David Link, with his customary nuance, examines the question:
Warren is all over the map on gay equality. On her show last night, Maddow clearly nailed Warren’s incoherence, both on Prop. 8 and on his role in Uganda. But that is where I think a bit of empathy may be in order (and I know this will be controversial). Like so many other heterosexuals of his age and older, Warren is caught in a bind.
He believed the lies and misperceptions about homosexuality that history, particularly as embodied in his religion, have taught him. He relied on those distortions, and built his belief system around them. For many years, we did too. It was hard to realize and then live out the truth about our own lives against those perversions of truth.
But as the Catholic church learns daily, you cannot deny nature long without paying a price. Sex and intimacy are fundamental to human beings, and cannot be either renounced or faked. We learned that the hard way, and are trying to correct the record so it doesn't happen again. Warren is obviously struggling with that. His conversation after Prop. 8 with Melissa Etheridge may have been a turning point. But his loyalty to the lies history taught him about us still permits him to blind himself to the lies he tells himself. And no lies are more persuasive then those.