Pandering presidential candidate Barack Obama launched his campaign on a platform of hope. Time and time again, the senator harped on expectant optimism, pleading with voters not to lose faith in America’s future and, most of all, themselves. In turn, Obama hoped people would vote him into the White House.
Too bad Obama’s anti-gay gospel gaffe turned his ambition into desperation.
Things haven’t been looking good for Barack’s black ratings. CNN took a poll earlier this month showing that the majority of black voters prefer Hillary Clinton over Barack, a man many think could be our first black president.
According to the CNN poll, Clinton leads Obama among black registered Democrats, 57 percent to 33 percent. Black women are backing Clinton to the tune of 68 percent compared with 25 percent for Obama. Black men favor Obama 46 percent to 42 percent for Clinton. The poll has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 6.5 percent.
While that’s a fairly big margin, Obama and his staff knew they had to hit the ground running and run up their numbers. Their next move, however, may demolish them.
In a bid to win over black Christians, the Obama camp decided to launch a three-day gospel tour: “Embrace the Change”. The plot had all the ingredients necessary to woo the swinging black, church-going vote: religion, passion, energy and entertainment. Obama hoped to use Christianity as a platform for his campaign’s inclusive vibe. Unfortunately, the tour derailed when news broke that Obama’s camp had booked two anti-gay acts: Donnie McClurkin and Mary Mary. McClurkin, it’s worth mentioning, claims he overcame his homosexuality, a homosexuality born of molestation. Others, he says, can crush their queer desires. Needless to say, the homos certainly weren’t feeling it and Obama found himself in the midst of a firestorm. Suddenly Malibu looked good.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Obama hoped to quell the raging gay fury with a stale, anti-climactic statement. Then, in an effort to clear his tarnished name, self-professed “ex-gay” Reverend McClurkin told the Chicago Tribune he’s not a homophobe. No doubt Obama hoped that would quiet things down. He was wrong. And it soon became clear that Barack would have to make a decision. Too bad he made the wrong one.
Late in the news day yesterday, after the massively powerful, mainstream Human Rights Campaign wagged their finger, Obama announced a gay minister would open the “Embrace The Change” tour. That would shut the homos up. Or so Obama hoped. To us, his gay compromise simply proved the “hopeful” candidate hopeless.
Many gay people have been skeptical of Obama since day one. Some saw his religious ties as a threat. Though wary, we wanted to believe Obama’s sincerity and vision. His presence at HRC’s gay forum seemed to be an attempt at engaging gay voters, even if he did seem a bit squirmy and his politics aren’t as groundbreaking as his campaign. This Embrace the Change tour and the senator’s poor judgment therein prove Barack Obama’s just like so many presidential candidate: a vote-hungry demagogue. He’s hardly the demigod people would like to believe.
Like most of us, Obama knows that two wrongs don’t make a right. The Democrat doesn’t seem to realize that a right and a wrong don’t make a right. They don’t even balance one another out. No, Obama’s indecision and ill-conceived reaction only make a bigger wrong. Barack Obama, a man countless children and adults admire, should have stood up and done what’s right. He should have said, “Homophobia and those who propagate homophobia have no place in my campaign.” He did not.
Instead, Obama has chosen the insolent and impotent route. Obama underestimated the power and penetration of anti-gay attitudes. He foolishly thought that tacking on a gay minister would make everything better. This man, this black senator, simply doesn’t understand gay struggles, motivations and hopes. This ambitious voter grab simply doesn’t look hopeful. It looks spineless and, worst of all, desperate. And that’s not a good look for a president.
Rt. Rev. Dr. RES
Let me understand Mr. Obama’s logic. Mr. Obama is seeking the presidential nomination of the Democratic Leadership Council, led by his friend, Harold Ford, Jr. Mr. Ford, a former congressman and son of his predecessor, lost a bid for the US Senate with a bigoted neocon attack accusing Ford of cavorting with a white “party girl” . Mr. Obama is perceived as a black candidate despite the fact that his mother was Caucasian.
Mr. Obama is second in the DLC nomination poll. He is second to a white woman, Hillary Clinton. Her husband, the former POTUS, was amusingly called the “first black president”. Mrs. Clinton has the support of all the major liberal African American voices in the country. Mr. Obama must be perceived as having a significant and leading poll in his own demographic. Enter the theocratic dominionists and right wing black preachers. The problem is that the man is seeking the pragmatic DLC nomination. The polls say that the GLBT community is angry, so enter a gay pastor to simply say: We present, you decide. Sound familiar.
In the DLC political mindset, objective justice and objective equality is all subjective. Listen to the theocon preacher and then listen to the gay preacher and decide who has the Bible or the Buy Bull on his side. Then regardless vote for Obama. Got it, I think!
Matt
Unfortunately, I think this sketch of the political logic underlying the Obama campaign is probably accurate. This is what happens when a political neophyte enters the presidential race: he has hordes of experts, analysts, strategists, advisers, and marketers calling the shots, and lacks a coherent, identifiable polticial center of his own. And like any structure made essentially of marshmallow fluff, we are witnessing this one’s collapse. At least we’re learning the truth about this guy early.
Divided we fall
I’ve also been constantly amazed at the “liberal” blogosphere’s treatment of Obama. They endorse Edwards, a Dixiecrat whose voting record earned him the high mark of 32% from environmental defense groups to Obama’s 100%; Edwards, whose experience and legislation in domestic and foreign policy isn’t half of Obama’s, who was a civil rights/constitutional law expert and attorney and elected to the state then U.S. Senate. (Edwards: lawyer, Senator one term, no major legislation, voted for Iraq War.) Now it’s Dodd they’re calling the go-to guy??!!
The liberal blogosphere is making itself more irrelevant this campaign season instead of more influential. Many are playing the old political games, forming PACs, which Obama won’t take a dime from, and 527s, which Obama discourages all supporters from joining so there aren’t smear ads put out against opponents “on his behalf” – don’t do him any favors, says he.
Plain and simple: They don’t fund or control Obama, Obama does not seek their undying favor, they are not the center of his political universe. Believe it or not, there are millions of people still without computers and/or internet access in the U.S., and many who have access never, ever visit a “liberal” political blog or read online news from MSM beyond the sports and weather and local news.
“Liberal” bloggers don’t reach out to the elderly, or to people of color, and they still speak about the LGBT population as if it’s one monolithic population – all white! It’s not! Black, Asian, Latino LGBT folks deal with homophobes in the family every day, just as much as poor white LGBT folks do. If they’re religious they go to intolerant churches, synogogues or mosques just for the fellowship of fellow believers, despite the vitriol they are subjected to. When there are enough of them, they form their own places of worship and tolerance.
Obama’s church is one of those denominations that is open and accepting of all worshippers, gay or straight, black or white or Latino or Asian or Native American. Here in the California Bay Area, there is a church from Obama’s denomination that is led by a black lesbian pastor, and has the only transgender gospel choir in the nation!
Tolerance increases with education, which increases with money or some lucky opportunities, that’s just a fact.
Obama will address liberals’ issues better and more honestly and directly than anyone, beholden to no one. They just don’t seem to want a black man to be president – it’s beyond me. I’ve never seen primarily white liberals (who predominate in those blogs) ignore such a stellar civil rights activist and attorney, constitutional law professor [qualified for the Supreme Court], grassroots activist, black candidate with a legislative, never mind environmental record like Obama’s – not that we’ve ever had a candidate like that before.
Many of the “liberal” bloggers don’t even stick to their professed liberal values. They say they’ll vote for Hillary if she gets the nomination – as if she weren’t the #1 recipient of lobbyist/PAC/527 dollars, and as if nominations drop into anyone’s lap!
They don’t work for a candidate in any way but blogging. Going door-to-door, doing outreach, volunteering, addressing the hundreds of issues all different people care about, face-to-face, that’s really working for a candidate.
I think lots of these bloggers would freak out at walking out among different people with different values and beliefs to register voters and promote their candidate. That’s why Dean lost; they thought they could just break away from their monitors at the last minute and yell their message out to people with very different lifestyles and win!
It’s what I’m most grateful for with Obama – after reading his Audacity of Hope, I don’t compartmentalize people by physical/ideological/religious identities anymore. I don’t police what others should think, feel anymore. I’ll have a discussion with anyone now and almost always find some common ground. I’ve made more progress getting “traditional” opposition to see my side than I ever made by rejecting, ridiculing and insulting people for their beliefs, and I see them as human beings again, not as categories.
Another poster here spoke the truth; it’s like the bloggers are getting to be more and more like MSM; forment conflict with incendiary headlines to increase readership. The liberal blogosphere dumbs down readers/viewers/listeners just like MSM, it promotes rancor and shouting matches like MSM, and does nothing to get our democracy functioning to solve real problems.
Fiona
So what’s the deal with Reverend McClurkin? Is he a gay ex gay? anti gay ex gay?
http://www.pollsb.com/polls/poll/3265/gospel-singer-donnie-mcclurkin-obama-s-new-touring-partner
Rt. Rev. Dr. RES
Divided, we fall……
I have read your posting several times. You write with the passion of a black LGBT person or supporter.
There are several sentences that I would like to comment upon, if I may do so. (I know whose permission not to seek LOL).
First of all, the sentence that suggests that the Audacity of Hope ( I READ THE BOOK ) addresses a nation where a nation adopts a national realpolitik and commonweal divorced from any real or imagined divisions within the society. This thought mirrors St. Thomas More and his UTOPIA.
There is a New World Order afoot, my friend, and it is not Christian in any definition I would use.
It speaks to unbridled corporate capitalism where human beings are commodities and politicians are subservient and do the bidding of the corporate elitists. Human beings are commodities based on Wall Street performance. Most blue collar jobs are “at will” and non-contractual and without affordable health benefits.
How can you merge the absence and presence of all these important differences for the sake of comity?
You use the term “liberal” and my thought is this:
The working poor are liberals, the thoughtful persons with compassion and a thirst for justice are liberals, but the politicians whom you describe are not liberals. They are poll-driven pragmatists without core values that sustain them.
Otherwise, you don’t create a reality where both the absence and presence of equal justice under law is simply a matter of the poll results.
I admire Barak Obama. I think that he is a credit to both parents. He is as much white as he is black. You call him black because of the Dred Scott decision whereby one percentage of a black ancestor describes his race. I would like to see a world where a man or woman is elected POTUS based on the content of his character and nothing else.
And finally, maybe the blogosphere is the 21st century substitute for the ” millions in the streets.” Today, the corporatist regimes do not allow street protests anywhere near the fascists.
The MSM media still shapes the news, and edits it for content sensitive to their greed for power and wealth.
A democracy that solves real problems, as you suggest in your last sentence, requires the true presence of a liberal party with strong ideological fervour, and tories with the same.
Anyway, that is my take on the subject. I assure you that I don’t have Alzheimer’s , but my 93 year old mother does, and that disease is a tragedy.
Matt
It’s true that Barak Obama is a member of the UCC, and it’s true that the UCC is one of the more liberal christian denominations (only slightly to the right of the unitarians, I think). But that said, it doesn’t seem that the liberal theology of his church as necessarily crept into Sen Obama’s politics, which seem to reflect a more religiously conservative view. So while there may well be a black lesbian UCC minister in California (I suspect there are others elsewhere as well), yet Sen Obama doesn’t want her to be able to marry her partner. So in some ways, his membership in a liberal congregation is more concerning than Romney’s membership in a conservative one.
UndercoverPants
I agree with Divided We Fall 100%. You guys seem to take some kind of perverse glee in knocking the wind out of Obama’s sails. You say ”many gay people have skeptical of Obama since day one” — who? Where? When? Why not just have the balls to say ”We at Queerty have been skeptical since day one” since that obvs seems the case.
And ”Vote-Hungry Demagogue” is laying it on THICK. And spineless? Please. If you want to see spineless, look at old Hill’s vote on the Iraq war. That lady has proved herself to be a calculating, manapulative shrew from the outset and I don’t trust her as far as I can throw Monica Lewinksy.
Ugh. And I keep coming back. Guess I’ll tune in tomorrow when you no doubt turn to your favorite porn star and asks what he thinks about the whole thing. Just do me a favor and see if you can’t get Cole Ryan to do it.
Rt. Rev. Dr. RES
Yes, I realise through reading that Barak’s mother was a non-denominationally attached Protestant, more cultural than observant. She also married two Muslim men.
The United Church of Christ is ironically, the Congregational Church of the Pilgrim fathers. I say “ironically” because they are today as liturgical as those whom they dissented against.
Every nationally liberal religious denomination has within it its share of conservative theologians and laypersons.
Personally, I see Senator Obama as a communicant with a conservative penchant in a rather liberal denomination. I also found Matt’s observation about the marital status of the black lesbian UCC pastor and Senator Obama’s opposition to civil marriage as discordant with the majority of UCC’s leadership. ( I am subscribed to the UCC newsletter ).
I agree with your concern about this. Romney has been rather delinquent previously with Mormon belief. If his family were not General Authority level, I would ask if he had a Temple Recommend during those years in “apostasy” ????????????
thatguyfromboston
I just want to address one thing. The ongoing charge of “calculating” as it regards political figures. Of course they are calculating. They have to be. It goes with the territory. You have to constantly calculate how your message will resonate with the public and adjust accordingly. When your elected you have to calculate how the decisions you make will affect millions, calculate what the cost would be to implement or not implement a policy. Part of the process is to determine how they calculate and if we like what we see of their process. So sit back, and enjoy the show. There will be no perfect candidate that get’s it all spot on, but I’m pretty comfortable that we’ve got a slate of candidates on the Democratic ticket that are at least trying to understand and address some of our concerns.
Leland Frances
Because he is still better at his worst than any Republican candidate at his best, I will campaign for and vote for Obama should he get the Democratic nomination or be chosen as the winner’s VP running mate. BUT these partisan distortions of his qualifications and positions must not be allowed to stand. I live in California but you’ll never see me surfing. Obama is currently a member of the wonderful [if one still needs to be theistic] United Church of Christ] but they support marriage equality and he does not. When he spoke at their last convention, he curiously mentioned everyone of the humanitarian issues of which they have often been early adopters such as abolitionism and women’s suffrage but curiously left out their early support for gay equality. I once met Bill Johnson, the first openly gay minister ordained by a mainline congregation—the UCC 35 years ago.
I yield to an essay from Bilerico by Black lesbian minister Irene Monroe who has been analyzing Obama as long and closely as anyone:
“Obama the vote-whore with ‘ex-gay’ at his side. – Rev Irene Monroe
October 23, 2007
It was intended to be an unprecedented example of how Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s grassroots political campaign could win over just as many religious conservatives as Republicans can. Instead, it has run afoul with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer supporters, as well as others, who bought into Obama’s rhetoric as a healer and consensus builder.
At the Values Voter Summit in Washington last weekend, Obama’s campaign announced that they, too, could help conservative voters have a voice in the presidential campaign. They then announced they would be hosting the “Embrace the Change! Gospel Series.†It’s a gospel fest to run in three South Carolina cities – Charleston, Greenwood and Columbia – this coming weekend with gospel mega-star Pastor Donnie McClurkin as part of the concert line-up.
It appeared to be an innocuous announcement showcasing some of gospel music’s most successful artists that would mark the final days of Obama’s “40 Days of Faith and Family†campaign in South Carolina. But it’s actually outing some of the black gospel chitlin’ circuit’s closeted gays ministers and biggest opponents of queer civil rights.
A reporter at the New York Daily News wrote me in an e-mail asking, “I’m writing a piece … about Sen. Obama’s gospel tour and the fact that one of the performers, Donnie McClurkin, has suggested that gay tendencies can be ‘cured’ or resisted. … I’m wondering how you feel specifically about McClurkin acting as an ambassador for Obama to the African-American Southern Christian community.â€
Well, let me tell you. McClurkin is the poster boy for African-American ex-gay ministries. “There’s a group that says, ‘God made us this way,’ but then there’s another group that knows God didn’t make them that way,” McClurkin has told the media. “Love is pulling you one way and lust is pulling you another, and your relationship with Jesus is tearing you.â€
In the highly competitive race for black evangelical votes in South Carolina, McClurkin just might give Obama the needed edge. However, that edge will come at a cost far greater than having McClurkin at his side. It comes at revealing how Obama is not only a vote-whore, but a race-card user as well.
The Obama/McClurkin alliance introduces Obama to McClurkin’s black and white Southern evangelical base, which thinks Obama is neither Christian nor black enough. And many observers are starting to realize just how much of a vote-whore Obama is. For example, MSNBC talk-show host Tucker Carlson suggested Obama’s faith is “suddenly conspicuous,” saying that Obama has only recently begun addressing his religious background as part of “a very calculated plan on the part of the Democratic Party to win” religious voters in the 2008 presidential race.
And though religion came to Obama late in life, and he was reared in a non-religious household, he came to understand “the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change.” And how much Obama really covets the power of the black church for his own political aggrandizement, rather than for its religion, has raised questions in the minds of many.
When he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004, Obama campaigned at the Salem Baptist Church on Chicago’s South Side. It’s the 22,000-member black mega-church of Rev. James Meeks, who has called homosexuality an evil sickness. Outside of the hallowed walls of church the Rev. James Meeks is State Senator James Meeks.
Obama knew to pander to his base.
Obama will continue to speak and write about the special relationship he has with his pastor, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, as long as it doesn’t run afoul of his ambitions. When news got out about Wright’s Afrocentric theology and Sunday sermons that disparagingly speak ill of whites and Israel, Obama immediately distanced himself. Yet these same sermons were not a problem for Obama when they were spiritually nurturing him into becoming a public figure. And when news got out that Wright was to deliver the invocation when Obama formally announced his candidacy in February, Obama canceled his appearance.
Many African Americans also suspect Obama of using the “race card†to win their votes, but his emotional detachment with issues blacks care about is a big turnoff. African-American journalist and CNN contributor Roland Martin stated, “You can’t find one major moment where black voters have embraced him and showered him with love. I was highly critical of his performance at the June debate at Howard University because that was his crowd. But he failed to ignite the room. One huge Obama supporter told me that his daughter went to the event backing him, and came out loving [Hillary] Clinton.â€
According to a recent CNN poll, Clinton leads Obama among black registered Democrats, 57 percent to 33 percent. African-American women overwhelmingly support Clinton 68 percent to 25 percent, whereas African-American men favor Obama 46 percent to 42 percent for Clinton. But it is African-American women who hit the polls in much greater numbers than African-American men.
McClurkin is not the only singer on the gospel tour who has publicly spewed vitriolic statements against LGBTQ people. But he is the biggest one Obama can use to try to win over black evangelical voters.
So once again, Obama is proving that his campaign marketed as “The Audacity of Hope†is really based on the audacity of hypocrisy.”
Bill Perdue
Have you noticed any new swelling or bruises on your legs? Any fang marks on your ankles? I ask because it’s the mean season for snakes in the grass. It seems that Frances’ soul mates in the Democratic and Republican are acting a lot more like a herd of angry rattlers. Gay basher and liberal (but very rich) Democratic house leader Pelosi and the quisling Barney Frank are ramming their toothless version of EHDA through Congress, giving the bosses who want to underpay us just what they want. It’s payback because all but a few reactionaries had the cheek to criticize them for their sellout and worse, it’s an across the board attack on unions, GLBT communities and the rights of all working people.
Barak Obama is slithering around imitating Hillary Clinton’s appeals to christian bigots. They’re like liberal (but very rich) John Edwards, a viper who invested his twenty three million dollar plus fortune in a mortgage company that shamelessly forecloses on Katrina victims. (Edwards quit when the NY Times exposed him.) Clinton, Obama and Edwards are not our friends, they’re our enemies.
Another legless reptile in the grass is named Dianne Feinstein. She’s a liberal (but very rich) Democrat whose tawdry backroom deals corralled 10 or so Democrat senators who voted with Bush to seat homobigot and racist Leslie Southwick on the New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. He’ll be there ‘til he strokes out, punishing GLBT folk, unions and minorities. Pray that he likes hogmaws ‘n gravy.
Obama will have to slink much further and faster to the right to pilfer Clinton’s bigot supporters. She’s been on the trail courting christians for over a year and it shows in her poll numbers and her draw from bigoted Republicans and christians.
Liberal (but very rich) Hillary Clinton got her early lead because she and Bill Clinton supported the federal DADT and DOMA laws that shoved GLBT folk into second class citizenship. The major candidates of both parties either oppose samesex marriage or take the cowards way out to mollify bigots, a carry over of their decade long support for the DOMA, which was enacted with a bone crushing bipartisan majority of 85-24 in the Senate and 342-67 in the House. After the Democrats and Republicans voted for DOMA Bill Clinton rushed it into law to attract homobigoted voters in the congressional elections that occurred two weeks later in the fall of ’96. Radio spots featuring Clinton trumpeting the sanctity of virtues of heterosex marriage and the dangers of samesex marriage began playing in Southern states immediately after he signed it. The whole thing boomeranged and the Democrats lost anyway but we got DOMA in 36 states.
Most Democrats supported DOMA and those 509 bipartisan Democrat and Republican bigot votes changed our lives for the worse. Keep that in mind when you hear some apologist shill claiming that Democrats are “better†than Republicans.
If you don’t have high boots you’d better get some.
A Republican politician is a baboon in a people suit with a totalitarian christian attached at the hip. A Democratic politician is a Republican in drag. (Except where does that leave Giuliani when he’s in drag – is he a liberal Republican or a rightwing Democrat? It doesn’t matter; they all oppose same sex marriage.)
James
Look. I am talking to the gay community. Let me try to understand this, you are angry at Barack Obama because he will be on the same stage as someone who says he used to be gay and that it was his choice and not by birth? Would this be correct? Guess what? We still need Obama to bring our gay soldiers who are fighting for us, safely home from Iraq. We still need Obama to reform our health care so that my gay brothers and sisters will have the reasonable and affordable care they need. We still need Obama to use his international relation experience to put an end to the nuclear threat to Iran so you do not have to live in fear creating a World War 3. We still need someone like Obama who unlike the other candidates worked as a community organizer in communities in Chicago like Cabrini Green to improve conditions to make a better place for you. You remember Cabrini Green don’t you? “Candy Man” ring a bell? My point is all of these issues domestic and international are so much bigger than the issue on one man who who says who used be just like you. Would you agree?
Leland Frances
All those so-called snakes Comrade Perdue is hissing about are no cause for worry. If they existed, they would have drowned long ago in the river created by the Comrade’s chronic, explosive diarrhea. Hip boot waders might save you but you’ll still come away with a bad smell after trudging through another of his expulsions.
Bill Perdue
As the candidates and owners of the Democratic and Republican parties shift further to the right, abandoning the people of the US to a future of war, declining standards of living, more Katrina’s, union busting and the penalties of bigotry they’re pulling their shills and hacks with them in a lockstep dance of treachery.
The logic of the shills’ blind party line loyalty translates to support for the war, the gutting of ENDA and a whole host of betrayals. It begins by apologizing for backstabbers like Frank, Feinstein, and Pelosi. It goes on to give cover to Bush’s genocidal war, which is wholeheartedly supported by Pelosi and Clinton – the same war that entails the arming of gay murdering jihadist by the US military.
It ends with abandoning the struggle for GLBT equality entirely. “It took 99 years after the civil war to pass the civil rights act” advises one, as if any sane person would want to wait for decades. For others, the victims, transgendered people, become the criminals in their warped view; “Trans activists and trans-supporters have accomplished their goal: to kill the first gay rights bill that would have passed in the House because it didn’t include them, too.” says one in a perfect illustration of how to use the Big Lie technique, while conveniently overlooking the fact that Frank and Pelosi needlessly gutted ENDA to appease bigots in their own party and that Bush has all along planned on vetoing it.
The well deserved isolation of the apologists for the gutting of ENDA, the war, union busting, and etc. is so complete that they’ve been reduced to quoting one another and desperately ignoring their increasing detachment from vast majority of activist and activist organizations, the 300 or so groups they pretend don’t exist. Their rightward political movement is irreversible.
They’ll end up in log cabins, still enying the existence of snakes.
A Republican politician is a baboon in a people suit with a totalitarian christian attached at the hip. A Democratic politician is a Republican in drag.