You have Rick Warren officially spooked

I thought it was all a tad too convenient that Rick Warren was talking the press about the controversy over his doing the invocation at Obama's inaugural, and that Warren was doing videos and emailings to supporters trying to present "his side" of the argument (his side is that we're hateful, evil, Christ-ophobes), and then scrubbing his church Web site to remove language that talked about banning gays from membership (though the church's apparent PR firm (what church has a PR firm?) just emailed me to say they have no rescinded their language on homosexuality, but rather they've "repurposed" it (repurposed?) in a series of videos. Whatever. The fact that Rick Warren's PR flak is now emailing me speaks volumes to what we have already accomplished.

Now we find out that Rick "Deny me three times" Warren is visiting an HIV/AIDS related thrift store in West Hollywood (the gay mecca of the west coast) and taking photos with known homos. Don't think for a minute that Warren isn't visiting the thrift store to prove that he loves American "victims" of AIDS just lke he likes those Africans (we "coincidentally" wrote about this distinction yesterday).

Folks - you, we, have Rick Warren running in circles in order to clear his "good" name. (And I have a hard time believing that he's doing this without a little coaching from some folks who might just have invited him to speak somewhere on January 20th.) But the problem is that Warren can only run so far from his anti-gay rhetoric because it's what he believes. It's what his followers believe. These people hate us. They consider us sub-human. As Rick Warren himself said, our relationships are no better than pedophilia, than incest. There are only so many amends Rick Warren can make before he, once again, reveals his true self, as he did this morning when he called us hateful, evil, Christ-ophobes.

So I'm not surprised that Warren isn't able to speak publicly without stepping his foot deeper in it. Having said that, it is interesting, and telling, that the guy so concerned about pedophilia and incest is now hell-bent on being the gays best friend. That suggests that Mr. Warren, and Mr. Obama, know they have a problem. They're worried. They're feeling vulnerable. And that, in and of itself, considering that we're dealing with the incoming president and the putative leader of millions of religious right evangelicals, is quite an accomplishment that you should all be proud of.

It also means, don't let up. They're running scared.