NPR’s Guy Raz spoke with Melissa Etheridge about her embrace of Rick Warren on “All Things Considered” on January 3.

Explained Etheridge: “I believe I understand Obama’s choice here. I believe that Barack Obama wants to be the President of the entire United States. Pastor Rick Warren reached out to him, brought him into his church during the campaign, which outraged many members of his church. Yet he reaches across and I think this is Obama reaching back and going, ‘I think we can disagree on things, yet we can still all move forward. We need to get past our differences.’ 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.”

After Raz played her the clip of Warren comparing homosexuality to polygamy and incest, Etheridge said:

“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.”

Plus, Warren’s a huge fan of her music.

Listen to the interview AFTER THE JUMP…

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(audio courtesy of Jeremy at Good As You)