Forty years ago today, Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered in Memphis, Tenn. He was assassinated before his work was done, but his role as a revolutionary has never been forgotten nor have some of his most famous words. There’s a lot of talk on the web today about how far we’ve come or haven’t come — and I think we both know and mostly agree with the arguments on both sides of that coin…

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North Carolina native Jim Neal just may be the most controversial queer candidate this political season. The 51-year old entered the race to rival Republican Elizabeth Dole. One would expect resounding praise for a man with such balls - Bob excluded - but Neal's senatorial candidacy became a scandalous affair.

Most people believed that Brad Miller would run as the Democratic candidate, but the Congressman ended up eschewing the race. Democratic Senate Campaign Committee chair Chuck Schumer attempted to persuade two other candidates - Sen. Kay Hagan and state Rep. Grier Martin - but both refused. Thus, Neal entered the raise, without Schumer's blessing. In fact, it's been widely reported that Schumer initially ignored Neal's calls, leading many to believe Schumer had little faith in a gay candidate.

Neal recently gave our editor some of his time to discuss the Schumer scandal. But, before we get into the present day political debates, we're going to take a trip back to see how former finance executive Jim Neal became a Democratic Senatorial candidate.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama felt the spirit yesterday at Ebenezer Baptist Church. The Democrat popped in for a special service honoring the church's late Reverend, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and took some time to encourage gay love:

For most of this country’s history, we in the African-American community have been at the receiving end of man’s inhumanity to man. And all of us understand intimately the insidious role that race still sometimes plays – on the job, in the schools, in our health care system, and in our criminal justice system.

And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community.

We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity.

Every day, our politics fuels and exploits this kind of division across all races and regions; across gender and party. It is played out on television. It is sensationalized by the media. And last week, it even crept into the campaign for President, with charges and counter-charges that served to obscure the issues instead of illuminating the critical choices we face as a nation.

Obama obviously learned a lesson or two from that Donnie McClurkin debacle.

Read the entire speech and watch the video, after the jump…

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