He has further stressed that for 5,000 years, EVERY culture and EVERY religion has maintained this worldview.

Well, perhaps he’s an idiot instead of a liar, but the fact remains that the above IS NOT FACT. 

It’s the opposite of fact.  Sometimes referred to as LIE.

Seriously, parsing the word “is” didn’t work when Clinton tried it.  When you can post video evidence of the man saying “I never supported Prop 8” and video evidence of the man saying “Vote for and support Prop 8” there’s no defense.

Either admit the bigotry and be proud of it, or admit the bigotry and be ashamed of it and advocate for a better world.  You can no longer send one message to one group of people and another message to a different group of people and believe that those messages can be kept separate.

Well, you can “believe” it all you want.  The facts are the facts, and Warren talked to cameras.

I think he is being held accountable, just not by the MSM.  But the fact is you caught him, Pam, and the liberal blogosphere pitched a fit about the lying and the failure of the MSM to react or ask a follow-up.  And while pointing out that we don’t believe his lies, you were loud enough that the bigots in his flock heard that he wasn’t openly hating people.

Which pissed them off and started the conservata-fundy blogosphere pitching a fit.

It’s all good.  Put it in the sunshine.

I love that he’s now outsourcing his lies to the PR department.  This man is a coward, a liar, and an ignorant ass.  But he’s smart enough to know when he’s losing.  I’m certain that his irrelevancy is starting to affect him.  The fear he must feel when he sees that Glenn Beck stole Jimmy Swaggart’s Armageddon with Tears act.  The fear he has when he realizes even young evangelical kids don’t worry that much about gay marriage.  The incredible dread he must face when he realizes half his own choir likes musical theater for more than the music and the theater.

How can someone claim to be a spiritual leader and lie so blatantly? There has never been a time in the past 5,000 years when marriage meant only one man and one woman in every culture and religion. For goodness sake, that’s not true in the US right now. Does he think we’ve never heard of FLDS?

Am I to believe that Pastor Warren has never read the Old Testament?

It wouldn’t surprise me. Many of the current generation of fundiwacko preachers have astoundingly low levels of biblical literacy. It just isn’t taught in their seminaries. What’s taught is dogma, with tiny snippets of proof-texting.

When Dr. Warren told Larry King that he never campaigned for California’s Proposition 8, he was referring to not participating in the official two-year organized advocacy effort specific to the ballot initiative in that state, based on his focus and leadership on other compassion issues.

Hey. what a great line! I’ll have to try that sometime: “Honey, when I said I never fucked your sister, I was referring to not participating in the official two-year organized advocacy effort specific to the initiative of getting her pants off, based on my focus and leadership on other compassion issues.”

Pam:  “That BeliefNet interview didn’t sound like an unintentional impression to me.”

That’s because it absolutely wasn’t.  And he made that explicitly clear in his follow-up comment.

Warren: You know, not a problem with me. I’m not opposed to that, so much as I’m opposed to the redefinition of the definition 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 getting married.

Warren: Oh, I do. 

“Am I to believe that Pastor Warren has never read the Old Testament?”

...oh, he’s read it.  He just assumes no one outside the fundnut hierarchy has read it.  They assume a level of ignorance that will let them make ridiculous statements about the history of marriage and they won’t get called on them.

Maybe that ignorance exists in their own “flocks”, and maybe too many Americans in general, but there are plenty of us who are aware of history in general and biblical history specifically who know that a claim like “marriage has been defined the same way for 5000-years!” is complete bullshit.

Own your words, asshole.  Admit you either lied to the fundies, or you lied to the rest of us.  Embrace the bigotry or reject it.  But don’t pretend you can have it both ways and not get into trouble…

<blockquote> Am I to believe that Pastor Warren has never read the Old Testament?

It wouldn’t surprise me. Many of the current generation of fundiwacko preachers have astoundingly low levels of biblical literacy. It just isn’t taught in their seminaries. What’s taught is dogma, with tiny snippets of proof-texting. </blockquote>
While Warren went to seminary - a Fuller Doctorate no less, so he does have some chops - many of the evangelical right haven’t proceeded on much more than just a few years of an undergraduate degree.

That’s the problem Warren has - I read this note and knew while it was addressed to Pam and her readers, its really meant to save Warren’s ass with the fundamentalist hardliners whom all “know” things from their text as literal truth.

You’ll find a surprising amount of proof-texting, called ‘eschatology’, in evangelical and fundamentalist materials used to support their beliefs and in their sermons.  Typically paragraphs of the root Greek or Hebrew meanings of words in one verse citations.  Which any 100-level rhetorician will recognize as a primary means to change the context of most statements to support the day’s message.

There’s an Italian saying, “traduttore, traditore.”  The translator is a traitor.  Fans of Umberto Eco know this is one of his peeves.  And so you have thousands of bible college and Bachelor’s graduates out there making their own translations and interpretations of 2000 year old scripture.

But God has guided their scholarship, whispered His voice into their hearts - so the original meaning is preserved.  And this is Biblical Truth.  Man and Woman have always been meant for marriage, one by one, as God planned, since time began.

Waldman: Do you think those are equivalent to gays getting married?

Warren: Oh, I do.

So this means that Warren thinks same-sex marriage is sanctioned in the Old Testament? Who knew.

I think that Warren and people like him are still fundamentally unclear on the concept of words being permanent and easily accessible. Any poor sod with a computer can put up a video of Warren talking out of three sides of his mouth and then superimpose or voiceover the “correction” email to square the circle.

I do know this.  Confession of sin or error has the requirement of sincerity.  You cannot equivicate.  You cannot straddle the fence.  You cannot do so purely out of a selfish motive (fear of damnation, etc.).  The good rev. ought to know he is ‘compounding the sin.’

Did that PR assmunch seriously call you “pam?” Your full name is on every one of your posts. And since names are proper nouns, they should be capitalized. He didn’t even put “CNN” in lower-case letters. He must seriously despise you!

“Am I to believe that Pastor Warren has never read the Old Testament?”

...oh, he’s read it.  He just assumes no one outside the fundnut hierarchy has read it.  They assume a level of ignorance that will let them make ridiculous statements about the history of marriage and they won’t get called on them.
…
MikeEss on 04/12 at 06:11 AM

...But God has guided their scholarship, whispered His voice into their hearts - so the original meaning is preserved.  And this is Biblical Truth.  Man and Woman have always been meant for marriage, one by one, as God planned, since time began.
idiosynchronic on 04/12 at 06:52 AM

I had some fun with this over at Talking Points Memo, in Amanda’s post there looking at the Bristol Palin mess in the light of Jessica Valenti’s The Purity Myth. There was this dude named Mike7Woodson, and he said a lot of stuff about the wonderful true message of Christian teachings on female purity and the complimentary roles of the genders, wrapping up with:

You might scoff at all of this, but you need to learn more about what people actually believe before you misrepresent their faith.
...
Posted by Mike7Woodson
April 9, 2009 2:09 AM

Well, I pointed out that actually a lot of us lefty feminist heathen types were real familiar with Christian apologetics and the scriptures they are supposed to be based upon. I was probably getting in over my head when I mentioned the contradictory passages in Genesis, such as the two distinct myths of the Creation of humanity, and that the more egalitarian, simple one was associated with the “Elohim” words for God—the so-called E-texts, as opposed to the J-texts associated with the more starkly patriarchal “Adam’s Rib” myth. Especially when I claimed these E-nouns were plural and even perhaps feminine—“Goddesses.”

Ol’ Mike came back at me on that one!

From Christian perspectives wherein the New Testament is believed a spiritual completion of Old, the plural Elohim in Genesis 1.26 refers to the three personal of the Holy Trinity, shifting to the unity of the three in verse 27. From both perspectives, your argument seems rooted in a modern failure to do proper exegesis that is not unusual for political use of academic inquiry.

O…K…then a bunch of Hebrew rabbis, in the monotheist period (after the Babylonian captivity) wrote down plural forms because they knew in their hearts, or were guided by the hand of God to write, despite their fervent belief in the unity of God, that God was actually a Trinity? This is proper exegesis then?

Apparently I’m just a rootless postmodernist:

Your first paragraph about the orthodox Christian view of women is that they “exist to be subservient” to men is way off. It is a projection 20th century sub-ideologies reacting to the politico-legal distortions between the genders imposed by the unique historical events and circumstances forming the crucible around American men and women (immigration waves, power tiers, the many wars, the flu, the depression, the chapters of capitalism, migration, racism and so on).

No, the Bible is clear enough!

In Genesis, the meaning of woman is clearly to accompany man. Accompaniment means complement. Complement means to complete. Man was incomplete without woman. Therefore, man depends on woman for his own completion.

Glad you cleared that up, Mr Woodson! That’s not oppressive at all, is it? Why, it’s beautiful!

Now I suppose I should hie myself off to some fundie church to find the woman who will complement me. It’s God’s will, after all.

Mark, it typically seems that what people think they see in the bible says a hell of a lot more about them than it says about the bible.

Let’s face it.  The bible is an old book, containing a whole lot of stories of uncertain provenance, some collected, some discarded, with no apparent rhyme or reason, translated into English through several other languages, with no available original source documents, from anonymous authors taking the names of characters from the bible, viewed through politically driven decisions on what parts to emphasize and what to disregard.

The fact that christianists of all flavors have been arguing about what it all means, practically since the day after Jesus supposedly died, indicates just how unclear the whole thing is — even for those who claim to be studied and pure-hearted Christians who have only the best intentions.

If you work hard enough, you can piece together enough “support” from things in the bible to “prove” anything you want…

It never ceases to amaze me the degree to which these fundies will stand on their heads to promote their bigotry and hatred.  I know that they have become used to the idea that the populace is filled with troglodytes however, there are still those that have a functioning brain and use it quite well.  We are not all so drunk on the communion wine that we cannot see a bold face lie when we see it. Rhetoric cannot place truth and these idiots need to realize that not all of us went to Bob Jones university, some of us actually went to places that taught us to think critically and recognize the smell of shit when it comes our way.

Nice follow-up Mark.  I can tell I wasn’t awake enough yet to post that coherently.

Now I suppose I should hie myself off to some fundie church to find the woman who will complement me. It’s God’s will, after all.

Oh don’t even go there.  Some denominations seem to breed singles whom are obstinately determined to marry sinners outside the faith and bring them to Jesus.  Atheists, agnostics & gays are irresistible to these folk.

You’ll find a surprising amount of proof-texting, called ‘eschatology’...

I thought ‘eschatology’ meant having to do with beliefs of the end times…? Did you perhaps mean ‘epistemology’? Or perhaps ‘episiotomy’ - you know, snipping out a tiny piece to push through a much larger payload?

Joking, idiosynchronic. Honestly I’m lonely and being “irresistible” sounds tempting, but I can’t even sit through a Catholic Mass anymore, despite knowing there is a broad range of opinion among Catholics. I just can’t be dishonest enough to pretend to believe stuff I don’t.

I can’t even enjoy the local Unitarian congregation any more. I still think I’d like the one I used to attend in Santa Rosa.

But that was a bust as far as finding dates goes too. I liked it for other reasons.

Fact is I just have no idea how to date…but I know better than to try to hook up with a fundamentalist.