Senator Barack
Obama talks about his record on LGBT issues, Donnie
McClurkin, and tells us that he isn't choosing one
demographic of voters over another.
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.
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