Savage Love - January 14, 2009

I'm going to Barack Obama's inauguration in Washington, D.C., on January 20. I've spent eight years, one month, one week, and one day waiting for this. (But who's counting?) However, I am looking for suggestions for a respectful way to protest the participation of Rick Warren. As a lifelong Episcopalian, I really don't want to engage in an anti-religious protest. (FWIW: I was annoyed with some of the anti-religious people at the anti-8 rallies. We need all our allies for this fight, so don't trash the engaged, progressive religious folk!)

While my friends want me to throw shoes, that ain't gonna happen. Ideally, I'd like a peaceful, gracious way to protest Warren's participation that won't undercut this great day, a way that can be picked up (and publicized) by folks on the Mall. Any suggestions?

Faithful Obama Girl

Whatever you do, FOG, don't do those things you, um, already said you don't want to do. No one should boo or throw shoes or do anything disruptive. The American Taliban love to pretend that they're the persecuted ones around here, and booing or throwing shoes or even just turning your back on Warren—the gay-hatin', right-wing Christian bigot Barack Obama invited to give the invocation at his inauguration—will invariably be spun as an attack on people of faith, as a vicious assault on prayer itself, as the moral equivalent of a syphilitic rent boy pissing directly into the open mouth of a crying baby Jesus.

Instead, borrow a page from those longsuffering gay Catholics. To register their displeasure with the pope's revealing obsession with gay sex, gay marriage, and gay shoes (the douchebag wears Prada), some gay Catholics wear rainbow sashes to mass. Perhaps folks disappointed by Warren's participation could coordinate a similar sartorial protest? Everyone wear a button with that rainbow-striped version of the Obama logo? Wave little rainbow flags during Warren's remarks? Head to the Mall in nothing but rubber chaps?

And speaking of Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church and author of The Purpose Driven Life…

My life's purpose over the last week was reading thousands of proposed new definitions for "saddlebacking" sent in by my readers. As with the new definition of santorum crafted by Savage Love readers ("the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes a byproduct of anal sex"), the new definition of "saddlebacking" has to be some act that 1) needs a name but doesn't already have one (we can't just rename "reverse cowgirl," people) and 2) is naughty enough to discomfort, say, a Reverend Warren, but something that actual people might actually do because that's the only way the actual word will actually get used.

So I've disqualified proposed definitions that were too literal ("putting an actual saddle on someone's actual back and actually riding them"), too gross ("to crap on someone's back and then sit on it, moving forward and back while making horse-riding-related noises like 'giddyap!' and 'whoa!'"), too complicated ("one person on all fours with a strap-on strapped to their midsection, a second person riding said strap-on, and a third person hitting the first person from behind while holding on for dear life/giving a handjob to the second person"), or too bitter ("when you give someone some kind of basic human right, like marriage, and then take it away again after a few months"). Here are the proposed definitions that made the cut:

1) Logically, if "barebacking" means having butt sex with no condom, then "saddlebacking" should mean having butt sex with a condom.