A Problem

Another point for Christopher Hitchens' Religion ruining everything' stance

Obama’s Gospel Tour
By Sarah Wheaton

As religious conservatives gather in Washington this weekend for the “Values Voters Summit,” Senator Barack Obama’s campaign announced its latest effort to attract people of faith to the campaign: a gospel concert tour.

All three of the dates of the “Embrace the Change” tour are in South Carolina, where Mr. Obama is locked in battle with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for black voters.
Gospel acts including Mary Mary, Donnie McClurkin and Hezekiah Walker, Byron Cage and the Mighty Clouds of Joy are scheduled to appear.

“This is another example of how Barack Obama is defying conventional wisdom about how politics is done and giving new meaning to meeting people at the grassroots level,” Joshua DuBois, the campaign’s religious affairs director, said in a release. “This concert tour is going to bring new people into the political process and engage people of faith in an unprecedented way.”

We checked in with Nate Chinen, a music critic for The Times, for his take on the lineup.

“I think this tour falls in line with what we know about Obama’s religious history as well as his need to energize a base/community rooted in faith,” he said. “In someone like Hezekiah Walker you have a spiritual leader as well as an artist, and in Donnie McClurkin you have someone who overcame great adversity to become a role model. And of course with the Mighty Clouds of Joy, you have music royalty.”

Why be concerned?

But what makes McClurkin a controversial figure is his preaching. It began with McClurkin's 2001 book, Eternal Victim/Eternal Victor, where he explained his 20-year experience with homosexuality, which he said started after he was raped by an uncle.

"Love is pulling you one way and lust is pulling you another and your relationship with Jesus is tearing you," McClurkin told the media. He says that God delivered him from homosexuality, and since that time, he has been counseling adolescent boys that homosexuality is merely a lifestyle choice that can be overcome.

...

"There was a big 20-year gap of sexual ambiguity where after the rape my desires were toward men, and I had to fight those things because I knew that it wasn't what we were taught in church was right. And the older I got, the more that became a problem, because those were the first two sexual relationships that I had. Eight years old and 13 years old. So that's what I was molded into. And I fought that. When I tell you from eight to 28, that was my fight -- in the church. And you were in an environment where there were hidden, you know, vultures I call them, that are hidden behind frocks and behind collars and behind -- you know, reverends and the deacons, and it becomes a preying ground, a place where the prey is hunted, and that was what it was like."

McClurkin basically describes a world in which homosexuality is common in the church community. Something we have been trying to point out from day one in our campaign. The black church is the most homophobic and the most homotolerant institution in the black community.

And McClurkin was a part of the community. Then he says he changed. "God started making it plain to me the things to hate. You don't hate the people, but there are certain things that are against God that may be in you that you have got to learn how to hate, even though it's in you." That leads us to wonder, how did these "things" get into you in the first place?

Comparing gays and lesbians to liars, McClurkin explains, "There are certain things like, you know, anybody who has a lying problem; they get to the point where they hate being so, having such a lack of character that they make a change."

Earl Ofari Hutchinson, blogging at the Huffington Post comments:

Desperate to snatch back some of the political ground with black voters that are slipping away from him and to Hillary; Bush's black evangelical card seems like the perfect play. Obama wouldn't dare go down the knock gay path, and risk drawing the inevitable heat for it, if he didn't think as Bush that anti-gay sentiment is still wide and deep among many blacks.

And this:

Washington Post:
Gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, who has detailed his struggle with gay tendencies and vowed to battle "the curse of homosexuality," said yesterday he'll perform as scheduled at the Republican National Convention on Thursday, despite controversy over his view that sexuality can be changed by religious intervention."

I can't let off. I didn't call myself -- God called me to do what I do," McClurkin told The Post's Hamil R. Harris. The Grammy winner declared, "If this is a war, we are willing to fight. Not a war of violence, but a war of purpose."

We'll be watching this ...