Reverend Rick Warren campaigned for alifornia's Proposition 8, which overturned the California State Supreme Court's legalization of gay marriage, and he has encouraged LGBT persecution in his first "purpose-driven" African nations, Uganda and Rwanda, where Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and Rwandan President Paul Kagame both insist that "homosexuality does not exist." During the December 2008 controversy over Barack Obama's invitation to Rick Warren, to pray at his inaugural ceremony, Rick Warren finally felt compelled to removed a page of instructions on how to "Walk a friend out of homosexuality" from his website.
The whole national LGBTIQ community now hopes that the same California State Supreme Court that legalized gay marriage in May 2008 will overturn Californians' vote to illegalize it, six months later, in November's election, with Proposition 8. Others think that, so as to separate church and state, government should stop performing marriages and stick to civil unions; some even want the state to stay out of everyone's personal lives and leave us to work out our own legal ties to those we consider family.
But me, I'm still thinkin' about Reverend Rick Warren, the evangelical Prop 8 campaigner whom Barack Obama invited to pray at the start of Inauguration Day.
Rick Warren not only promoted a big defeat for gay rights in California, but also, reinforced Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's insistence that homosexuality does not exist in their African nations, and, that homosexuals, therefore, will not be included in U.S.-funded HIV/AIDS prevention and care.
Here at home, Reverend Rick Warren insists that homosexuality need not exist, because it's a choice; his website once included instructions on how to walk friends out of homosexuality.
So. . . hmmm. . . why is that Reverend Rick Warren thinks that homosexuality, and, thus, heterosexuality, is a choice? Obviously, because he himself chose, which means that he ain't all that straight.
In his 1948 "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male," and his 1953 "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female," Albert Kinsey proved, to most scientific minds, that 10% of us are gay, 20% of us are straight, and the rest of us inbetween, as Reverend Rick must be, since he's so convinced that homosexuality is a choice.
Who knows what Reverend Rick may get up to in Rwanda, after flying all the way from Southern California to Central Africa, working up enough jet lag to make anyone sleepwalk? What might he get up to in Rwandan hotels? "Anonymous," in an interview in GlobalGayz, said that hotels are the only safe place for gay Rwandans to have sex, that foreigners are the only safe people for gay Rwandans to have sex with, that the HIV/AIDS situation is just terrible, because it's not safe to even talk about HIV/AIDS and gay sex, and, that many adult gay men never know long term intimacy in their lives. Rwanda is the first purpose-driven nation in Reverend Rick's evangelical empire, and, I so wish that California had something better to share with Africa.
---Ann Garrison, San Francisco, CA, anniegarrison@thepriceofuranium.com
