Obama Explains It All for You

When the Obama campaign announced that Donnie McClurkin would be among the featured singers on the presidential candidate's gospel tour in South Carolina this weekend, it inadvertently ventured into the void between African-American Christians and gays and lesbians.

McClurkin, an award-winning gospel singer who has also struggled with his sexuality for years, is a one-man personification of the craggy crossroads between black gays and Christians. The fact that he has called homosexuality a “curse” that runs against “the intention of God” rips open the wounds of so many gay African-Americans who have been “prayed over” for years by family and friends who endeavor to save them from their “shameful” fate.

As Joe Solmonese of the Human Rights Campaign put it once the din to pull the controversial singer had reached a fever pitch midweek, “There is no gospel in Donnie McClurkin’s message for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people and their allies.” There appeared to be two choices for Obama’s campaign: Keep McClurkin on the tour and disregard the cash-laden gay constituency that has bundled money with the best of ’em for Obama or ditch McClurkin at the expense of sacrificing a precious bloc of votes from South Carolina’s black religious community.

But rather than oust McClurkin, the campaign found a third way, officially adding gay minister Andy Sidden to the tour on Wednesday.

The gospel tour is an apparent attempt to up Obama’s numbers among a crucial segment of black constituents that made up 47% of South Carolina’s Democratic primary voters in 2004 and among whom Obama and Hillary Clinton are running neck and neck in recent polls.

The inclusion of McClurkin brings two things into relief at this critical juncture in the Obama campaign when he needs to translate his substantial fund-raising sums into votes.

For LGBT people, it prompts the question, Weren’t Obama and, by extension, the people who run his campaign versed enough in the pain of the people he calls his “gay brothers and sisters” to see the McClurkin land mine before they rolled over it?

And can Obama really, as he claims, create the “big tent” movement he’s been selling, where voters who vehemently disagree on something as fundamental as what constitutes love put aside their differences to rally around a single candidate?

The Advocate: How did this happen? Was Mr. McClurkin vetted?
Senator Obama: Obviously, not vetted to the extent that people were aware of his attitudes with respect to gay and lesbians, LGBT issues -- at least not vetted as well as I would have liked to see.

Having said that, we viewed this simply as an opportunity to have a gospel concert as part of our overall outreach, and since he was singing at a concert along with a number of other artists, as opposed to being a spokesperson for us, probably it didn’t undergo the same kind of vet that someone who was serving as a surrogate for me might have.