This happened on April 8 and I’ve been meaning to comment on it.
Rick Warren, “America’s pastor,” was on This Week on ABC that morning, and he had this to say:
TAPPER: You — you’ve written about this, especially on Twitter a great deal when it comes to the Obama administration’s health care rule when it pertains to contraception. You — you objected to that. Initially they dialed it back.
R. WARREN: Yeah.
TAPPER: How are you with what they called an “accommodation?” Where you OK with that, or no?
R. WARREN: Well, no I’m not. But the issue here is not about women’s health. There’s a greater principle and that is do you have a right to decide what your faith practices? Now I don’t have a problem with contraception. I’m a — I’m a Protestant. I’m an evangelical. But I do support my Catholic brothers and sisters who believe what they want to believe.
Warren has done a masterful job of positioning himself as a moderate, but his words say otherwise. This totally illogical and specious line of reasoning about whose rights are being trampled by private insurance coverage proves the point.
Rick Warren, fraud and charlatan.
Look at that again. He says the question is: “do you have a right to decide what your faith practices?”
Well, of course you do. You can tell those who are in your church what they can do, and they can adhere to it or not. That is not changed one iota by giving anyone a choice about contraception.
The problem with these preachers — and Catholic bishops — is they know that most of their own people don’t pay attention to what they say about contraception. So they want private businesses in the form of insurance companies to enforce their theology by denying everyone — Christians, Jews, atheists — the right to basic birth control coverage. So, really, who is shoving their views and agenda down whose throats?
If Rick Warren is such an awful religious leader that he cannot use the power of his charisma, position and rhetoric to convince his own flock to not use contraception, why should he be able to use private insurance companies to enforce that religious vision?
It’s crazy that they’ve been able to sell this to a moronic mainstream media as an issue of them being forced to do things against their wishes, when they aren’t being forced to do anything. Covering contraception doesn’t force anyone to use it.
Then there was this exchange:
TAPPER: You said in December that no American could say that they’re better off than they were four years ago.
R. WARREN: Well I don’t think so, not economically. There may be a — a portion but I have my ear to the ground. Most people would not think they’re better off economically than they were four years ago.
TAPPER: And — and who do you hold responsible for that?
R. WARREN: I hold everybody responsible for that. I hold the people who got themselves in debt. I hold the government that got themselves in debt. I hold multiple administrations. It’s not the fault of any one person. There’s plenty enough blame to be passed around.
Well, Warren should stop supporting Republicans who want to turn the economy over to the highest bidder. That is the root of the problem. There would not have been any unqualified people getting sub-prime mortgages if the people Warren generally supports had not created slickly packaged no-money-down balloon mortgages — if Wall Street had not offered them up to unsophisticated home buyers taken in by fast sales pitches, dishonest underwriting, and the myth that home ownership is an investment guarantee.
The blame lies with the people to whom Warren most appeals: the believers in so-called “success theology” where the worship of money trumps all, even honesty.
Warren is shameless.
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