I don’t know if you watched Anderson Cooper last night, but he did some slamming coverage of the Rick Warren debacle on his program. He basically had to referee a heated debate between Hilary Rosen editor-at-large for HuffPost and a CNN contributor, CNN’s Roland Martin and Robert Zimmerman, a Democratic National Committee Member and CNN contributor. Hilary Rosen had the afterburners on last night; she had no patience for the attempt by Roland Martin to give legitimacy to Rick Warren and called it “an outrageous mistake.” Read and watch it. (H/t Towleroad re: the video):
RICK WARREN, PASTOR, SADDLEBACK CHURCH: I’m opposed to having a brother and sister be together and call that marriage. I’m opposed to older guy marrying a child and calling that a marriage. I’m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You think those are equivalent to gays getting married?
WARREN: I do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: It’s comments like that from Pastor Rick Warren that made the Internet and blogosphere light up with outrage today when it was announced that President-elect Obama has asked the popular conservative preacher to give the invocation at the inauguration. Now Warren was a big supporter of Proposition 8 which took away marriage rights from gays and lesbians in California. And late today, an Obama spokeswoman said that while the president-elect disagrees with Rick Warren on gay rights issues, he wants this to be the most inclusive inauguration ever.
Let’s dig deeper with Hilary Rosen, Robert Zimmerman and Roland Martin.
Hilary, Andrew Sullivan wrote today on his blog. He said, “It’s shrewd politics, but if anyone is under any illusion that Obama is interested in advancing gay equality, they should probably sober up now.” Is this a slap in the face to the gay community?
ROSEN: You know, from what I gather, every gay person who paid attention to this today felt like we were kicked in the stomach. This is just kind of outrageous that you would choose such a divisive figure to speak out in a blessed prayerful moment at a day of bringing the country together. I think it’s kind of an outrageous mistake on the part of the Obama campaign.
COOPER: Roland, of all of the pastors to choose from, why choose someone controversial?
MARTIN: How about choosing Reverend Jeremiah Wright who supports the issue of gay marriage? Obama believes in marriage is between a man and woman. Is that controversial?
Not only that, you have two people who are speaking today who are preachers. You have Rick Warren who is against gay marriage, giving the invocation. You have the Reverend Joseph Lowery who is for gay marriage, giving the benediction.
ROSEN: This is not a policy difference. This is not even about gay marriage. That could be a political or policy difference that obviously Barack Obama has with many gay and lesbian people. This is about the way that Pastor Warren has used homosexuality as a weapon, that he uses religion as a weapon to suggest that gay relationships are akin to—and pedophilia and other things.
That’s the problem. It’s not a matter of a policy difference. It’s a matter of using this sort of moral religious authority to divide one group from another.
The debate continues below the fold.