life” helping people who got AIDS through gay relationships. So they can’t accuse me of homophobia. I just don’t beleive in the re-definition of marriage.

If you read it structurally, Warren actually argues that sodomy is equivalent to homosexuality in the context of them both changing the 5,000 year old definition of marriage. Which is obviously true. Although Warren is by-no-means the most politically correct or salient speaker, his comment remains factually correct. Warren also comments later, via an off-the-cuff youtubescue video, saying that he by no means believes incest and homosexuality equal. Thus, to argue his prejudice against gays using one comment out of context, while simultaneously disregarding his clarification of that comment later, seems illogical.

I can understand why homosexuals may disagree with Obama’s choice, obviously they would much prefer a pastor who somehow believes the Bible doesn’t forbid homosexuality (another story for another time). But the outrage shown by so many people remains unwarranted.

Warren has also been charged with the crime of comparing abortion to the holocaust. Although taken out of context as well, the main problem with this argument is that it doesn’t understand the main premises of pro-life advocates.

“Don’t tell me it should be rare. That’s like saying on the Holocaust, ‘Well, maybe we could save 20 percent of the Jewish people in Poland and Germany and get them out and we should be satisfied with that,’” Warren said. “I’m not satisfied with that. I want the Holocaust ended.”

The context shows that the holocaust was used only as a popularly understood event of mass murder, such an analogy could easily be interchanged with many others. In addition, most pro-lifers believe that abortion IS murder. Although one may disagree with such an assertion, the analogy above simply defines a holocaust as mass murders, and thus abortion is like a holocaust and ought to be stopped. Once again, you may disagree with him, but there is nothing extreme or logically fallacious with his comment. Once again, although politically incorrect, the remark remains factually correct if taken from a pro-life viewpoint.

While watching one of my favorite news shows, the Rachel Maddow Show, the host brought another supposedly disturbing fact to light: the fact that Warren doesn’t allow homosexuals to be members of his church. Thanks to a conservative upbringing (for which I have politically forsaken), I happen to know that there is a big difference between not being allowed to a church, and not being allowed to become a member. Many churches have a strict process of membership where you must learn and subscribe to a churches basic dogmas, one of them usually being heterosexuality. Once again this is not unusual nor extreme. Homosexuals are generally (although sadly not in all cases) allowed to go to a church, they simply cannot become members. Such a policy was created so all could understand exactly what a church believed was right or wrong, not to hate on gays; most churches still believe homosexuality is wrong as interpreted literally from the Bible. Obviously to not let “sinners” into ones church would create a hateful and pretty much empty audience, but to allow anyone, regardless of their lifestyle, to become a member, would also be irresponsible.

Accepting all the points made above, one may still disagree with Obama’s choice of Warren, but to argue that it was “wrong”, or to be particularly outraged would be too strong of a response. The question then remains whether this was politically wise. I would personally say, Yes. Although I can see why many would disagree, Warren is probably the most popular moderate evangelical leader in the country. If Obama needs a pastor (Wright won’t do), and wanted to reach across the aisle, Warren remains the best choice.

As seen over his presidential campaign, clearly Obama is shrewd. But how shrewd? Shrewd enough to lean away from his party to make himself more favorable to evangelicals particularly? I think so. In the end, you must admit that this issue, once Obama takes office, will be completely forgotten by liberals. They will go back to worshiping the ground he walks on once he shows he can at least properly invade countries without warrant (if that was over your head, I was remarking on our current President’s incompetence). Evangelicals, on the other hand, are still wary of Obama and feel lost in today’s Republican party. I would argue that the Democratic outrage regarding this “issue” only better serves Obama’s strategy, since Obama now looks like he is a moderate, cares about evangelicals, and will even stand up to the “far left”. Since evangelicals are the only ones who may remember this event, why not concoct a such a strategy? Regardless of whether it was planned or not, this could turn out well for the incoming President.

In the end, “Warren-Gate” is not newsworthy. In the absence of any real news, the media enjoys creating drama in their own image. Homosexuals and Democrats can disagree with the decision, but don’t act like this is a big deal when people around the world are dying from crimes against humanity (I haven’t heard this much outrage about Darfur)! This petty bickering and inability to form priorities remains one of the greatest problems facing our political system. We just elected an African American Democrat as President during a financial crisis and we’re really spending time on this? Despite being a big supporter of Obama’s, I’m all for keeping our politicians accountable. However, this borders on the ridiculous, and is absolutely hypocritical. We can’t ask that our politicians work with opposing parties while excluding those who have different opinions!

Its ironic how intolerant we viewed conservative Christians when they ridiculed Warren for inviting Obama to his church, and yet in this situation there is no hypocrisy? As Obama has already pointed out in his talking points, Warren has done much for social justice issues as well as AIDS/HIV (even donating 90% of his proceeds and keeping only 10%). Rick Warren is not an extremist, nor is he intolerant. He simply disagrees with most Democrats on some social issues. I seriously question who is being more intolerant in this situation, which is why such writers as John Cloud, Mario Ruiz, Lisa Derrick, Isobel White, Leah McElrath Renna, Harvey Fierstein, Hilary Rosen, Barney Frank, and even my beloved Rachel Maddow need to grow up and get back to the real issues (I also applaud writers like Jon Hoadley, Lynda Resnick, John Leo, Stephen Elliott, Nathaniel Frank, Steve Chapman, Lee Stranahan, Frank Schaeffer, and Melissa Etheridge for creating logically coherent and reasonable arguments, even if I disagree with some of them. If you have time, Please read their well thought out articles).

Conservative Christian moderates like Rick Warren ought to be encouraged, not tarred and feathered for not agreeing on every issue! Obama is acting in a bipartisan manner, like he said he would, while still legislatively pursuing the Democratic issues he promised. And we wonder why politicians lie to us?