Tuesday, January 22, 2008

A look at Obama and the Gay issue

This piece gives a nice tour through Obama and his turbulent campaign history with Gay issues, and how he has come a long way.

AMERICAblog:
Obama's relations with the gay community were off to a great start yesterday morning. Obama had just addressed the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, MLK's own church (text of the speech and video here), and Obama went out of his way in the speech to call the black community to task for having "scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them."

Not bad, considering candidates don't usually admonish their own in order to get votes.

Then, word started getting around (i.e., I started getting lots of emails) that Obama was embracing yet another homophobic friend-of-Bush, a la the controversy a few months ago in which Donnie McClurkin, a gospel singer (and Bush supporter) who advocates that gays can (and should) be "cured" emceed an Obama fundraiser. This time around, it's Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, a black minister who says he's been asked by the Obama campaign to travel around the country on their behalf. The controversy? The minister's church runs a ministry that tries to cure gays.

Or at least they did. The ministry's Web site no longer contains the page promoting their anti-gay/ex-gay ministry, but I still have a copy that you can see below ...

...

1 comment:

Deep Fried said...

DOMA
Don't Ask Don't Tell
Both served up to us by the Clinton Administration. Both have had a more detrimental effect on LGBT Americans than anyone who Obama has ever stood beside or taken a picture with. Get real folks -- Since Clinton is taking credit for everything that happened during her husband's administration, maybe she can answer for these two horrendous policies as well.