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Obama and McClurkin: Two for Which Road?
Under siege by the seemingly unstoppable Sen. Clinton, is Senator Obama's campaign heading toward incoherence?
The same man who's worked hard, even bravely, to bring open but tolerant religiosity to Democratic politics, who ventured into Christian, hard right territory for an AIDS conference at Pastor Rick Warren's Saddleback church, who underwent a public AIDS test there to help de-stigmatize the disease in black eyes and who surely has heard about the black church's newfound dedication to combatting AIDS - that guy is barnstorming with Donnie McClurkin, gospel star, pastor to the black elite and crusading homophobe? What on earth is he thinking? Like Bill Clinton in his day, Obama is supposed to be the smartest, most intellectual guy in the bunch but this move is dumb as a rock, transparent as Britney Spears' clothes, cynical and desperate. Times are hard for a former super star whose best case scenario now is to argue sloppy staff work.
The normally restrained commentator, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, has lost it over this move and I can't say I blame him, though I'm too busy being confused to move on to anger. Hutchinson notes:
Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama ripped a page straight from the Bush campaign playbook with his announced upcoming three date barnstorm tour through South Carolina with notorious gay basher, gospel singer Donnie McClurkin. The Grammy winning black gospel singer’s last effort on the political scene was his song and shill for Bush’s reelection at the Republican National Convention in 2004. Obama has hitched his string to McClurkin’s high flying gay bash kite in part out of religious belief (he purports to be somewhat of an evangelical), in bigger part because he’s falling further and further behind Hillary Clinton with the black vote in South Carolina and everywhere else, and in the biggest part of all because he hopes that what worked for Bush’s reelection will work for him. Enter McClurkin. He’s black, he’s popular, and gospel plays big with blacks in South Carolina, especially black evangelicals, and many of them openly and even more of them quietly loathe gays.
Perhaps like this minister who also practices restorative, religious 'therapy' to cure gays who said in defense of McClurkin: "Telling any child that he or she is born gay and cannot change is a death sentence. Gay activists and their blind allies in the mental health, medical and educational professions have blood on their hands for condemning young people to a life mined with such suffering and disease."
So, this guy is sharing a stage with this guy?
If McClurkin doesn't suddenly come down with a sudden "schedule overlap" and 'voluntarily' cancel this appearance (he's not singing at all of them), we'll know that Senator Obama still isn't quite soup yet. If he was smart enough to distance himself from his controversial minister and to even quit smoking, let's see if he's smart enough to get himself out of this one or if he's going to pander to black intolerance.
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Posted by Debra Dickerson on 10/22/07 at 11:28 AM | E-mail | Print | Digg | de.licio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Yahoo! MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Netscape | Google |
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Zogby Poll: Half Say They Would Never Vote for Hillary Clinton for President, only 37% said they would never vote for Obama. Democrats need to unite behind Obama because Hillary's negatives are so great, it will result in a Bush type Republican for another 4 years. For the sake of the Country and the World, vote for Obama to save us all.
Posted by: Clare on 10/22/07 at 5:33 PM
I am just curious - Is there ever going to be respect for a presidential candidate's words and/or stand for what he believes to be right? What makes you think that the presidential candidates who do not speak out against gays essentially support them? At least Obama has a right to defend what he knows is right. Just as you would expect others to respect your support for gays, respect his support for what he stands for. You do not have to use all those words and terminologies to put your point across. I wonder if all those who support gays always say the same behind closed doors. I respect those who declare their stand publicly and let us know what they believe in their deep self. So, you need to respect those who say it publicly than those sheep in wolves' skin who do not say it but in their hearts are against it. I believe that most people who speak against gays do not hate the gays, but the ‘gayism’! Won’t you agree? You need to separate what you feel is right from what you know is right.
I would think that those who say that Pastor does not purport to be somewhat of an evangelical; he is an evangelical. Those who all Pastor a gay basher should stop trying to trample him because he speaks out of experience and knows what he is saying. He has a right to bash ‘gayism’ but not the gay which is what he preaches. He loves all people but not sin! Does he not have a right to speak out like any other American? Sit down and analyze what he says, and then synthesize it and find out what is best for the community.
Wangima
Posted by: Wangima on 10/23/07 at 6:29 AM
Gays bash Christians(Christophobia) and demonstrate their hated for Christians just like the Jews who hate Muslims(Muslimphobia). The ad for the Folsom Street Fair, a San Francisco festival that depicts the Last Supper as a sadomasochism party, (portrayed Christ and his disciples as half-naked homosexual sadomasochists) which is partly funded by San Francisco's Grants for the Arts program, which is funded by the city's hotel tax - sparked outrage from Christian groups because it mirrors Leonardo Da Vinci's famous painting of "The Last Supper" but replaces Jesus and his apostles with scantily leather-clad men and women sitting at a table where the bread and wine representing Christ's broken body and lifegiving blood are replaced with sadomasochistic sex toys in this twisted version of Da Vinci's The Last Supper. 'Gay' activists disingenuously call Christians 'haters' and 'homophobes' for honoring the Bible, but then lash out in this hateful manner toward the very people they accuse. In their version of The Last Supper, Christ, Who gave His life for our sins, is despicably replaced by sin itself as the object of worship. You Gays, stop being so hateful towards Christians.
Posted by: Pastor Leroy Jones on 10/23/07 at 7:13 AM
Homosexuality does not, as a core belief, preach hatred of anyone else. Sexuality, and sexual orientation in paritcular, are not systems of belief at all, but rather compose a major facet of the human persona.
Christians and other zealots who hate and fear gays; who tell gays that they are unnatural and sinful; who seek to prevent lovers of the same sex from having their love recognized -- these people deserve no respect. We progressives who are gay or who believe in defending gays deride religiously-based discrimination against gays because it is based on irrational belief.
Gays would not hate Christians if Christians had not spent the past 2,000 years hating and oppressing gays.
Posted by: cavillor on 10/23/07 at 8:26 AM
Gays are petite bourgeoisie not progressives according to our dealy beloved Karl Marx. Marx condemned the sexual freedom advocated by Fourier and Saint-Simon as a relapse into a "bestial" state of "universal prostitution". Engels condemned homosexuality among men of ancient Greece in two separate passages of The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, describing it as "morally "deteriorated", "abominable", "loathsome" and "degrading". Marx apparently shared Engels' views, writing that "the relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of human being to human being" and describing the author of a text promoting sexual freedoms as "that queer prick" ("Schwanzschwulen"). According to the socialist writers Hekma, Oosterhuis and Steakley, Marx and Engels saw any form of sexuality outside of a monogamous heterosexual marriage as a kind of degeneracy fostered by capitalism, which could be cured by socialism. According to Engels, "natural moral principles" would flourish in the socialist future, when (heterosexual) "monogamy, instead of declining, finally becomes a reality — for the man as well, and homosexuality would simply disappear.
August Bebel's Woman under Socialism (1879), the "single work dealing with sexuality most widely read by rank-and-file members of the SPD," was even more explicit in warning socialists of the dangers of same-sex love. Bebel attributed "this crime against nature" in both men and women to sexual indulgence and excess, describing it as an upper-class, metropolitan and foreign vice.
Posted by: August Bebel on 10/23/07 at 10:48 AM
Communist countries are intolerant. In Communist Cuba, Though public antipathy towards homosexuals is gradually easing, it remains quite high according to a survey conducted in Cuban cities in 2002. More than half of the respondents believed gays and lesbians were “people with problems,” and more than one in five said they were sick and needed medical treatment. Six out of seven persons expressed aversion to lesbians, with the antipathy particularly strong among women.
Homosexuality went underground after the formation of the People's Republic of China. The Communist regime persecuted homosexuals, especially during the Cultural Revolution, when many homosexuals were punished with long prison terms and sometimes execution. Social tolerance of homosexuality declined.
Since the policy of Reform and Opening Up in 1979, the communist party has been loosening its control over this kind of behavior. But the practice of homosexuality is still labeled as a "moldering life style of capitalism".
In Communist Vietnam, in 2002, the government run media declared homosexuality to be a "social evil" comparable to prostitution, gambling and illegal drug use and promised that legislation would be forthcoming to allow the government to combat homosexuality and arrest gay couples
Posted by: Roger on 10/23/07 at 8:23 PM
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