Rick Warren defending himself (and successfully, I might add), explaining that the video in question was not a public statement, but video was intended for his congregation alone. He said:
The truth is, Proposition 8 was a two-year campaign in the state, and during those two years, I never said a word about it until the eight days before the election, and then I did make a video for my own people when they asked, "How should we vote on this?" It was a pastor talking to his own people. I've never said anything about it since. I don't know how you take one video newsletter to your own church and turn that into, all of a sudden I'm the poster boy for anti-gay marriage.
He later explained that part of his beef is that the homosexual community does not believe that someone like Warren (and by extension, other Christians) can love them, be friends with them, yet disagree with homosexual (“gay is the new black”) political platform. In this, I actually empathized with him. It is frustrating but perhaps expected: Christians are taught to love those who are different from them and their own, but we do not always get the same treatment in return.
There were other statements that Warren made that I was happy about it. For instance, he took a stand on non-interference and refused some government money. Wisely, he did not want strings attached. I cannot support him enough in this. I do not have, in principle, a problem with many para-church organizations that do accept federal money, but there is often a cost of identity that I think may make it not worth it.
If I could ask Rick Warren one question it would be this. Refusing government money, because you don’t want the government to mess with your religion, is sound and classical libertarian principle. The government does not get its fingers into the church’s businesses. On the same token, why endorse a “yes” vote on prop 8? The Christian definition of marriage is something that Christians should defend. Why should we allow the government to have its fingers in it? The opinion of the body politic means little to me for what marriage is, for the same reason that the opinion of the body politic means little when it comes to baptism. Such is a similar classical libertarian principle that makes accepting money from the government a bad idea. So why care about prop 8?
