Barack Obama took some time yesterday to address the Donnie McClurkin controversy.
For those of you not keeping up, Democratic presidential candidate Obama announced his “Embrace the Change” gospel tour, which includes McClurkin and Mary Mary, both of whom have anti-gay pasts. It’s McClurkin who’s really caught people’s ire, because the preacher preaches – and practices – ex-gay conversion. Needless to say, the queers aren’t gay about it.
As the fury reached a fever pitch yesterday evening, Obama finally released a statement disavowing McClurkin’s anti-gay ideology:
I have clearly stated my belief that gays and lesbians are our brothers and sisters and should be provided the respect, dignity, and rights of all other citizens. I have consistently spoken directly to African-American religious leaders about the need to overcome the homophobia that persists in some parts our community so that we can confront issues like HIV/AIDS and broaden the reach of equal rights in this country.
I strongly believe that African Americans and the LGBT community must stand together in the fight for equal rights. And so I strongly disagree with Reverend McClurkin’s views and will continue to fight for these rights as President of the United States to ensure that America is a country that spreads tolerance instead of division.
Obama can’t feel that strongly about it, because McClurkin and his representatives say the tour’s still a go.
Meanwhile, you guys may want to read Jasmyne Cannick’s assessment of the situation, in which she sheds some more light on Mary Mary’s homophobic attitudes, including this doozy from a 2007 interview with Vibe:
I feel how God feels about it, um… but I still love them. You know what I mean? I don’t agree with the lifestyle, but I love them. They can come to the concert; I’m going to hug them just like I hug everybody else. They have issues and need somebody to encourage them like everybody else – just like the murderer, just like the one full of pride, just like the prostitute, everybody needs God.
Cannick also uses her column to deflect blame from Barack Obama to his ignorant white staff. Yes, really. Cannick would rather point a finger at Obama’s melanin-deprived staffers than the candidate – a candidate who should a. know better and b. have the brain power to check his staff’s decisions. Here’s Cannick’s take:
However, I am surprised that given the number of high profile openly gay men and women working on Obama’s campaign, that neither one of those choices set off a red flag for any of them. Perhaps that’s because most, if not all of the gays working on the Obama campaign are predominantly white, followed by Asians and Latinos. Pair that up with a set of campaign advisors that probably never heard of Donnie McClurkin or Mary Mary until recently, and you can easily see how the stage could be set for something like this.
It’s not Obama’s fault! He can’t be held accountable for his own campaign!
Are we the only ones who see fundamental flaws in this argument?
Cannick also says that Obama needs to sit down with black gay people to get a sense of their lives and issues. By neglecting to do so, she says, Obama’s ruling out an important social population. We totally agree with Cannick’s thinking, but does she truly believe Obama’s going to give up millions of gospel-loving churchies for a few black queens? It’s not likely…
Dom
Fuck him. He’s toast. Tell him to run on the Brain Dead Party ticket. Jeez, does he honestly think he can pull this shit as a Democrat? Maybe he wants to be VP for Huckabee.
Matt
I’m a constituent of the Senator’s, and I voted for him (well, that’s not saying much, since he was running against a dish of warm poo), and I’ve never understood the obamamania thing. He made a good speech four years ago, it’s true, and he’s certainly clean and articulate (thank you Sen Biden). But there’s always been something fundamentally troubling to me about him: a sort of disingenuous quality, a vague aloof intellectual superiority, a sense that I don’t really know where he stands or what he believes (and neither, I fear, does he). And this story didn’t help one little bit.
Rt. Rev. Dr. RES
As a gay person, an American should understand the passive aggressive self-loathing that comes as a minority in your country.
Barak Obama is fifty percent Caucasian….but when Chief Justice Roger B. Taney invoked Dred Scott (with the exception of Napoleonic code LA), no one ever sees a white man with black blood. He is a Negro, a black man, an African-American with white blood, albeit equal. After all, most African Americans have Caucasian ancestry somewhere.
Minorities also have few success stories who remain in the ‘hood, ghetto, or neighbourhood. When you are Barak Obama and you graduate from Harvard and Harvard Law and become the first black person to head the Law Review, and as a young man, and after a short state legislative term, win the US Senate, that is “reason” to conceal your sense of inferiority with a “superiority complex”. Excellent language skills replaces eubonics.
This prostitution to the right wing dominionists is predictable as he seeks to be all things to all. The code is clear. Nothing but down low bro.
Dawster
I kinda (sorta) agree with Cannick’s second quote. it’s understandable and probable (at least for me), but it’s still bothersome to me.
i honestly look at it, and it looks like a COMPLETE and utter fuck up. there is NO WAY anyone (except Giuliani) would be so sinister as to pander openly to the gay Logo forum, come up with a gay slogan on the website, and be completely pro-gay, HIV/AIDS awareness to homophobic, predominately black churches (as he has in the past) over and over again… and THEN start a gospel tour with both McClurkin and Mary, Mary.
for the record, McClurkin said in a phone interview that discrimination against homosexuals is wrong… (a nicely timed statement, i must say).
this really shows a like of attention to detail on ALL accounts (staffers, gay volunteers, Obama HIMSELF, his wife, anyone involved… etc). there are thousands of people that should have thrown up a red flag. my assumption is that a few DID, but were not heard. or maybe many did, and were all squashed… who knows?
Right now, he’s not showing his white side, or his black side… he’s showing his GREEN side. his lack of experience exploded with this one.
Becca
Obama is off my Radar. Up his!
Stuart
There are people, people who are politically “good” and “progressive” who have issues concerning homosexuality. Disagreements do not have to led to estrangement, or political isolation. America is a large nation with many voices. Democrats should find ways to include those of the right edge of our left leaning camp. As a gay man I truly do not care if I am liked, I simply do not want to be hindered or harmed for being gay. The best way for me to assure my safety isn’t to deny my enemies their voice or even to shun them, but to assimilate them, bring them home, listen to them. As what passes for the middle ground in American politics has shifted to the right, it would do Democrats well to remember that most Americans want change, desire peace, feel that what one does in one’s own home with one’s own body is no one else’s business, that my right to will my money to my boyfriend, cover him with health insurance, visit him in the hospital, bury him next to me, raise a child as equally ours, should not be denied to us. Getting upset that Obama is attempting to be a President of all Americans, even those those who do not understand or accept another sexuality, is much more stupid than his including those who do not share all of his views in his camp. I hope he manages to attract the bigots as well as the homophobes, the isolationist as well as the religious zealots.
Matt
Insightful, Rt Rev, but there’s also something of a good old emulation of the oppressor going on too. When he sat at the LOGO panel thingie and insisted that no, really, civil-unions-but-keep-marriage-hetero was not at all the same sort of thing as separate-but-equal, he totally lost me. He may be dealing with a number of personal and cultural devils, but not on my time, please. For a man who is perceived culturally as Black, and who presents himself as progressive and thoughtful, to be so insensitive to another minority’s issues is simply astonishing. I totally get that he wants to be more Huxtable than Davis, but he’s so shooting for middle-of-the-road that he totally fades to gray. His occasionally-bubbling-up churchiness is a bit…troubling, despite his membership in the progressive UCC. Lord, why can’t we have a nice, sensible atheist, unencumbered by all this religion?
Bob R
To me Obama is too much too soon. I really don’t know what he’s all about. I’ve heard the hype and watched the hoopla, but to me there is still not enough there to get a clear picture of what Obama’s all about. I do not trust him. My “gut” tells me to be careful with this man and he has not won me over. I came close to getting swept up, but then I started looking a little closer. I just don’t trust Obama. I don’t know if I ever will. I do know if he’s on the ticket, in either spot, I’ll probably select a third party candidate or just stay home.
Dawster
Bob R… i’ve heard “I really don’t know what he’s all about” and this discussion of “hypes” so many times, and it kinda makes me ill. he has been at several debates, has a website, is on the news, constantly in promos… how can you avoid ALL information about someone? I don’t understand how a person can not bother looking up one website and scanning through the platforms. No one has been more hyped than Hillary.
I’m over BOTH of them now, but when i took the “which candidate is right for you” test, Obama came up top (we disagree on immigration and social security… and apparently now… gospel singers).
Matt, i think his meaning was “a first step”, like the Netherlands did. civil unions came first, then full marriages for all came just a few years later. it’s a “go with what works” method… kind of like EDNA. I agree it works, i DON’T AGREE with the premise. i would RATHER have gay marriage NOW and fight for it. i think it’s worth fighting for… same with Trans-rights side by side our own… i just don’t see a lot of people fighting these days – i see a lot of people bitching, no fighting.
Jerry Farwell said to CNN weeks before his blessed death that he would rather have an atheist for president who knew what he was doing with foreign policy than to have a born again christian who was clueless to the world.
i say “FUCK! Let’s give THAT a try!” i’ve ben wanting to vote for a smart atheist for some time now! I’m really tired of religion being the deciding factor of civil politics.
Dawster
plus… kucinich’s wife has a tongue ring. i’m going with that….
Leland Frances
Cannick? Even a broken clock is right twice ad a day. The rest of the day she’s busy dealing the race card. Isaiah Washington is a saint; Michael Vick is a dog lover…. From the other side of the peanut gallery, from Canada specifically, the comments of Rt. Rev. Dr. RES borders on racism.
As for the main topic: it’s one thing to applaud Obama’s documented efforts to make various groups less homophobic, which I do, but McClurkin is a professional, pathological homohater, demurrers notwithstanding, and his invitation to participate in the Obama campaign must be withdrawn until McClurkin recants.
If he does not, and they do not, then Obama MUST be opposed in every Democratic primary. BUT, if he gets the nomination, WE MUST VOTE FOR HIM if we value the future of not just gay rights but of the Supreme Court, Iraq, the environment, ad infinitum
Even if he’s shaking a tambourine on stage tomorrow night with McClurkin that would STILL not make him as bad as ANY of the Repug front runners who have COURTED homohaters BECAUSE they are [among other things] homohaters not IN SPITE OF it as Obama would be doing. They were doing that just THIS PAST WEEKEND as they all got on their knees to rim the attendees of the “Value Voters” read HOMOHATERS covention.
Obama, like ALL Dem candidates, would end DADTDP. ALL the Repugs support it. Obama, as ALL Dem candidates, supports domestic partnerships and federal benefits for gay couples. Romney viciously tried to destroy marriage equality in MA; Giuliani even condemns New Hampshire’s domestic partnerships as “too much like marriage.
Whatever ignorance went into the inclusion of McClurkin [St. Oprah frequently features the equally antigay gospel stars the Winans], Obama has been put on notice. Short of endorsing McClurkin’s madness, there is NOTHING he could do in this case that would justify our own ignorance, our voting in November 2008 for any member of the entire CHOIR [Mormon and otherwise] of homophobia exploiting/homohating Republicans.
Daniel
I’ve made a poll to commemorate Obama’s utter lunacy:
http://www.pollsb.com/polls/poll/3201/what-does-the-fact-obama-tours-with-notorious-anti-gay-reverend-mcclurkin-mean
Mr. B
Hey, it’s no secret that the man can’t even run his own campaign.
Applause, Queerty, for doing something other than glorifying this bozo like all the other hip young liberals of the day.
ProfessorVP
I also don’t get what the big deal is about Barry. On LBGT issues, I think he’s like the other candidates on both side. Privately, he doesn’t give a shit about such matters. Like Hillary, Barry just listens to his pollster.
Timothy
Just for the record, McClurkin is probably unknown by the Obama camp as a phobe. He’s not too tied in to the political side of the ex-gay crowd and seems more the religiously ex-gay (and hey, I have no problem if he want to think that God wants him to be straight. that’s between him and his God).
Cannick’s defense of Obama seems to me to be just more of the “white gays are evil” crap that she occassionally trots out to defend every indefensible action taken by a black person. She should consider that sometimes (surely) the white gay folks aren’t secretly conspiring to take down the black man. Sometimes white gay folk aren’t racists. Yeah, really.
Timothy
Ugh. the “yeah, really” looks sarcastic. Sorry. What I meant was that truly sometimes white gay folk aren’t racists.
Sure some are. But not every time.
Leland Frances
Though I stand by my support for Obama should he get the nomination, there is no real difference between the “political side of the ex-gay crowd and … the religiously ex-gay.”
McClurkin CAMPAIGNED FOR BUSH in Michigan and performed at the 2004 Repug convention, and has appeared on Rev. & former Presidential candidate himself Pat Robertson’s “700 Club.” In 2004, he told the “Washington Post” under the headline, “Donnie McClurkin, Ready to Sing Out Against Gay ‘Curse'”:
“I can’t let off. I didn’t call myself — God called me to do what I do. If this is a war, we are willing to fight. Not a war of violence, but a war of purpose.” You know, the “holy war” against gays.
It falls under his and anyone’s “religious freedom” to spew homophobia from the pulpit [though I would still condemn them for it] but he, like 99% of them, have merged it with politics and tried and too often succeeded in denying gay civil rights.
I have praised Obama in the past for his courage in publicly speaking to the high incidence of homophobia in the Black community, as he did in the debate hosted by Tavis Smiley, so, regardless of how white and how clueless his staff is, for him to not have said, “Uh, tell me about the known political positions of these groups you’re suggesting I go on tour with” is predictable [gay issues are “after thoughts”] but unforgivable.