From Joe Solmonese, President of the Human Rights Campaign:
“I did thank him [Obama] for announcing he would be adding an openly gay minister as part of the tour and for his willingness to call on religious leaders to open a dialogue about homophobia. 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.” [For the full article, see here]
Please tell me how Obama aligning himself with a hateful homophobe like Mcclurkin will in any way help "...to confront the issue of homophobia."? What kind of double talking nonsense is this anyway? (And who the hell is McClurkin to be called a "religious leader?")
It's typical "liberal" rhetorical nonsense that doesn't seek to offend or in any way be seen as being politically incorrect! Solmonese doesn't want to call it as it is, presuming he sees it for what it is: pure political expediency by just another political whore (Although I hate to use the word "whore" in this context, as prostitutes do serve a useful function for people.) at the expense of the basic principle of equality for all, and at the expense of the freedom and safety of LGBT people!
Sonmonese said, "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. [Ya think?] That’s a message that certainly doesn’t belong on any Presidential candidate’s stage.”
True enough! However, he speaks of "our community's disappointment." Disappointment? What about the use of the word, "outrage?" Is the LGBT community for which Solmonese says he speaks merely "disappointed" with Obama's alignment with ignorant, hateful homophobes from whom he seeks to gain more popularity?
Where is the outrage, the revulsion, from the HRC that claims to speak for LGBT people, and that has a mandate to fight and agitate for full and equal civil rights for LGBT people? If the HRC's fighting and agitating is taking the form of sugarcoating Obama's alignment with rabid homophobic elements in our society; translating righteous "outrage" with the anemic word "disappointed" to describe that alignment, by a self-styled "liberal" no less, the HRC may well be showing itself to merely be one more ineffectual and increasingly unnecessary bureaucracy!
With friends like these, who needs enemies? For the President of a major Gay Rights organization to do anything but outright condemn Obama's alignment with the likes of McClurkin, with no added verbiage to somehow sugarcoat the reality of that alignment and what it truly means for LGBT people and for the political process in 2007 America, is nothing short of disgusting!
This state of affairs again points out that the only way that organizations like the HRC will become truly and meaningfully activist is when there is grassroots activism that forces them to become aggressive in fighting for LGBT civil rights or, absent that, to give up their presumably handsome salaries and fold up shop!
2 comments:
The one good thing that may come out of this debacle is that America may get an education about Black religious bigotry. Jasmyne Cannick and other Black Gay bloggers have made a huge fuss about McClurkin and the other hetero-fascists on Obama's tour. Yesterday, I heard a report about the controversy on NPR.
Absolutely, Don Charles! What makes this religious bigotry so surreal is the tragedy, the crying shame, of a still stigmatized minority group demeaning another stigmatized minority group, its members frequently aligning themselves with many reactionaries who otherwise would have little or nothing to do with them; Gay people, a despised minority group, willing to throw their Transgendered brothers and sisters, another despised minority group, to the wolves for political expediency and pure selfishness. "Religion" is meant to heal others, but one must be intact enough to accept that healing and manifest that healing to others. When one is driven by a selfish agenda, that "religiosity" is both perverted, and is used to legitimate discrimination against others, which in my opinion is no different than the "Christian" White Supremecists' selfish agenda during the era of segregation to keep Black people "in their place," and keep them subservient to whites. As long as we fail to realize that we are all in this together, there will not only be a war of all against all, prohibiting full and equal civil and sacramental rights for everyone, but "religion" will continue to be more dangerous than healing, further contributing to the climate of hate and exclusion, and further turning off intelligent, decent, and sensitive people from even considering Christianity as a viable way to live their lives, precisely because they have never been exposed to the real thing by most of the institutional Church, most of its leaders and most of its members, and clergy of all colors are largely responsible for this debacle.
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