Opinion: What Rick Warren said

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A reader called to question my brief reference to incest in a post about Rick Warren’s inaugural invocation. (I think that was the offending article; he got me on deadline).

I had written that there was no mention of same-family sex in the prayer, a reference (I admit it) to the widespread impression that Warren had compared same-sex marriage to incest and pedophilia. My caller demanded the quotation.

Here it is, but I doubt he’ll be satisfied, for reasons I’ll explain below.

In an interview with the Beliefnet web site, Warren said:

‘I’m opposed to having a brother and sister being together and calling that marriage. I’m opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that marriage. I’m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.’ The context was Warren’s opposition to same-sex marriage and his support for Proposition 8.

Was Warren comparing same-sex marriage to incest and pedophilia? Clearly yes, in the sense that he was equating all three relationships as unfit to be denoted ‘marriage.’ That doesn’t mean that he was saying that gay sex is morally equivalent to pedophilia, (which I think is what our caller imagined me to have said), but a comparison is being made. And, beyond the parsing of words, Warren ought to know that responding to a question about gay marriage with references to brothers marrying sisters, adults marrying children and polygamy is bound to offend.

The debate over Warren’s comments is deja vu all over again for me, because I remember similar complaints when my former newspaper was accused of treating former Sen. Rick Santorum unfairly by saying that he had compared gay sex to bestiality.

In a now notorious 2003 interview with USA Today, the other Rick was asked: ‘OK, without being too gory or graphic, so if somebody is homosexual, you would argue that they should not have sex?’ After defending anti-sodomy laws, Santorum offered this historical analysis: ‘In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.’

Equally memorably, the reporter responded: ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think I was going to talk about ‘man on dog’ with a United States senator, it’s sort of freaking me out.’

Warren’s language wasn’t as flavorful as Santorum’s, but he too was making comparisons. Again, he was doing so in the context of marriage. But it’s nitpicking to suggest that lumping homosexual relationships with the others as unworthy of recognition by the state doesn’t involve a more general derogation of same-sex relationships.