Obama's gospel mistake: He can't have it both ways on gay issues in the black community.

[Bluebear]

By David Ehrenstein
October 31, 2007

All the characters in this melodrama played their roles to the hilt. Gay-rights organizations demanded that McClurkin be dropped. Numerous bloggers cast doubt on the fullness of McClurkin's "recovery." Obama's campaign staff hastily added a gay minister to give an opening prayer. But it was McClurkin who dominated the event, claiming before an audience of about 2,000 Sunday in Columbia, S.C.: "I don't speak against the homosexuals. I tell you that God delivered me from homosexuality. No matter what blog you read, let me tell you, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature!" (For all of McClurkin's religious talk, biblical scholars remind us that Jesus had not a word to say on the subject.)

Adding fuel to this fire was Obama's reply to questions about the concert. He haughtily told a reporter from the gay news magazine the Advocate, "If there's somebody out there who's been more consistent in including LGBT Americans in his or her vision of what America should be, then I would be interested in knowing who that person is." (The answer, of course, is Dennis Kucinich.)


...Black churches are so much at the center of African American public life, and so much in denial about the gays and lesbians in their pews and choir stalls. As the late Marlon Riggs said in "Tongues Untied," his acclaimed 1990 documentary about gay blacks and AIDS, "How many choir directors have to die before we know who we are?" The "Embrace the Change" lineup reflects how this struggle is far from over. McClurkin, who is a minister at an evangelical church in New York, calls homosexuality a "choice" -- needless to say the wrong one. The duo Mary Mary claims to love gays in a love-the-sinner kind of way, equating us with murderers or prostitutes. It is only Byron Cage of the Mighty Clouds of Joy who has been actively working to heal the gay-straight divide.

Gays played pivotal roles in African American history, but the community continues to wish away their sexuality. Blues legends Bessie Smith, Alberta Hunter and Ethel Waters all took female lovers. (Impresario Leonard Reed once said Waters was "so mean she married her second husband to spite her girlfriend when she found out she was sleeping with him.") Gay composer Billy Strayhorn gave the Duke Ellington Orchestra its sound, including its theme song, "Take the A Train." The fabled Harlem Renaissance was, frankly, a gay and lesbian movement led by the likes of Zora Neale Hurston, Bruce Nugent and Langston Hughes.

Over and above all these towers James Baldwin, the novelist and essayist whose accounts of the civil rights movement are without peer, and Bayard Rustin, the most important civil rights figure after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Rustin conceived of the 1963 March on Washington, but thanks to a vice arrest in Pasadena a decade earlier, he was forced to take a back seat during the unveiling of his masterpiece.

Coretta Scott King never forgot Rustin's sacrifice and went on to support the gay-rights movement. Her daughter, however, the Rev. Bernice King, joined a 2004 march against same-sex marriage. And so we now find Obama trying, as it were, to court both branches of the King family. It won't work. And his continued relevance to gay and lesbian African Americans is over.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-oe-ehrenstein31oct31,1,1680186.story?coll=la-news-a_section

[Solly Mack]

1. K/R

[Chovexani]

2. K&R for visibility!

Thanks for sharing this wonderful article!

:kick:

[cboy4]

3. Sense when...

K&R

[Karenina]

4. K&R!

Loved the 11th commandment! :rofl:

[knitter4democracy]

5. For those who constantly cite the eight verses or so supposedly against homosexuality:

Ask them about the epistle of Philemon. It's an entire book in the Bible from St. Paul to a Christian convert who was also a slave. In it, Paul tells Philemon to keep being a good slave so that he could get his reward in heaven. There is an entire book in the Bible promoting slavery (not just a couple of verses) and many, many, many references to it in the rest of the Bible--and yet, Christians decided slavery was wrong and fought to end it and are still fighting to end it.

Why did they do that? It's based on the Second Greatest Commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself. Since the abolitionists decided that anyone and everyone in slavery was also a neighbor, that made for a strong argument to end the practice.

So, ask those homophobes who their neighbor is and why a handful or two of verses somehow trumps the Second Greatest Commandment. I have yet to have anyone give me a good answer. I even got the PR chick with James Dobson's office to shut up on that one a couple years back. It works.

[LostinVA]

7. NONE of those verses are against homosexuality -- ZERO

They are either against non-Hebrew religious practices, breaking the code of hospitality, or, in the case of women, about them having positions of authority and leadership in the Early Church, something the women hating Paul didn't like.

And, not only didn't Jesus say anything against homosexuality, he healed the young dying male lover of a Centurion.

Your post is great, btw.

[knitter4democracy]

8. Oh, I know, but don't even try convincing them of that.

It's better to take them on in the major tenets of the faith. It beats them every time. I always say that, if Jesus were here today, the Parable of the Good Samaritan would instead be the Parable of the HIV+ Married Gay Couple with Kids. That's the story that Jesus tells after He tells them that the Second Greatest Commandment is to love our neighbor. He's asked who's our neighbor, and he goes into the story of the Good Samaritan, which makes the point because the Samaritans were hated by most of the Jews then more than almost anyone else.

[LostinVA]

6. Excellent!

[Cha]

9. I didn't know this..

"Over and above all these towers James Baldwin, the novelist and essayist whose accounts of the civil rights movement are without peer, and Bayard Rustin, the most important civil rights figure after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Rustin conceived of the 1963 March on Washington, but thanks to a vice arrest in Pasadena a decade earlier, he was forced to take a back seat during the unveiling of his masterpiece."

It's too bad Obama was so blatantly trying to have it both ways on such a vital matter.

He shoulda just went with his conscience for civil rights and left donnie off his program.