After my exasperated post about Rick Warren's initial unwillingness to condemn the proposed Ugandan laws prescribing imprisonment, and in some cases the death penalty, for gay people, I feel I must report that Pastor Rick has had second thoughts and has written a letter to Ugandan pastors urging them to speak out against such laws.

As with the Lutheran Church's belated apology for its founder's vile and nauseating anti-Semitism, and the Southern Baptist Convention's belated apology for its sect's enthusiastic support of slavery, and the Catholic Church's belated (and still rather half-hearted) apology for conspiring in the sexual abuse of children, I guess one can say, “Better late than never.”

Perhaps one could also say that getting browbeaten by history or bad publicity or common decency into adopting the most fundamental teachings of Jesus is a curious kind of witness for Christians, so many of whom seem to have a special genius for identifying the most vulnerable and oppressed members of the societies they inhabit and adding to their oppression by every means within their earthly power.