Rick Warren is so freakin’ narrow-minded and ignorant. And dangerous. First off he says says the Bible does not permit a woman to divorce a spouse who is abusing her.  Well, Leviticus 19:27 says

Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.

And judging from photos of Pastor Rick, it sure looks like he gets hair cuts and shaves very regularly and carefully. Pastor Rick says the only reasons for divorce are abandonment and adultery. In an audio clip on his Saddleback Church site, the cherry-picking Bible-thumper explains:

I wish there were a third in Scripture, having been involved as a pastor with situations of abuse. There is something in me that wishes there were a Bible verse that says, ‘If they abuse you in this-and-such kind of way, then you have a right to leave them.’

I want to tell you the advice that we give in our counseling ministries. First of all if you are in this kind of a situation, I strongly recommend that you take advantage of our lay counseling ministry. Go in and talk to someone and let them minister to you. And the advice that we give is not divorce but separation. Separation combined with counseling has been proven to provide healing in people’s lives…

When I say physical abuse, I mean literally somebody is beating you regularly. I don’t mean they grab you once. I mean they’ve made a habit of beating you regularly. You need to separate in that situation, because that’s the only thing that’s going to solve that.

Incidences of reported domestic violence increased by 42% from 2005 to 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.  But in this clip, there’s nothing about contacting law enforcement if you’re being beaten regularly. Or grabbed once, which in California is battery. Nor the thought that regular beating can start with a grab…

Pastor Rick’s ignorance about polygamy is nowhere as life threatening as his utter stupidity about spousal abuse, though it does enhance his image as a narrow-minded knuckle-dragger.

For months and months now America’s Pastor has been flogging us with the absolutely false information that

For 5,000 years, marriage has been defined by every single culture and every single religion–this is not a Christian issue. Buddhist, Muslims, Jew–historically, marriage is a man and a woman.

I called golden cafe poop in an earlier post that went into ye olden times polygamy, and now it’s time to look at polygamy today.

Jacob Zuma, the current head of the African National Congress, has numerous wives.

In Sudan, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has encouraged multiple marriages to increase the population.

While the State of Israel has severely limited the ability for Jews to enter polygamous marriages, it instituted provisions for existing polygamous families immigrating from countries where the practice was legal.

Idigenous people, like those in Tibet practice polygamy, as do some Hindus in Nepal.

Polygamy was only banned in Hong Kong in 1971.

Polygamy is practiced, albeit illegally, in the United States by certain sects of  Mormons

Islam allows for the practice of multiple wives, a practice found primarily in Arab countries. The Islamic populations of Europe and America don’t practice polygamy, because it is outlawed, which raises an interesting question:

If a country’s laws can superceded a religious code, as with Islamic and Mormon plural marriages, then it seems a law permitting certain forms of marriage, which might be religiously ojectionable to some–say marriages between people of different races or creeds or of the same sex–shouldn’t be an issue.  

Gods, Rick Warren is an idiot. Please fix him. Or make him go away.