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Rick Warren claims he never said it:

I have been accused of equating gay partnerships with incest and pedophilia. Now of course as members of Saddleback Church you know I believe no such thing, I never have. You’ve never once heard me in 30 years heard me talk that way about that.

Rachel Maddow has the video proving him wrong.

Rick Warren: 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.

(Transcript via Pam’s House Blend; video via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)

Maybe Warren misspoke; if so, the thing to do is apologize and move on. Instead, Warren simply lies about what he said.

The video is also well worth watching for Katha Pollitt’s segment at the end, in which she outlines some of Warren’s genuinely outlandish misogyny. For instance, you probably already knew that Rick Warren thinks wives should be subject to their husbands; but did you know that Warren says the only acceptable reasons for divorce are abandonment and infidelity? Abused spouses, presumably, should just suck it up.

Transcript of Maddow’s chat with Pollitt is below the fold.

Joining us now is Katha Pollitt, a columnist with “The Nation” and author of “Learning to Drive: And Other Stories,” which is currently on sale now. Katha, nice to see you, thanks for coming in.

KATHA POLLITT, AUTHOR, “LEARNING TO DRIVE: AND OTHER STORIES”: Thanks so much for having me.

MADDOW: I was surprised that Rick Warren is continuing to talk about this publicly. Are you?

POLLITT: No, I`m not. Rick Warren, I think when you said he confuses himself with Christ, I think you`re on to something. The man obviously has a colossal ego. He`s a best-selling author. He`s got churches all over the place. He is not going to shrink away. This is a big opportunity for him.

MADDOW: The thing that seems, I guess, even more surprising to me in watching this 22-minute video today and spending more time than I ever thought I would in my life with learning about him and his politics as an activism, is that he sort of seems like a “not ready for primetime player” here.

That was an unscripted 22-minute screed that had a lot of very impolitic comments, things that are not going to help President-elect Obama take this heat for having extended this invitation. I would have thought that a man that`s so experienced internationally and in national politics would be more careful.

POLLITT: Well, I had a different feeling about that video which I watched while I was having my little dinner before coming here. I thought, my god. He`s very - he does project that teddy bear geniality - I`m talking to you. He has that ability to seem like he`s just talking to one person when he`s talking to, you know, hundreds of - however many - hundreds of thousands are watching.

And I thought that the things that you noticed would fly by the people that that was aimed at who share those beliefs. They also think that they`re the real Christians. So if you don`t like Rick Warren, you don`t like Christ.

MADDOW: How big of a political problem is this for Barack Obama? And is it getting larger or getting smaller?

POLLITT: Well, I think it is getting larger. I think that the Proposition 8 and the disappointment and anger over that has given it a news hook that might not otherwise be there. When I wrote about it in the “L.A. Times,” I focused on some of the other things that Rick Warren believes that I find very disturbing.

Besides the anti-gay stuff and the anti-gay marriage stuff, that he has compared people who are pro-choice to holocaust deniers. He says that women who have abortions are like Nazis. And compared - you know, it`s like comparing their wounds to Auschwitz.

He has very disturbing ideas about the inequality between the sexes, that he believes, and his church believes - it`s all over the church`s Web site - that wives should be subject to their husbands and that the husbands where it goes.

I learned today - and I think everybody should spend time on the Saddleback Web site because it`s very educational. He believes there are only two reasons you can get divorced, so all those gays who want to get married better think about this.

MADDOW: Yes. The exit strategy.

POLLITT: And the reasons are abandonment and infidelity, but abuse is not a reason. Abuse is not a reason for divorce.

MADDOW: Wow. I think that this problem is getting larger for Barack Obama, and I think that is largely the choice of Rick Warren at this point which itself should be a bit of a warning bell. Katha Pollitt, columnist at “The Nation,” author of “Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories,” it`s really nice to see you. Thanks for coming in. `

POLLITT: Thanks so much for having me.

Let’s face it, things are not going very well for right-wing radio these days. Rush Limbaugh has been reduced to a national laughingstock, while Sean Hannity is best known for simply repeating talking points handed to him by the RNC. Where is the innovation? The fight? The good ol’-fashioned hatred that will sustain the righties into a new era?

Well, my fellow Minnesotans can puff our chests up with pride, because we’ve got a budding right-wing radio superstar right here in our own backyard, broadcasting daily at KTLK-FM.

Minnesotans know KTLK as the radio station that made the head-scratching decision to abandon reasonable talk and go to an all-right-wing-nonsense-all-the-time format right before the collapse of the Republican party. With the aforementioned Limbaugh and Hannity, along with Jason “North Carolina is Infinitely Superior to Minnesota, What With its Low Taxes and Family Values, Which is Why I’m Getting the Hell Out of There and Coming Back to the Cities” Lewis, KTLK is the sort of radio dinosaur that would have been really popular in 1994, but now languishes down with KOOL-108 (the oldies station) in the ratings.

But Chris Baker aims to change all that. The new morning drive host and Texas import is making a name for himself nationally, and doing it the old-fashioned way: by saying crazy crap.

You may remember Baker from his previous assertion that basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson had faked testing positive for HIV, because as everyone remembers, in the early 1990s nothing was cooler than pretending to have AIDS. Now, most radio hosts would kill to have just one crazy statement like that, driving the ratings and whipping up conservative resentment of multimillionaire basketball players who have spent their retirement building up the poorer areas of Los Angeles through investment. But not Chris! No, he’s just getting started.

According to the George Soros-controlled Media Matters, in his brief time in Minneapolis Baker has:

• Said that the murder of transwoman Latiesha Green was the media’s fault, saying, “I believe the media and the rest of the enablers out there, they have this guy’s [sic] blood on their hands because they create this false sense of reality and they enable people who need serious psychological counseling.” Because nothing says Liberal Media Conspiracy like the argument that people should be able to live their lives without being shot.
• Said, “I don’t think homeless people should vote. Frankly. In fact, I have to be very honest. I’m not that excited about women voting, to be honest.” Honestly!
• Suggested his gal Sarah Palin “shoulda had a little cleavage going” during her debate with Joe Biden. (Thank goodness she didn’t, it could have killed Rich Lowry.) Baker continued to show the kind of not-sexism that the GOP showered upon their veep, saying “[S]how your stuff, you know what I’m saying? Use all your assets….By the way, I noticed a panty line on her. … When they turned to walk to the podium, I saw a panty line.”
• Said of Code Pink protesters, “I’ll tell you, though, in the speech — the best part of the speech was when those Code Pink nuts — another bunch that ought to have all their tubes tied. All right? I can’t stand these Code Pink broads.”
• Called Thomas Beatie, the transman who has become pregnant twice, a “mutilated lesbian.”
• And while he didn’t say it himself, he promoted a video of a pastor who called Barack Obama’s mother “trash” for having a child with a black man.

Heckuva guy, huh? He also, just for the record, argued for the use of ax handles and machine guns against RNC protesters who, as far as I can tell, broke a window at Macy’s and…well, that’s it. Misogynistic, transphobic, racist — I assume homophobic, since it really is part and parcel of that worldview.

Of course, Baker is hardly alone in using sexism and hate to sell his agenda — it’s pretty much expected on the right. But for a guy to do so much in such a short time…well, it’s inspiring to all the hatchet men and haters on the right. Baker has set a high bar for his fellow wingnuts to clear. And I shudder to think what he’ll do next. Because while I suspect Baker doesn’t believe half the stuff that comes out of his mouth, we all know that a lot of his listeners do — and Baker has given the thumbs-up to violence against women and transpeople, given the green light to attacking liberal protesters. He’s opened the door to a lot of hate and evil. But that’s what the best right-wing talkers do, now, isn’t it?

As many of you heard, Connecticut’s supreme court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage today. Awesome.

However, next month Californians will be voting on prop 8, which seeks to eliminate same-sex marriage here. For the last couple of months, polls have been looking good, but earlier this week support for the proposition jumped by ten points. 47% of Californians are now in favor of eliminating same-sex marriage rights, with 42% opposing. If this proposition passes, it’ll reverse the supreme court’s decision and once again make same-sex marriage illegal. Now, the numbers are inexact, and pollsters are saying it’s still too close to call. But we need to pay attention to this.

A couple of quick notes: contrary to the lies supporters are spreading, the existence of same-sex marriage does not mean that officiants are now forced to perform these marriages. One thing you hear fairly often is that theoretically, people can now sue their places of worship if said place of worship won’t marry them. Sure, they could file a lawsuit - they could absolutely take the paperwork down to the courthouse and hand it to the clerk. But it’d be laughed out of court. Rabbis aren’t forced to marry Jews and non-Jews, even though that’s legal.

Also. This whole thing about forcing teachers to tell their students that homosexuality is okay? Please. The reasoning goes like this: since teachers sometimes talk about marriage in the classroom, teachers would theoretically be required to teach that same-sex marriage is just as good as hetero marriage. I actually wish that were the case, but no - the police aren’t going to break down the doors of classrooms in which teachers aren’t extolling same-sex marriage. It just isn’t going to happen.

My husband put it very nicely: supporters of prop 8 are framing all of their arguments as theoretical - as if Californians haven’t already been living with gay marriage (in our state, cities, neighborhoods, or homes) since June. They don’t want us to think about the fact that it’s a reality: first off, because that would call attention to the fact that they’re trying to take away actual rights, and secondly, because people might start to notice that civilization hasn’t crumbled to pieces yet.

And don’t get me started on that party-A-party-B-is-ruining-straight-marriage bullshit.

If you live in California, please volunteer to phone bank with the No On 8 campaign. And if you live in Connecticut, pay attention to this - the bigots are showing their cards.

Stay tuned for my diatribe against prop 4! Also opposition to prop 2, which people are claiming will force us to eat Mexican chickens. No, I’m not making this up.

(Cross-posted on Modern Mitzvot)

Once you take either of these positions, you lose all rights to be treated as if you might possibly have anything interesting to say. You lose all rights not to be cursed at. You also lose all rights for others to assume that you are a human being and not, say, a shit-covered paramecium.

1) Homosexuality is linked to pedophilia.

2) Black people are less intelligent than whites.

Feel free to comment on this, but guess which two positions you shouldn’t take unless you want to be banned? Pleas for civility will also be ignored.

From Feministe:

Projection, anyone?

A boy scout leader who opposed allowing gay men and atheists serve as troop leaders — and who even sued the city of Berkeley over it — has been arrested on felony sexual abuse charges. For sexually abusing boys in his troop.

But at least he kept the gays and the atheists out.

This is the best thing I’ve read in probably a month, and it’s am absolute must-read for anyone who’s ever wondered about the political and theological confluence of events that became the religious right.

It’s 3 years old, but I just read it this afternoon, so it’s new to me. Also, it’s long, but I found myself entertained and interested all the way through.

It is, of course, of special interest to those among us who would like to live by Biblical principles, since there’s a fair amount of talking about just exactly what those principles are.

It’s broken up into 5 parts:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

The author, bradhicks, is awesome in several other ways as well. It’s worth poking around his LJ, especially for some of his political writing.

PS. This was originally posted at my LiveJournal page, but I decided to repost it here for the general quality of conversation.

Idaho Senator Larry Craig was arrested and pled guilty to disorderly conduct after he was caught propositioning an undercover police officer for sex in an airport bathroom.  Pam has the run down on his votes on key gay/lesbian policy issues:

* Voted YES on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage. (Jun 2006)
* Voted NO on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes. (Jun 2002)
* Voted NO on expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation. (Jun 2000)
* Voted YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage. (Sep 1996)
* Voted NO on prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation. (Sep 1996)

This would be funny is this guy didn’t wield so much power, but at least he didn’t say a black man scared him into offering a blowjob like the last Republican who was caught doing this.

Is anyone keeping count of how many Republican politicians have been caught in gay sex scandals this year?

I’m going to organize this as bullet points for each episode. 

Gods Jewish Warriors

• I thought this was the best one of the series. 
• It was balanced in showing both the extremist settlers, and the more mainstream Jews who were opposed to the extremists.
• They gave ultra-orthodox Jews a free pass on the sexism issue, which was unfair.  They noted the treatment of women by Muslim and Christian fundamentalists, but mentioned nothing that I recollect.
• I was also impressed with how they discussed the international dimensions of the settler movement, and the fundamentalist Christians and right wing Jews who provided money and support to the settler movement.
• They also discussed the changes throughout history and covering the various peace agreements between Israel and its neighbors.  One of the most disturbing parts of the special was the discussion of the killing of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.  If you don’t know the story, you can click on the link.

God’s Muslim Warriors

• I felt like this one was a little more predictable because we are quite accustomed to critiques of Muslim fundamentalists–people promoting violence, Jihad, etc.  I do wish they would have highlighted more of the moderate leaders, and more people opposed to Islamic fundamentalism.  They did interview a few people who left extremist groups, which was interesting, but I wish they would have talked with people who were fighting these extremists all along.
• I thought the scenes of the Iranian women protesting were the most moving.  Heart has several postings on the women’s movement in Iran; you can find them here.  Many of the Muslim countries in the Middle East have draconian anti-women policies, and these policies are often justified in the name of religion.  By far one of the most consistent trends with Muslim, Christian, and Jewish extremists is their disdain for the rights of women.
• They did very good at focusing on the international dimensions of the movement; in particular the growing movement in Europe.  What I also found interesting was how both the Christian and Muslim fundamentalists were obsessed with the “cultural decay” in the West, focusing mostly on the decline in traditional definitions of family, materialism, and hedonistic popular culture. 

God’s Christian Warriors

• This was by far the worst of the three.  First, they didn’t show any of the Christian fundamentalists who advocate murder and violence.  There was a brief mention of bombing abortion clinics, but I wish they would have had an in-depth interview with someone like American terrorist Eric Rudolph or any of these people who have engaged in violence at abortion clinics. What about the Christian Identity movement?  What about Fred “God Hates Fags” Phelps and his family?  They did talk with Christian fundamentalists, but they didn’t talk to the ones who engage in or promote violence like they did in the first two parts of the series.
• I was happy to see them discuss gender, and the treatment of women, especially when Christiane Amanpour told the one minister that the Taliban said the same thing as him. That was classic.  But they didnt get into the depth that they could have– discussing churches who barred women from being ministers.
• There were not enough interviews with people opposing Christian fundamentalism.  They had two ministers who stepped away from some parts of the movement.  I liked the Minnesota minister, who couldn’t figure out why these groups were so obsessed with homosexuality as a sin, but not materialism, greed, or gluttony.
• There was no coverage of the international nature of Christian fundamentalism.  You would think it is only in the US, but there are places like.  Several of the countries in the pink on this map prohibit abortion even in the cases of rape and incest, and Christian fundamentalists are responsible for promoting this in many countrries.  This list also includes some of the various Christian based terrorist groups around the world.

What do you think?

From the Boston Herald:

A Boston man who failed the Massachusetts bar exam has filed a federal lawsuit claiming his refusal to answer a test question - related to gay marriage - caused him to flunk the test.

Stephen Dunne, 30, is suing the Massachusetts Board of Bar Examiners and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, claiming the “inappropriate” test question violated his religious convictions and his First Amendment rights. Answering the question, Dunne claims, would imply he endorsed gay marriage and parenting.

The suit also challenges the constitutionality of the 2003 SJC ruling that made Massachusetts the nation’s first state to legalize same-sex marriage.

Dunne, who describes himself as a Christian and a Democrat, is seeking $9.75 million in damages and wants a jury to prohibit the Board of Bar Examiners from considering the question in his passage of the exam and to order it removed from all future exams.

The lunacy of Dunne’s position is obvious; because a lawyer disagrees with the law doesn’t exempt her from knowing the law. Dunne’s moral claim — that answering a factual question about a law implies agreement with the law — is similarly groundless.

This illustrates the sense of entitlement held by many fundamentalist Christians today. Consider the fundamentalist pharmacists and emergency room doctors who refuse to fulfill the duties of their job, but push for laws exempting them from the consequences of that decision; or the Christians who have objected to biology exams that ask questions about evolution.

No one can force Dunne to answer an exam question he prefers to leave blank. But being Christian shouldn’t exempt Dunne from having to pass the bar exam if he wants to practice law. Unfortunately, Dunne’s attitude — which can be summed up as “let’s make a special law exempting Christians from the ordinary consequences of not meeting requirements” — seems increasingly common among right-wing Christians.

Genarlow Wilson, the teenage boy who was sentenced to ten years in prison for consensual¹ oral sex with another teenager (at the time, he was 17 and the girl was 15, which is “aggravated child molestation” according to Georgia law), had his sentence thrown out by a judge who called his sentence “a grave miscarriage of justice.” But the Attorney General of Georgia has appealed, meaning that for now Wilson remains in prison.

Wilson’s long minimum sentence stems from the fact that Georgia’s laws, at the time of Wilson’s conviction, called for a harsh 10-year minimum sentence for “aggravated child molestation” (which includes oral sex). If Wilson had had coital sex with the 15-year-old, rather than getting a blow job, he would have been sentenced to one year instead of ten years. I suspect the harsher penalties for non-coital sex were based on the association of non-coital sex with homosexuality; so although Wilson is being punished for straight sex, he may be a victim of homophobia.

It’s also hard not to suspect that the system would have found a way to be more merciful — or the Attorney General would have given this appeal a pass — if Wilson weren’t Black.

One last disturbing note about this case: Wilson was also acquitted of raping a different girl at the same party. Of course it’s impossible to be 100% certain, but from what ABC reported, it sounds to me like Wilson probably is a rapist, despite the acquittal.

In a portion of a tape obtained by “Primetime,” Wilson, then 17 and an honor student and star athlete who was homecoming king, is seen having intercourse with a 17-year-old girl, who was seen earlier on the bathroom floor. During the sex act, she appears to be sleepy or intoxicated but never asks Wilson to stop. Later on in the tape, she is seen being pulled off the bed.

Other portions of the tape show a second girl, who was 15 and later said she did not drink that night. She was recorded having oral sex with several boys in succession, including Wilson.

The following morning, Wilson got a phone call that would change his life. He learned from a friend that the 17-year-old had gone to the police to report that she’d been raped.

“I was, like, ‘What? When was this happening? Did this happen at the same party I was at?’” Wilson said. “It was shocking to me.”

Authorities believed the 17-year-old alleged rape victim and said she was too intoxicated to consent to any sexual acts, which is what Georgia law requires, otherwise these acts can be considered rape.

Wilson maintained his innocence. “I know that it was consensual,” he told “Primetime.” “I wouldn’t went on with the acts if it wasn’t consensual. I’m not that kind of person. No means no.”

Five of the boys accepted plea deals, but Wilson — the only one without a police record — held out. […] Jurors voted to acquit Wilson of raping the 17-year-old.

“I mean it wasn’t even an hour,” said jury forewoman Marie Manigault. “We immediately saw the tape for what it was. We went back and saw it again and saw what actually happened and everybody immediately said not guilty.”

Notice that Wilson’s defense — that he understands that “no means no” — is exactly the kind of thinking that leads a lot of date rapists to think their rapes of semi-conscious victims are justified. “She didn’t say no,” in their minds, is enough to make the event “not rape”; that she actively say yes is not required, in this view.

Unfortunately, that belief is held not just by a lot of date-rapists, but by a lot of people everywhere, which is (perhaps) why the jury found acquitting Wilson of rape so easy. My view is that when someone is nearly asleep during sex with a half-dozen boys and men, and when she’s so out of it that she has to be pulled off the bed (presumably because she wasn’t able to get up by herself), and then she says that she didn’t consent — that’s rape.

1. According to Wikipedia, the girl herself has repeatedly said that the oral sex was consensual. (back)