Melissa Etheridge and Rick Warren redux

Since New Years, the whole Rick Warren debacle has faded somewhat from my mind (which, I'll admit, it probably shouldn't have), but then Melissa Etheridge has to go and dredge it all up again, reprising her role as arbitrator of what the LGBTQ community should think.

Courtesy of The Bilerco Project comes this NPR interview (which I'm surprised I missed since NPR is pretty much on 24 hours at our house):

And I just want to make sure that as the liberals and progressives and Democrats or whatever you want to call us are moving into this new time with this new president do not say that they, the evangelicals who say such horrible things about gays, they have to stay over here and we're not going to let them in. That makes us no better than the last administration.

Just because he [compares gays to incest or polygamy] does not mean I have to not speak to him, or don't ever want to be in his company. We had a crazy experience at the Muslim Public Affairs Council conference...We met, we spoke. He's a fine person...He said he was trying to make the definition of marriage not change, not necessarily saying that gays are pedophiles or any of that stuff. One can draw whatever they want from that. This is what he told me.

TBP's Michael Crawford writes "Hav[ing] gay celebs like Melissa Etheridge making excuses for anti-gay leaders like Rick Warren does us no good," and I completely agree with him. That said, I do take issue with his suggestion that she just "shut up and sing," which, to me, smacks of the idea that Etheridge has no worthy opinions to express and that artists (particularly female artists?) should be seen and not heard, so to speak. That's bullshit (and it may be that that's not what Michael meant, but nevertheless that particularly phrasing made me uneasy). However, I do wish Etheridge would stop telling the LGBTQ community that we need to let the Warrens of the world into our hearts. Let's see some contrition on the sides of the evangelical right and then I might think about offering an olive branch.