Alan Cumming on Gay Rights and Rick Warren

Alan Cumming, the award-winning Broadway and film actor, who also is gay, has penned a decent article responding to Barack Obama's unfortunate decision to have the opportunistic, anti-gay, and hyper-materialistic evangelical minister, Rick Warren, speak at his inauguration.

He writes,

In many ways Rick Warren is like a lot of people we know -- friends' dads or people we meet on planes that are pleasant but occasionally offer an opinion that gives you a startling glimpse into the darkness of their souls. Comparing same-sex relationships with incest and pedophilia is a case in point.

And further on,

Obama is very clearly showing his promise to be everyone's president -- from little, lefty queers like me to big, right-wing religious bigots like Rick Warren.

(And he is a bigot. Go look it up in the dictionary.)

But wait! I can see his point about gay marriage! Much as he misled his congregation about Proposition 8 with the fear-mongering notion that ministers would be arrested for not promoting some gay agenda if it passed, he does have a reasonable point that marriage has been defined in a certain way (i.e. not between two dirty queers) for many years (he claims five thousand, but who's counting?), and as we all know as we emerge exhausted from this last election, change is difficult. I see his issue with it. And Mr. Warren does seem to support equality for the gay community in all other ways, so it seems to be merely a semantic issue with the use of the word 'marriage.'

If he, and many other millions of Americans, cannot handle the word 'marriage' in reference to two men or two women, and if that is the only stumbling block to him being able to embrace equality and the end of prejudice against gays, then fine! Fine, Mr Warren, keep your 'marriage!'

I actually think the gay rights movement has shot itself in the foot with the insistence on this word. For me, the most important thing is that I have the same rights and protections as any other human being, whether I wish to enter into a legally recognized relationship or whether I wish to remain single. And as things stand right now, I have neither.

I am not even actually 'married.' I 'entered into a civil partnership.' Of course everyone, even the man who conducted the ceremony, called it 'marriage,' but technically, legally it is a civil partnership -- one incidentally that straight people can enter into, too. So are we to believe that Mr. Warren and his fellow Americans would feel comfortable if the U.S. government followed the U.K. model (where the word 'marriage' was also a small moot point)?

Maybe -- in the spirit of the new United States of Obamica -- the gay community needs to reach out and say that if the end of a civil rights struggle rests around the interpretation of one word, then it is willing to forgo that word and use another, or others.

But why should they? Obama has shown his empathy for gay marriage by pointing out that his parents' marriage was illegal in many states when he was born. (Incidentally he said 12, but it was actually 22, according to Politifact.com). Would he have been fine with saying his parents entered into a civil partnership? Maybe. But would he be fine with hearing that his parents' marriage was akin to a brother marrying his sister or a pedophile marrying a child? I think not.

And that, finally, is what is so upsetting and insulting about the idea that Rick Warren will be standing on the podium on this great day of celebration for a new America: because this whole thing is not about gay rights or policy or differences of opinion. It is about human decency and respect. Let's face it, a generation ago Rick Warren would have made Barack Obama sit at the back of the bus, and now it's the gays who are back there and we feel kind of lonely.

Check out the whole article. What do you think?