October 25, 2007

Memo to Obama: You’re Only Making It Worse

Barack Obama just doesn’t get it. He thinks that adding a gay minister to his gospel concert is going to make up for Donnie McClurkin, Mary Mary, and Hezekiah Walker — and for the most obvious fact that this concert is meant to increase Obama’s appeal to southern black homophobes.

The latest, from the New York Times:

Senator Barack Obama is trying to tamp down a growing uproar over his plans to include a controversial gospel singer at a campaign concert this weekend in South Carolina and says he will feature an openly gay minister before the concert.

. . .

But in a phone call that just concluded, Mr. Obama told Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, that he intended to keep Mr. McClurkin in the lineup. He is to appear Sunday in Columbia as part of a three-day gospel tour to help Mr. Obama reach out to black evangelicals.

Dear Senator Obama:

What a lame, transparent attempt at appeasement.

You wax poetic about “reaching out” to everyone, when all you’re doing is overreaching. If you’re so bent on bringing everybody into the “big tent,” what’s next — a community singalong with White Stormfront?

If all your rhetoric about your support for the LGBT community were based in reality, you would have taken the time to get to know us well enough to realize what a hurtful affront this whole stupid idea was in the first place — and then you wouldn’t have done it.

But, having made this grave error, you might have repaired the damage by dumping the ‘phobes from the tour. But you wouldn’t, and you won’t. So, instead, you think you’re going to offset the damage by throwing a gay preacher into the mix.

Wrong. You’re only making it worse. The saddest part is that you don’t even understanding how you’re compounding the damage, no matter how many times, or in how many ways, we explain it to you.

Finally — and oh so typically — it never occurred to you that adding a gay minister to the bill is also going to piss off the very homophobes you’re “reaching out” to. Do you think they’re as stupid as you seem to think we are? They’re not.

Posted by: Sapphocrat