Warren sent a tweet Thursday saying he forgives whoever sold the weapon to his 27-year-old son Matthew, who committed suicide last Friday.

The Orange County Sheriff's Department is trying to find the seller but it won't be easy. The gun's serial number was scratched off, making it impossible to trace, spokesman Jim Amormino said.

"We can't tell if it's registered or not because the serial number is scratched off," he said. "At one point in time, it may have been, but it's going to be impossible to find out."

It's illegal in California to buy a gun without a background check and purchasers are supposed to register their firearms. Defacing a gun's serial number is a federal offense.

Rick Warren is pastor of Saddleback Church in Orange County and author of "The Purpose-Driven Life," a bestseller.

He and his wife, Kay, said in an email on Saturday that their son struggled for much of his life with severe depression and suicidal thoughts. They have set up a mental health fund in Matthew's memory.

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A mere 12 hours after Margaret Thatcher exhaled her last breath Monday, a 75-year-old tune from a musical was on its way to becoming an overnight, chart storming hit. By Tuesday, "Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead" had become the biggest, most celebratory way of marking a death since Osama bin Laden helped make "Party in the USA" a mega hit.

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Progressive activists, who had just worked hard to elect Barack Obama, were "deeply disappointed" with the choice of a pastor who had a long record fighting against homosexuality and abortion rights. “How the hell did Rick Warren get inauguration tickets?” Salon’s then-Washington correspondent Mike Madden asked in December of 2008.

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Warren told CNN's Piers Morgan that it wouldn't bother him if there was a gay gene found. “I have all kinds of natural feelings in my life and it doesn’t necessarily mean that I should act on every feeling. Sometimes I get angry and I feel like punching a guy in the nose. It doesn’t mean I act on it. Sometimes I feel attracted to women who are not my wife. I don’t act on it. Just because I have a feeling doesn’t make it right. Not everything natural is good for me. Arsenic is natural.”

Watch:

Via Raw Story.

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Wednesday morning Warren replied in our letters section, and I thought I'd give him the courtesy of putting his reply in a post. It's below. I'm publishing it verbatim, rather than cleaning it up, to capture it accurately. As someone who has certainly wished I could take back a Tweet or two myself, I appreciate Warren's honesty. We disagree about many things, maybe most things, but in this treacherous political climate I respect his work with the poor as well as his willingness to engage with someone on the other political side. You can decide whether you agree with his reasoning yourself, and most of you probably won't.

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HALF of America pays NO taxes. ZERO. So they're happy for tax rates to be raised on the other half that DOES.

That's a right-wing meme spreading wildly of late. It's absolutely false. Thanks to the Earned Income Tax Credit, a bipartisan innovation adopted under President George H.W. Bush and expanded under President Clinton, it's true many low-wage workers pay no taxes and may even get government subsidies to bring them above the poverty line. As many as 47 percent of workers today pay no income tax, a number that jumped substantially during the recession. They do, however, pay payroll taxes and of course the regressive sales tax, which disproportionately burdens the poor, so it's false to say they pay no taxes. If you're not happy with the EITC, you might want to think about what it means that so many jobs pay poverty level wages in the U.S. today. The low-wage workers aren't the moochers; in fact, the subsidies benefit industries that profit from low-wage workforces. But the EITC has become a new obsession of the right wing; Andrew Leonard broke it all down here.

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The role of American evangelical Christians in popularizing anti-LGBT sentiment in Uganda and working directly with the religious leaders responsible for this bill has been explored at length since the bill was introduced in 2009. Many American religious right groups have belatedly distanced themselves from their former allies, but it seems like the damage has already been done.

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For weeks, Warren, a stalwart opponent of gay rights in this country, has refused to comment on a bill under consideration in Uganda that, if passed, would make homosexual acts punishable by life imprisonment or even death in some cases. (Salon's Mark Benjamin appeared on the "Rachel Maddow Show" recently to discuss an American whose program was an inspiration for the measure; you can watch that here.) The pastor has been under particular pressure to issue a statement condemning the legislation because of his affiliation with Martin Ssempa, a Ugandan minister who has repeatedly spoken at Warren's Saddleback church and who has unequivocally endorsed the bill. When other American Christian leaders from across the ideological spectrum issued a statement denouncing the proposed law, however, Warren declined to join them.

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Well, Warren has just done the deed, and suffice it to say, he left the gay bashing at home in Orange County. Gay-rights groups and liberals can still be mad at his presence (and understandably a little protective of separation of church and state), but it’s hard to get mad at the specific content of a prayer as stock as it gets. Pastor Rick hit all the classic notes -- the Lord's Prayer, the Shma (Judaism's main prayer -- that bit about "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one). He even danced up close to referring to global warming:

Help us to share, to serve, and to seek the common good of all. May all people of goodwill today join together to work for a more just, a more healthy, and more prosperous nation and a peaceful planet.

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Warren uses the video, which can be viewed below (hat-tip to Wonkette) to talk about his stance regarding homosexuality and gay marriage, and to attack the media and especially bloggers because of the controversy.

"The media never gets it 100 percent correct. I've never seen an in-print article that gets everything right," Warren says, adding, "The media lives for conflict. If there's no conflict, then somebody's going to create it."

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The main source for the animosity caused by the Warren selection was the pastor's intolerance of homosexuality. For example, the Web site for Warren's Saddleback Church contained language that said "someone unwilling to repent of their homosexual lifestyle would not be accepted at [sic] a member of Saddleback." The site also described homosexuality as "an enormous sin."

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An excerpt from Tammy Lynn Michaels' post, which I've left un-edited:

so honey met rick warren last night. well, she spoke to him on the phone beforehand, giving us insight into the man the media has made our latest "HE HATES YOU!" target. if i sit real still and think about it.. it's almost like reverse smear-the-queer... at times, it seems that the media presents us with target after target to smear, as if to say to us, "THIS IS THE GUY HOLDING YOU BACK!! GO GIT 'IM!!!" and it does seem that my lovely gay family is so bruised and bettered and ready to fight back (myself included), that we attack and deem someone ANTI-GAY, and ready to SMEAR, simply when they don't want the word "marriage" brought into our gay ceremonies. now, if the person doesn't want gays AT ALL, then i'm gonna chase that one down. but, i'm starting to think that there are indeed some people... some well-meaning and loving people... who are not at all ANTI-GAY, that's not why they don't want the word marriage used... they are merely RELIGIOUS. and for religious (archaic) reasons, they want to stay safe and respectful to WHAT THEY'VE BEEN TAUGHT.

let me try to differentiate the two.

let's say i am wearing a baseball cap. now what if i want to call it a yamaka? you know- it's basically the same thing, but one is missing the sun visor. i don't call my caps yamakas... cuz that is a religious name for a hat that is worn by religious people. now if i apply that thinking to this situation.... i would like to think of it as.... if they afford us the EXACT SAME RIGHTS, then who cares what it's called? ... joel and hanna can have a piece of paper with the word MARRIAGE on it, and all 1200 rights... and i can have a piece of paper with who-cares on it, and all 1200 rights. the word marriage is a religious, holy, word that people who go to church on sundays are told belongs to them. like yamaka, menorah, or matzo.

rick is not a televangelist. rick is not falwell. rick spoke of some "stupid" things he's said (his word, not mine), some missquotes that were given, and lots of ammunition from the media. all excellent points. (we're all war-minded right now, you know. it's easy for the media to distract us by throwing us into our own verbal wars here at home.) ) what to do, what to do.... the rest of the public is given an animation of rick warren... and then my wife meets the man behind the projections, the quotes, the "OTHER SIDE". and he is warm, caring, effusive, and LOVES gays. since he nearly swallowed honey when he hugged her, i tend to believe him. he wants our gay marriages to be just as respected and embraced as the straight marriages. he just wants to wear his yamaka, and me wear my hat.

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That quote is this: "We should not let 2 percent of the population determine to change a definition of marriage" -- that definition being one man and one woman for life, of course, as he states moments earlier in the video -- "that has been supported by every single culture and every single religion for 5,000 years."

This is simply not true. Different cultures have supported different definitions of marriage, to include the following, ahem, deviations from the pastor's purported pristine, 5,000-year tradition: polygamy, marriages involving children and/or forced marriages, marriages for dowry, divorce and remarriage, and now, increasingly, same-sex marriage.

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One of the biggest reasons for that hurtful outcome was the Rev. Rick Warren, who publicly endorsed Proposition 8 in late October. He told his parishioners and reporters alike that "any pastor could be considered doing hate speech if he shared his views that he didn't think homosexuality was the most natural way for relationships." But civil marriage rights for same-sex couples had nothing whatsoever to do with religion.

More recently, he even compared same-sex marriage to incest, pedophilia and polygamy. He may cloak himself in media-friendly happy talk that plays well on television, but he stands steadfastly against any measure of equality for LGBT Americans.

President-elect Obama must now, as my mother used to say, put some meat on the bone. We've seen appointment after appointment of talented Americans who come from constituencies that are part of this country and that helped gain his election. Well, we're one of those constituencies who actually worked and voted for Obama, unlike Warren and probably most of his 21,000 parishioners. Yet, we're the ones left waiting for some real evidence of inclusion.

So, are we angry about Rick Warren? You bet we are. And including a gay marching band in the inaugural festivities doesn't heal this wound. It only serves to make us question the promises that Barack Obama made in his historic quest to be president. We pray we weren't misled.

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So about the only thing less surprising than the outrage that news of Warren's selection to give the invocation at Obama's inauguration is prompting among gay activists, liberals and Obama supporters generally is probably Warren's appearance on the program in the first place. Obama and Warren have often used each other to demonstrate that they'll be willing to listen to people they disagree with -- and yes, also to let everyone know that they'll be willing to anger their friends. This isn't one of those political controversies that pop up out of nowhere without warning; whether they want to admit it or not, it seems Obama's advisors brought on this fight with his own supporters knowing full well what was coming.

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So I dropped in at Change.gov. It's getting ugly.

Here's a recent post from somebody named Jacinto Hernandez:

Mr Obama,

I am writing to ask that you return the campaign donations made by myself, Jacinto Hernandez, and my husband, Charles Callahan, to your campaign. Chet and I were passionate supporters-- Chet volunteered for weeks at a local phone bank. We attended numerous rallies and fundraisers-- including one with your wife, Michelle (see attached picture) That fund raiser was ostensibly held to court support with the gay community. At that fundraiser, Michelle held my my baby and promised to "not forget us." Yet you have. We worked tirelessly for your campaign-- replacing our yard sign when it was vandalized. So why would you betray the gay community- that stood by you-- and ask Rick Warren to lead your inauguration, when his anti gay rhetoric is dangerous to our family. He also was a huge proponent of proposition 8, that has endangered our family and has eliminated the civil rights of thousands of Californians.

We gave thousands of dollars-- despite the tough economy- in hopes that are community would no longer be marginalized. Despite the passage of prop 8, we celebrated on election day. Today we feel betrayed. There are so many christian leaders who are advocates for the gay community-- why choose one who is not?

Please return our donations immediately. We made donations over a number of occaisions, frequently in response to "urgent" pleas from your campaign. Consider this an "urgent" plea as well.

Please remove us from your mailing lists and never ask us for your support again, unless you stand with us and reject homophobia once and for all.

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But the analyses and critiques are taking some interesting turns:

• Sarah Posner, who has written extensively about evangelical politics for the American Prospect, has a great essay in the Nation, which she concludes as follows: "Warren represents the absolute worst of the Democrats' religious outreach, a right-winger masquerading as a do-gooder anointed as the arbiter of what it means to be faithful. Obama's religious outreach was intended, supposedly, to make religious voters more comfortable with him and feel included in the Democratic Party. But that outreach now has come at the expense of other people's comfort and inclusion, at an event meant to mark a turning point away from divisive politics."
• Ezra Klein of the Prospect discusses what the choice means for "inclusiveness," ostensibly the principle gain of inviting Warren: "The going explanation for Warren's presence on the inauguration podium is that 'this aims to be the most open and inclusive inauguration in history,' as Linda Douglas, a spokeswoman for the inauguration committee, told Politico. It's a peculiar definition of 'open and inclusive.' Warren, after all, is the only preacher giving the invocation. He will not share the stage with a rabbi, an imam, a monk, and an episcopalian. And Warren is not being chosen because he himself is open and inclusive . . . The tolerance Obama is asking for, in other words, is not from Warren. It's from the LGBT community, and women. He is asking them to be tolerant of Warren's intolerance. It's a cruel play, framed to marginalize the legitimate anger of those who Warren harms and discriminates against."
• And Mark Kleiman has some fun imagining if a similar move had been made in Iran: "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has chosen a fundamentalist imam to give the opening prayer at the next meeting of the majlis. The Hojatolislam Rukh al-Warun is considered 'moderate' by Iranian standards, but that merely illustrates how completely insane Iranian Islam has become. For example, asked whether sharia supported 'taking out' George W. Bush, al-Warun replied, 'The Prophet, Peace be upon him, has said, 'Allah puts government on Earth to punish evil-doers.' And it is written in the Holy Qu'ran that evil cannot be bargained with; it must be brought to an end. That is the legitimate goal of government.' "

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Though abortion is but one issue, and there has arguably been some movement and even growing agreement between the candidates and parties on other issues (e.g., human trafficking and environmental protection), in the end not much in the way of news or new commitments was elicited from either Obama or John McCain. I'm guessing few evangelicals changed their candidate preferences as a result. Perhaps some nonevangelicals did, and that is an important electoral consequence.

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