Nice try, Steve, but you are spreading misinformation and lies.

The adversity referenced is not sexual orientation, but a childhood filled with rape, drugs, and domestic violence.

It's intellectually dishonest of you to take Obama's staff's comments so wildly out of context to try to make Barak look like he supports the ex-gay movement.

Pretty disgusting of you to use the demeaning term "groupie" as well.

Steve, thanks for the talking points.

Unlike you, I study christian music and media culture extensively, and I knew who Donnie McClurkin was long before this episode. McClurkin is not a bigot. He's a messed-up guy with confused ideas about sexuality based on his messed-up life. But he's NEVER condemned anyone, and hasn't ever pushed anti-gay public policy. To portray him as some anti-gay crusader spreading hate betrays a fundamental ignorance about who he is, what he believes, and about the theological dynamics at work in american cultural politics.

Tolerance and acceptance work both ways--Barak's campaign is based on the idea that just because someone disagrees with me, it doesn't make them my enemy--and we can unite for the common good. Your eagerness to cry "bigot" without fully investigating the truth is reckless and wrong.

But that's the kind of sleazy politics you Clintonites love.

Surely Alex, you must recognize that this breed of politics that prioritizes mudslinging "gotcha" politics over factual critical inquiry about issues extends back to the Clinton campaign in the 1992 democratic primary. It's how these folks operate. It's a cynical, meanspirited mode of operation that aggravates the bogus "culture war" mentality (and serves to distract us from issues that really matter.) An example of this is Steve's misleading juxtaposition of quotes from the Obama camp in 2007 with quotes from McClurckin in 2002. (Dude was a bush supporter back then. People change!)

(Also, I have registered, it won't let me post any way except anonymously, it says "wrong text entered" when I use the LJ or AIM logins).

Donnie is a totally amazing performer, a grammy winner as you note. Sort of a gospel version of Luther Vandross. He was a protege of the Winans family, so he essentially came of age in the theologically and politically conservative Christian media industry. At the time, he didn't have any other options or reference points. But now the Christian media industry is now starting to fragment. He's a survivor of sexual abuse--so his ideas about homosexuality were unfortunately shaped by those events as much as the corporate christian media industry that employed him. But he's never been particularly politically active, and unlike many "ex-gay" identified individuals, never engaged in the demonizing anti-gay rhetoric or fought for anti-gay public policy. He just kept on being a gospel singer! He was a Bush supporter and performed at the GOP convention, but like many religious conservatives has been drifting leftward. That Obama's populist politics have brought him into the fold indicates a crumbling of the religious right's stranglehold over Christian political discourse. We should be welcoming this development, encouraging religious communities to think critically about the issues, helping them come to modern understandings of sexuality, rather than demonizing them and calling them bigots.

Good eye on the quote from the music critic, Alex. What's the Bilerico policy on corrections? That misattribution seems significant enough to warrant one.

As does the mischaracterization of McClurkin as an "ex-gay activist", when the dude has never done any activism.

It's not enough "acknowledge" an error. You have to change the initial post. Otherwise, you're still spreading misinformation.

And no, that's not activism. That's advocacy.

I mean, look at dude's website. Doesn't even mention sexuality.

Haha, what a pitiful game of semantics with discussing "advocacy" and "activism."

By the way, check out Pam's site. If calling gays and lesbians liars is not anti-gay demonization, I don't know what is.

There is a clear attempt to make him into something he's not, though. He is not an active part of the ex-gay movement alongside actual activists like Alan Chambers or Stephen Bennett. He hasn't to my knowledge, ever even self-identified as "ex-gay."

He hasn't written "books" about "it". He wrote one book, a memoir, wherein he talked about his personal experiences with sexuality, among many other topics.

He didn't "counsel" adolescents, so much as he relayed his experiences to people who emailed him.

He didn't "speak to the media" so much as he answered their questions openly in interviews. (if you look at the interviews, he frequently declined to attack the "gay community" when given opportunities.)

Obama's not holding him up as an awesome role model. He's holding him up as a great gospel singer! Which he is. Prolly an inartful choice on obama's part, but not the end of the world.

What i am saying though is that McClurkin doesn't really "speak out against gays." He's just morally opposed to homosexuality. So is half the country. Yet he's willing to find common ground and work for a candidate that supports legal equality. That's a positive development for american religious politics. If we're going to make some arbitrary litmus test that our candidates can't have anyone who has thus far missed the boat on the morality of homosexuality appear at their campaign stops, we're being impractical, and demanding pandering, excluding half the country.

There are a lot of people who have moral reservations about homosexuality but also oppose discrimination. We can choose either to get them on board and educate them along the way, or we can label them hateful bigots and the conversation ends there. I would hope we would choose pragmatism over self-righteous indignance. Let's not be stupid.

Obama's just being pragmatic, he'll come back for Gays later. This time. Promise. When the GLB lobby shows it has the votes.

And it's very selfish of GLBs to get in the way of having the first Black President. Civil Rights are only gained incrementally. A minority is getting in the way of the hopes and aspirations of tens of millions of African-Americans.

And besides which, the GLB lobby is relatively recent. Who invited them in to the Civil Rights movement anyway?

Sorry, just channeling John Aravosis.

My, my, my, what a little cat fight we have going here ... but I must say, this is a situation where we need to be immensely circumspect and careful.

(1) I'm not sure that Obama including McClurkin as a gospel singer means he also endorses anything McClurkin has put out there regarding the topic of "ex-gay" --- if Obama had selected Donna Summers or Gloria Gaynor, would we here at Bilerico then be obligated to re-dissect these two singers also?

(2) "Ex-gay" is itself an issue that requires carefulness. I've written about this before.

Although practically all of us here believe that individuals have a right to their sex lives whether hetero- or homo-, I think we also must acknowledge that individuals have a right to be celibate, or abstinent, regardless of what internal sexual urges they may or may not experience. Acknowledging this, there are layers in the ex-gay/anti-gay movement that form a continuum that potentially extend from realistic/healthy to pure superstition-fantasyland/psychotic. If a gay man decides he wants to keep his dick in his pants, and praying to Jesus helps him do that, then that may be a decision that many of us would find unfortunate --- but even so, you and me disagreeing with it is irrelevant, since that may be his truth, and he certainly has the right to make that decision and follow through with it. But conversely, if some pseudo-religious, psycho-babble-brandishing lunatic like Paul Cameron, or Dr. Laura, or Ted Haggard, claims that praying to Jesus will effect physical changes in one's brain so that one is rendered heterosexual when previously homosexual --- well, I don't have proof, but with my science-based understanding of brain-wiring, I'm willing to call that pure propaganda. And when the propaganda is obviously politically motivated, the wolf in sheep's clothing becomes unmistakable.

So, as we counter the statements, influence, and effect of the ex-gay movement, we also have to be careful not to stomp on the right of any one individual to complete self-determination. Even Donnie McClurkin, and even teenage boys that look to Donnie McClurkin.

(3) Yet, after having said all that, I'll cut to the chase re Obama: There are many, really good, African-American gospel singers that are not as politically problematic as Donnie McClurkin --- and if Obama is good at playing the political game, he better drop McClurkin in a millisecond. If he thinks the GLBT political base isn't large enough and vocal enough to cause major problems in his campaign, he has a painful lesson ahead of him. Moreover, I hope it doesn't come to this, because --- and here I try to select wording a bit more artfully than John Aravosis did --- I can think of few things that could shatter whatever tenuous political alliances we have managed to put into place between voters of color and GLBT voters over the last few decades.

Kevin,
and others out there who actually believe what Kevin wrote "Unlike you, I study christian music and media culture extensively, and I knew who Donnie McClurkin was long before this episode. McClurkin is not a bigot. He's a messed-up guy with confused ideas about sexuality based on his messed-up life. But he's NEVER condemned anyone,...."

You must not have studied Christian music that closely because you missed some VERY bigoted statements made by not only Donnie McClurkin but also MAry,Mary who are also on the tour. Check out the links below.

"homosexuals are trying to kill our children.”
Donnie McClurkin
http://www.republicoft.com/2007/10/22/why-oh-why-obama/

"They have issues and need somebody to encourage them like everybody else - just like the murderer, just like the one full of pride, just like the prostitute, everybody needs God."
Erica from MAry,MAry
http://www.vibe.com/news/news_headlines/2007/03/mary_mary_interview/

Hezekiah Walker is well know for his anti-gay views

There's more just check out the links below the quotes.You can play the semantics game all you want but its VERY clear these are awful remarks that represent people who are bigots.

Its also important to note that NBJC opposes this tour just as they opposed Bush and McClurkin teaming up during his last re-election campaign.
http://www.aegis.com/news/bayw/2004/BY040903.html

Furthermore (Kevin and others) these anti-gay acts are performing at 2 of the 3 days thats a majority of the shows.

You can play the semantics game all you want but its VERY clear these are awful remarks that represent people who are bigots and Obama is associating himself with them which is the opposite of what he claims to represent. The question is what is he going to do now?

This can be analyzed to the ends of the Earth - but it does not change one critical fact: If the shoe were on the other foot and Obama were merely the voter and the candidate were a white man who had invited a performer on who it was learned had a history of making statements that were anti-black - would Obama accept that white candidate putting a black minister on board as acceptable without withdrawing the anti-black performer. Obviously not. Everything else said about this topic is irrelevant. "Advocacy vs. Activism" - what a ridiculous topic. Don't try to justify his inclusion by splitting hairs. Obama would not accept this "compromise" if the shoe were on the other foot and neither do I. He has lost my vote and I'm certain the votes of many GLBT people as well. Period.