Barack Obama's campaign is starting to look like the original "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" from SNL. Radner, Curtain, Belushi, et al, would have a field day. The McClurkin debacle continues to unfold as HRC takes Obama to task:
Human Rights Campaign Statement on Sen. Obama’s South Carolina Gospel Tour
WASHINGTON — Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay civil rights organization, released the following statement in response to Sen. Barack Obama’s South Carolina Gospel Tour featuring anti-gay gospel singer, Rev. Donnie McClurkin: “I spoke with Sen. Barack Obama today and expressed to him our community’s disappointment for his decision to continue to remain associated with Rev. McClurkin, an anti-gay preacher who states the need to ‘break the curse of homosexuality.’ There is no gospel in Donnie McClurkin’s message for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people and their allies. That’s a message that certainly doesn’t belong on any Presidential candidate’s stage.”
We hope that Sen. Obama will move forward and facilitate face to face meetings with religious leaders, like Rev. McClurkin, and the GLBT community to confront the issue of homophobia.” We also call on all of the Presidential campaigns to look within their ranks of supporters and make the same commitment to engage in a dialogue among differing views around issues of equality and fairness for our community.” Rev. McClurkin, an “ex-gay” gospel singer and minister who has called homosexuality a “curse”, has repeatedly stated his opposition to homosexuality as being against “the intention of God.”
It will be telling to see what Obama does in the face of this statement. If he keeps McClurkin, he's pretty much telling the LGBT community to go f**k itself. In my view, his staff needs a house cleaning. Meanwhile, in Nevada, Obama has teemed up with a convicted batterer of women (http://www.lvrj.com/news/10761301.html):
When Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama launches his group of black supporters in Nevada today, the headliner will be a superstar: a boxer who won the biggest title fight in recent history, a flamboyant personality who's been on "Dancing With the Stars." But Floyd Mayweather Jr. is also a convicted batterer with a history of arrests in Las Vegas and elsewhere.
In 2004, Mayweather was convicted on two counts of battery for punching two women at a Las Vegas nightclub the previous year. He was given suspended prison sentences, $1,000 in fines and ordered to complete impulse control counseling. Mayweather in 2002 pleaded guilty to two counts of domestic violence in one case and battery in another. In 2005, a jury acquitted him of a third domestic violence charge, a felony, after his accuser changed her story. He reportedly was convicted of battery in his hometown of Grand Rapids, Mich., and he has also been the subject of civil lawsuits accusing him of battery.
University of Nevada, Reno, political scientist Eric Herzik said the Obama campaign made a bad choice in associating itself with someone with such a dicey past. "You're dealing with legal problems, and domestic violence in particular," he said. "No candidate wants to be associated with that. You'd think his staffers would have raised a red flag about this."
Nice family values! Can't Obama get some normal, non-hateful people to tour with him? Not too many of my black friends look favorably on homophobia OR assaulting and beating women. Seriously, his selection of these people is on an incompetence level akin to that of the Chimperator.
3 comments:
Bill Clinton was convicted of purgery. He cheated on his wife and abused her emotional in front of the entire world by having sex with a teenager. Before you criticize Obama for something he had nothing to do with, you should look at Hillary and her blindness to the cheating ways of her husband.
Anonymous,
I am not taking up for Hillary or anyone else. I am merely making the point that if these kind of blunders are being made on Obama's campaign, what the Hell might happen with him in the general election or in the White House. His staff appear to be amatuers or dim wits.
I will make the point on Hillary that just maybe she loved the guy and made some bad choices because of it. Overlooking the failings of a spouse are far different than going out and recruiting bigots and brutes.
Let's face it, none of the presidential candidates are brave enough to embrace gay issues head on and in the face of homophobes, etc but out of all of them Obama seems to be the one most likely to give gay issues a national and even international forum, more exposure and an acceptable platform from which to launch, and/or increase dialog on the issues. McClurkin appeals to the black church goers and they are a large, sheepish voting block. While symbolic inn nature, I don't think McClurkin's stand on gay issues is Obama's. I think Obama, more than any other, can become an advocate once elected. This is progress!
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