Are you kidding me?
I was beginning to feel, nay, to think that Barack Obama might be exactly what we need. A fresh start. Now this:
"'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, the statement added."
I can't believe that Obama, who has a real chance to be President, would pander to the anti homosexual sentiment in the black community. I remember when the Defense of Marriage bill was up in Ohio in 'O4, and people were shocked that Shuttlesworth supported the bill. I wasn't shocked at all: If it comes between reality and superstition, superstition wins, because, at the end of the day, anybody and everybody can misread the Bible and take it to heart.
I'm just a little sad that Barack, this generations Bobby Kennedy, the hope of a new tomorrow, choses to fetter himself with bigots.
Say it ain't so. Say it ain't so.
Update: The question begs, and continues, to beg. Obama's invitation to a homosexual saved, as it were, to appear on stage with him, help him deliver his message, would seem to indicate a kind of tacit endorsement on Obama's part of the kind of ideology Rev. McClurkin has talked himself into. Doesn't it? I mean, the guy sang for Bush at the fucking GOP Convention.
Certainly, McClurkin doesn't see his worldview, or the the professed truth of his ministry, as "anti-gay", claiming that his remarks were taken out of context. Yet in his 2002 essay "No Longer a Victim", yet the by-line can be thought of as kind thesis for the piece:
"Pastor Donnie McClurkin was raped at the age of 8 and spent years wrestling with homosexuality. Today he's telling the world that true freedom can be found in Christ."
McClurkin goes on to tell the world that his Uncle, a pederast, molested him and turned him gay, he struggle amidst other "broken" people, but only Jesus can save you... "In just seven days, I can make you a man..."
Looking past what makes this idea, at first glance, so hateful-its equivalent being Ann Coulter's insistence that Jews need to be "perfected", except that this one works the rigid assumptions of Patricarchies as God, as opposed to Coulter's invocation of Blood libel and deicide. Both of these "readings" pinion on right and true superstitions of the early Middle Ages. In Europe-is the empirical idea that becoming a homosexual just happens one day, or you wake up, and decided to be "gay", and you can unlearn it, dammit, and get right with the Lord. John Ridley seems to agree with me on this...
Look, I know Obama added an openly gay minister, and that will be laudable only if, somehow, we can have serious dialogue about faith and sexuality: This might be a moment to do so, but I can't help but feel that it is an attempt to deflect. I hope I'm wrong about that.
I hope I'm wrong about Obama, but on behalf of my gay and lesbian friends and family, my transgendered and intergendered friends, on behalf of my sense of human rights...if they are disrespected, I am disrespected;if they are not free, then I am not free.
Update to the Update: Dave points out that fighting injustice must be total, and that stereotypes help the Right Wing.
And as we discussed earlier, demanding orthodoxy of opinion to be considered a "real" progressive or someone who is "enlightened" is nothing more than elitism all over again. Whether power, class, race, or intellectualism, elitism is elitism. Quack.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing that encompasses an entire "progressive" nature. Look at the gay community turmoil over the ENDA bill -- who's the "real" homosexual?