Rick Warren

• PFAW: 16 Iowa and National Groups Call on Grassley to End Routine Delay of Judicial Nominations.
• Towleroad: Westboro Baptist Church Member Debates Homophobic Former Navy Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt.
• Chris Johnson @ The Washington Blade: U.S. officials dispute media reports on Uganda anti-gay bill.
• Amanda Terkel @ Huffington Post: Ray Giunta, Discredited Pastor, No Longer Appearing At Pentagon Prayer Breakfast.
• Sarah Posner @ Religion Dispatches: Televangelist Watchdog May Be Forced to Close Its Doors.
• Andrew Kirell @ Mediaite: Megachurch Pastor Rick Warren To Piers Morgan: Being Gay Is Like Taking Arsenic.
• Zack Ford and Annie-Rose Strasser @ Think Progress: Rick Warren: I Regret Coming Out In Support Of California’s Anti-Gay Marriage Proposition.

Rick Santorum is set to address Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition in Iowa tonight along with Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty, Herman Cain, and Buddy Roemer. On Saturday he wrote a guest column for the Des Moines Register where he repeated the same groundless right-wing arguments that marriage equality will lead to the end of religious freedom and that the Obama administration has stopped enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act. In Iowa, a state which has had equal marriage rights since 2009, religious liberty has yet to collapse, as many conservatives predicted. And while the Obama administration found DOMA to be an unconstitutional law that it would no longer defend in court, it will continue to enforce the law. Santorum claims that as a result of Obama’s “power grab,” the “free exercise of religion will be eviscerated,” and also argues that advocates of marriage equality use “hate-filled” rhetoric against their opponents:

In refusing to enforce DOMA, the president was saying a law that was overwhelmingly passed by both Democrats and Republicans, and signed by a Democratic president, was simply no longer valid, no longer constitutional. Usually such actions are the province of the Supreme Court. This was a power grab, and it was wrong at every level. It was also a surprise. President Obama defended the law in the courts for the first half of his term, and said to Rick Warren in 2008, "I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman."

Let me first define what we are not talking about. I believe if two adults of the same sex want to have a relationship that is their business. But when they ask society to give that relationship special recognition and privileges, then we should be able to have a rational debate about whether that is good public policy.

We should also ensure the debate takes cognizance of its constitutional implications. And with the President's decision, the free exercise of religion will be eviscerated.
…

Iowa is on the front-line of this looming battle because its activist Supreme Court redefined marriage to include same sex couples. But for the first time in Iowa history all of the justices up for retention were soundly defeated in November.

Iowans are not alone in standing up for traditional marriage. From Maine to California, 31 times voters were given the opportunity to amend their state constitutions to affirm marriage as it has always been, one man and one woman, and 31 times it has passed.

What is the retort to those who stand for what has been the foundation of every society from the beginning of time? Do they make a reasoned case providing evidence about such things as the effects on children, traditional marriage, faith, school curriculum and public health?

No, sadly there is no reasoned, civil discourse. Civility is only trotted out as a tactic to put the opponent on the defensive, never to actually enlighten. Their game plan is straight out of the Saul Alinsky playbook. Claim high-minded concepts like "equality" and "tolerance" then launch vile and hate-filled personal attacks intended to strike fear and silence the opposition.

Some have argued this is not the time to wage this fight; that we have to focus solely on the vitally important job of limiting government, reducing the debt and creating jobs and growth. I agree these issues are at the top of our national list, but a big nation can focus on more than one thing at one time, just as men like Jefferson and Madison fought for religious liberties when arguably more consequential issues were occupying the public mind. In the end, it simply will not profit a country to gain wealth and lose its soul.

• Don Wildmon is officially stepping down from his role at the American Family Association due to on-going health problems.
• Politico got its hands on a rather remarkable RNC fundraising presentation, and the RNC is already furiously backing away from it, calling its images and language "unacceptable" and saying "it will not be used by the Republican National Committee – in any capacity – in the future."
• Shirley Dobson has been dismissed from the lawsuit against the National Day of Prayer.
• Rick Perry has been the Governor of Texas for more than a decade, so why is he playing off his primary win last night as some sort of shot at the establishment?
• Rick Warren and the Jonas Brothers, together at last.
• Wow, FRC is really producing groundbreaking research.
• Finally, the quote of the day from Rev. Rob Schenck reacting to marriage equality officially coming to Washington DC today: "Let me remind everyone that there’s nothing new about what happened today at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia Marriage Bureau. In fact, it’s very old. Thousands of years ago, the world at the base of Mount Sinai looked very much like Indiana Avenue, NW, the street outside the Marriage Bureau office. Actually, it was far worse. On the Day of Pentecost, when the Christian Church was born at Jerusalem, Greco-Roman athletes competed in the nude and engaged in homosexual acts to titillate insatiably wild crowds. Worse, Roman men of stature kept wives to sire children by, but young boys as sexual play toys. Temple prostitutes were used and abused as an act of worship. It was into this kind of moral abandon that the Jews first taught God’s moral code and Christians later were called to evangelize. Both remain our challenge today. It was this kind of sin-sick, miserably wretched, often shockingly coarse and even frightening world that 'God so loved,' and to which He 'gave His only begotten son' ... If there’s anything to be disappointed about today here in the Nation’s Capital, it’s that we thought human progress had come so far, but, in fact, it has regressed."

• Matthew Yglesias: War on Christmas Just Got More Fierce.
• Pam's House Blend: GOProud calls for President to speak out against Uganda's execute gays bill (You know, maybe GOProud should be calling on some of its CPAC allies to speak out as well.)
• Sarah Posner: Rick Warren condemns the punishment but not inflammatory rhetoric.
• Think Progress: Tea Party activists to ‘storm Senate offices’ and ‘stay there until they force us to leave.’
• Tapped: CAIR Tipped Off The FBI.
• Media Matters: AIM blog post smearing Jennings as a "pedophile" removed from site.
• Finally, it's amazing that ABC let an insightful media professional like John Stossel get away.

Rick Warren is attempting to respond to all of the criticism he is receiving for refusing to condemn the proposed law in Uganda that would make some homosexual acts punishable by death - claiming that "it is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations" - by trying to change the subject with the following tweet:

Globally last yr 146,000 Christians were put to death because of their faith. No one, except Christians, said anything.

I realize that Twitter is not necessarily conducive to rigorous fact-checking, but it would be nice to get some sense of just where Warren got this figure of 146,000 Christian martyrs.

I've been looking all over trying to find some article or report or anything to back this up and I'm coming up empty.  I'm not saying he's just making this figure up, but he obviously got it from somewhere and it would be nice to know just what his source is for this claim.

Political Research Associates has released a new report, written by PRA Project Director Reverend Kapya Kaoma, entitled "Globalizing the Culture Wars: U.S. Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia" [PDF] which explores how figures like Rick Warren and Scott Lively and organizations like the Institute on Religion and Democracy have been promoting "an agenda in Africa that aims to criminalize homosexuality and otherwise infringe upon the human rights of LGBT people while also mobilizing African clerics in U.S. culture war battles."

From the PRA press release:

[T]he U.S. Right – once isolated in Africa for supporting pro-apartheid, White supremacist regimes – has successfully reinvented itself as the mainstream of U.S. evangelicalism. Through their extensive communications networks in Africa, social welfare projects, Bible schools, and educational materials, U.S. religious conservatives warn of the dangers of homosexuals and present themselves as the true representatives of U.S. evangelicalism, so helping to marginalize Africans’ relationships with mainline Protestant churches.

The investigation’s release could not be timelier, as the Ugandan parliament considers the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009. Language in that bill echoes the false and malicious charges made in Uganda by U.S antigay activist and Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively that western gays are conspiring to take over Uganda and even the world.

"We need to stand up against the U.S. Christian Right peddling homophobia in Africa," said Kaoma, who in recent weeks asked U.S. evangelist Rick Warren to denounce the bill and distance himself from its supporters. "I heard church people in Uganda say they would go door to door to root out LGBT people and now our brothers and sisters are being further targeted by proposed legislation criminalizing them and threatening them with death. The scapegoating must stop."

While the American side of the story is known to LGBT activists and their allies witnessing struggles over LGBT clergy within Protestant denominations in the United States, what’s been missing has been the effect of the Right’s proxy wars on Africa itself. Kaoma’s report finally brings this larger, truly global, picture into focus.

“Just as the United States and other northern societies routinely dump our outlawed or expired chemicals, pharmaceuticals, machinery, and cultural detritus on African and other Third World countries, we now export a political discourse and public policies our own society has discarded as outdated and dangerous,” writes PRA executive director Tarso Luís Ramos in the report’s foreword. “Africa’s antigay campaigns are to a substantial degree made in the U.S.A.”

• Pam's House Blend: Peter LaBarbera's anti-gay 'rally' at Maine statehouse draws feeble numbers.
• Alan Colmes: eBay Refuses Fundraiser For Accused Tiller Killer.
• Sarah Posner is now writing for Religion Dispatches' "The Devil's Advocate" blog. Adjust your bookmarks and RSS feeds accordingly.
• Truth Wins Out: Liberty Counsel Defends Qaddafist’s Support for Global Imprisonment of Gays.
• Oliver North is now a Republican foreign policy advisor? Amazing.
• Finally, Political Research Associates Calls on Rick Warren to Denounce Proposed Antigay Law in Uganda.

I have to say that I really don't understand what Rick Warren's role is when it comes to politics ... or rather, I don't understand what Rick Warren thinks his role is when it comes to politics because he surfaced recently to insist to USA Today's Cathy Lynn Grossman that he doesn't get involved in political or policy questions:

Warren has no plans to burst back into politically-fired headlines, however. When politicians call him, he says,

I never get involved in policy. Never. But I'll talk to guys (like Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain and a host more) about their family, their stress and stuff like that....

Most people don't realize, I really have no faith in politics. I'm not a politician. If I thought you could change human hearts by laws, I would but I don't. Law is downstream from culture. By the time you make a law about something, you're reacting, not acting. I'd rather shape the culture.

This has always been Warren's stance, however it hasn't kept him out of hot water. Friday, he took a moment to clarify some of last winter's headline moments.

In December's interview with Steven Waldman of Beliefnet, did he really mean to equate gay marriage with pedophilia and incest? No, he says, he simply blew the question, and the followup, too. He has no such views of gay couples, he just wants to reserve the word "marriage" for the Biblical one-man-one-woman model.

Did he really campaign against gay marriage during the lead up to the Proposition 8 vote that overturned it's legalization in California? That would depend, evidently on how you define "campaign." He preached against it to his congregation but in Warren's opinion that's not campaigning, that's just a pastor sharing Scripture with his flock, even if his comments went worldwide on line.

Warren can claim that he "never gets involved in policy" or politics all he wants, but it won't change the fact that he most certainly does:

The election’s coming just in a couple of weeks, and I hope you’re praying about your vote. One of the propositions, of course, that I want to mention is Proposition 8, which is the proposition that had to be instituted because the courts threw out the will of the people. And a court of four guys actually voted to change a definition of Christian … uh, marriage that has been going for 5,000 years.

Now let me just say this really clearly: we support Proposition 8. And if you believe what the Bible says about marriage, you need to support Proposition 8. I never support a candidate, but on moral issues I come out very clear.

This is one thing, friends, that all politicians tend to agree on. Both Barack Obama and John McCain, I flat-out asked both of them: what is your definition of marriage? And they both said the same thing — it is the traditional, historic, universal definition of marriage: one man and one woman, for life. And every culture for 5,000 years, and every religion for 5,000 years, has said the definition of marriage is between one man and a woman.

Now here’s an interesting thing: there are about two percent of Americans [who] are homosexual or gay/lesbian people. We should not let two percent of the population determine … to change a definition of marriage that has been supported by every single culture and every single religion for 5,000 years.

This is not even just a Christian issue, it’s a humanitarian and human issue that God created marriage for the purpose of family, love, and procreation.

So I urge you to support Proposition 8, and pass that word on. I’m going to be sending out a note to pastors on what I believe about this. But everybody knows what I believe about it. They heard me at the Civil Forum when I asked both Obama and McCain on their views.

• Judicial Watch has released a "Special Report on Judge Sotomayor's Connection to the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund."
• Rick Warren will reportedly be attending Islamic Society of North America's annual convention in Washington, D.C. over the Fourth of July weekend.
• Carrie Prejean is seeking a book deal.
• Gary Bauer says that Sarah Palin's feud with David Letterman "proves conservatives can fight pop culture and win."
• Operation Rescue and other Wichita-based anti-abortion groups say they have received death threats in response to last month's killing of George Tiller.
• The Family Research Council defends Bill O'Reilly's attacks on Tiller, saying "Something has been lost in the canonization of George Tiller--and that 'something' is the truth ... If Bill O'Reilly was fanning anything, it was the facts. We applaud him for drawing attention to a grisly procedure that even the most hardened pro-choice Democrats in Congress oppose.
• Finally, the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission explains that Tiller's murder was wrong because, even though "Tiller certainly was guilty of murder before God ... lawfully established civil authorities are the rightful ministers of God’s wrath. They have been granted a monopoly by God on the use of the sword, namely capital punishment and physical coercion. "