FORT MILL, S.C. — Fort Mill Mayor Danny Funderburk says he was “just curious” when he forwarded a chain e-mail suggesting Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama is the biblical antichrist. “I was just curious if there was any validity to it,” Funderburk said in a telephone interview. “I was trying to get documentation if there was any scripture to back it up.” …
The e-mail, which has circulated in the last six months since Obama secured the Democratic nomination, claims the biblical book of Revelation says the antichrist will be in his 40s and of Muslim ancestry.
There is no such scripture. And Obama is not a Muslim. …
The urban legend Web site Snopes.com first exploded the myth in March. Funderburk forwarded the e-mail this month.
When asked if he believed Obama was the antichrist, Funderburk replied, “I’ve got absolutely no way of knowing that.” …
“I am curious about current events and their connection to the Bible,” he said.
We’re also curious about whether or not Funderburk’s brain stem goes all the way to the top.
It looks like Chad Prosser, director of South Carolina’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism, is a big, fat liar* — and that some poor schmuck fell on his sword to cover Prosser’s butt.
In late June, Amro Worldwide announced a poster campaign to lure gay travelers from the U.K. to various destinations across the U.S., with the tagline Atlanta — or Boston, or Las Vegas, or wherever — is “so gay.” (We like it — it’s cool that somebody decided to co-opt the phrase “so gay” as a positive rather than a negative.)
At the time, South Carolina Tourism spokesperson Kirsty Dillury said:
“South Carolina has a lot to offer gay travellers, and we think that people may be surprised to see our destination reaching out to the gay market,” said Ms Dillury. “We are delighted to be involved with the ‘So Gay’ campaign in particular as it sends a powerful positive message to everyone that there is nothing wrong at all with a destination being described as ’so gay’. For our gay visitors it is actually quite wonderful for them to discover just how much South Carolina has to offer — from stunning plantation homes to miles of wide sandy beaches.”
South Carolina’s tourism agency has slapped the wrist of its ad manager and is refusing to go ahead and pay for a campaign to attract gay tourists from Britain.
The state employee who gave the OK for the ad campaign resigned Friday.
“[He] exercised extremely poor judgment in approving participation in the program,” state Parks, Recreation and Tourism director Chad Prosser told the State newspaper.
Prosser said the department will require more review in the future.
It was too late to stop the ads that proclaim “South Carolina is so gay”. They’ve already gone up in the London subway to take advantage of gay pride in the British capital.
But Prosser said Friday the state will refuse to pay the $5,000 cost of the ads. …
Today, WSPA-TV reveals that Prosser himself had essentially approved the “so gay” campaign — or, rather, he was for it before he was against it:
…PRT emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that, on July 3, Prosser told his staff the state would take part in the campaign. The email to London says, “Per Chad’s direction as of 4:40 p.m. today, (July 3) DO NOT ask the vendor to remove South Carolina from the campaign.”
Prosser told reporters after the story broke that upper management at PRT never approved the posters, and other emails back that up. He says it was approved by a lower-level employee who resigned after lawmakers, the governor and members of the public questioned the use of tax dollars for the ads.
One email, from PRT Communications Director Marion Edmonds, says, “I’m praying this little story doesn’t jump the pond.” His email was in response to one from another PRT employee’s friend who was traveling in London and sent a cell phone photo of the South Carolina poster. “I hadn’t seen the photo of the poster,” he writes. Prosser says he also had not seen the actual ad until he was forwarded the same email with a photo of the poster in the London subway.
What a… Well, you find your own word for what Prosser is.
Meanwhile, we can’t make heads nor tails of the gobbledygook excuse Prosser offered WSPA:
Asked why he directed staff not to ask the vendor to remove South Carolina’s poster from the campaign, Prosser told News Channel 7, “These were not our ads. We did not place them, so we didn’t have the authority to pull them.” …
Prosser says his initial reaction was, in fact, to pull the ads. But once he found out the ads were done by Amro, not PRT, he decided not to ask that they be pulled.
“Asking for ads that we weren’t paying for, that we didn’t place, to be pulled would’ve been difficult,” Prosser says. And there was another reason. “We found out by that point that the campaign was extremely limited in time and the ads were already scheduled to come down, so there was really nothing that we could do to speed that process up,” he says.
Oh, puh-leeze.
* No libel here: We said it looks like Prosser is a big, fat liar — “big” and “fat” being purely figurative, as we have no idea what he looks like.
I haven’t finished the first part of project mentioned here, but it’s getting there. In the meantime, while I continue to dig into the ugly depths of the anti-gay movement, here’s a quick rundown of what’s happening in our world:
Speaking of The Presumptuous Nominee, Queerty notes that Florida’s gay Democrats are disappointed with the Obama campaign, and quotes a report from Florida Capital News: “The leader of the Florida Democratic Party’s gay caucus, declaring that ‘I’m sick and tired of getting table scraps,’ complained Saturday that Sen. Barack Obama offended a large and faithful voting bloc by not sending his wife or another top campaign surrogate to the group’s annual meeting.”
Now, before anybody resorts to the tired old argument that ignoring gay groups is consistent with Obama’s refusal to pander to any single “interest,” we say: If Saint Barry can find the time to pander to hard-right Christian fundies — like he’ll be doing (again, and this time along with John McCain) at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church — then he can at least send his compulsive gum-flapper of a wife to talk to the Florida Democratic Party’s gay caucus. This isn’t like ignoring local gay press; this is an official caucus of the Democratic Party.
Back in the reality-based world, we’re happy to hear that activists in San Diego aren’t taking Doug Manchester’s campaign of anti-equality lying down — especially in one of Manchester’s beds. (Backstory here and here.) Just before San Diego Pride Saturday, between 150 and 200 people rallied in protest outside the Manchester Grand Hyatt (and were countered by about 75 bigots).
As for the San Diego pridefest itself, while Wendy Fry was bemoaning the fact that straight men just can’t wear boas and sequins the way gay men can, the “internationally renown anti-Scientology activism group Anonymous” was marching in its own contingent in the parade. If I were Anonymous, I’d remain anonymous, too. Those zany Xenuists scare the bejeebers out of my quivering little body thetans.
Tourism experts are “puzzled” since five grand is such a measly price to pay “for such a lucrative niche market.” We’re not puzzled at all; hysterical homophobia always trumps common sense. Look at Jamaica, where they’d rather murder us than prop up their own barely-on-life-support economy with our Big Gay Dollars. We say: Screw ‘em — both Jamaica and the Jamaica of the United States, South Carolina. Let them eat dirt.
Also, my dear Gaytheist shines the light on yet another example of masking bigotry behind “deeply held religious beliefs,” in the case of a gay-hatin’ British cop: What’s the Matter With the UK Lately?
(Speaking of dumb cops, one of the San Diego Harbor Police shot to death a go-go boy who fell off a pride-cruise boat, and got physical with his rescuers. I don’t care what the guy did — when you’ve got one suspect surrounded by a bunch of armed police officers, there can’t be any excuse for failing to subdue him without killing him.)
Elsewhere on the international front: We’re glad that Iris Robinson, wife of Northern Ireland’s First Minister, and Ignorant, Sour-Lemon-Faced, Mad Old Cow whose sunken, empty eyes are only accentuated by a criminal sense of makeup application (see the picture at the link), lives half a world away from us, so we don’t have to listen to her vile nonsense about how much worse homosexuality is than child sexual abuse.
And here are the rest of the headlines that caught my eye today — I’ll leave you to them while I get back to the dirty work of digging into the incestuous circle of money and hate behind the Proposition 8 campaign:
Young, Gay and Murdered Kids are coming out younger, but are schools ready to handle the complex issues of identity and sexuality? For Larry King, the question had tragic implications.
South Carolina’s tourism agency has slapped the wrist of its ad manager and is refusing to go ahead and pay for a campaign to attract gay tourists from Britain.
The state employee who gave the OK for the ad campaign resigned Friday.
“[He] exercised extremely poor judgment in approving participation in the program,” state Parks, Recreation and Tourism director Chad Prosser told the State newspaper.
Prosser said the department will require more review in the future.
It was too late to stop the ads that proclaim “South Carolina is so gay”. They’ve already gone up in the London subway to take advantage of gay pride in the British capital.
But Prosser said Friday the state will refuse to pay the $5,000 cost of the ads. …
That’s how 365Gay.com’s reading of the story goes. Now let’s take a look at the State article itself, the headline of which positively spits with venom at those nasty, nasty homosexuals they don’t want in their stupid state:
South Carolina’s top tourism agency has canceled an overseas advertising campaign targeting gay tourists. …
After learning last week the state had agreed to spend tax money on the campaign — and spurred by a post on The Palmetto Scoop blog — the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism said Thursday it would not pay the tour operator. …
The agency will not pay the roughly $4,942 fee to take part in the campaign.
Employees “exercised extremely poor judgment in approving participation in the program,” Prosser said. PRT, he said, will require more review of future overseas advertising, as it does with domestic advertising. …
Prosser said the employee, who works for an overseas contractor, was not authorized to speak on behalf of the agency. The agency is reviewing how, if at all, to discipline the employees who signed off on the program.
Some lawmakers were shocked to learn about the campaign, with state Sen. David Thomas, R-Greenville, calling for an audit.
Joel Sawyer, spokesman for Gov. Mark Sanford, said using tax money to support a social or political agenda is inappropriate.
“Our state tourism dollars should be talking about the beaches and attractions of South Carolina,” Sawyer said. …
“Attractions”? There’s nothing “attractive” about rank bigotry and blatant offense.
Well, don’t worry, boys — as soon as word gets around the queer blogosphere, we won’t be spending any of our juicy, disposable income in S.C.
By the way, Sawyer, being gay isn’t “political,” or even “social,” for that matter, any more than being black is. Would y’all be so horrified and pissed about a tourism campaign targeting the African-American travel market? How about Jewish tourists? Women?
Actually, come to think of it, you probably would — you just wouldn’t be able to say so in public.
I swear, one day your descendants are going to be as ashamed of you as if you’d been high mucky-mucks in the KKK.
Never mind that Saint Barry didn’t dare breathe the word “gay” alongside “young and old, rich and poor, black and white, Latino and Asian” in his South Carolina victory speech tonight (and why should he, when it’s our backs bearing his muddy bootprints as evidence of the way he trampled us in order to win SC in the first place?).
Rather, I am compelled to quote what he said about religion in his speech, which caused all three residents of my home to emit spontaneous shrieks of incredulous laughter (and two of us to shout something a little less polite than “Baloney!” at the television):
And what we’ve seen in these last weeks is that we’re also up against forces that are not the fault of any one campaign, but feed the habits that prevent us from being who we want to be as a nation. It’s the politics that uses religion as a wedge, and patriotism as a bludgeon.
Forget the Republicans — you, Senator Obama, made religion a wedge among Democrats in this campaign. You used gay Americans as a wedge to woo rabidly homophobic Southern evangelicals who would have voted for you anyway. You opened a fissure the size of the San Andreas Fault between black fundamentalist Christians and gay and lesbian voters — a fissure that may never heal. You continue to employ the politics of division.
Also worth noting:
There are those who will continue to tell us we cannot do this. That we cannot have what we long for. That we are peddling false hopes.
There he goes again, with the meaningless “hope and change” rhetoric — as he steadfastly refuses to tell us what he hopes to change, and how.
Empty words, empty rhetoric, empty suit — all held afloat by the politics of division.
(And no, I’m not bitter about Obama’s SC win; I knew that was going to happen, and I don’t care. What’s important is Super-Duper Tuesday, when the big states vote. And, unless something unforeseen happens — like some crazed Obama supporter dropping LSD in the nation’s water supply — February 5th should fix Obama’s little red wagon, once and for all. I certainly hope so, anyway; I’m sick of hearing his empty promises, and sick of writing about his ruthless steamrolling of the American gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered community.)
1. Kirbyjon Caldwell — spiritual adviser to George W. Bush, pastor of Houston’s Windsor Village United Methodist Church, and senior pastor of “ex-gay” brainwashing program Metanoia Ministries — announces his endorsement for Barack Obama, and says he plans to campaign for Obama, apparently with the blessings of the Obama campaign: “I have been in contact with the Obama campaign team,” he said. “I will be making visits on his behalf.”
3. I receive an email from a reader called “dbdors” whose panties are all in a twist because the link to Caldwell’s anti-gay ministry page (in this post) doesn’t work. Twisted-Panty Reader accuses me of lying, and concludes, predictably, that I must just be a Hillary supporter anyway:
It is a sad day in America when people resort to lies and plain fraud to discredit someone becasue of their choice of canditate.
Could you please explain why I cannot link to this website via www.kingdombuilders.com??? When I go to “care groups”, there is no such site.
Why is it that a Google search brings back a bad link? I know, it’s because you made this up!!
Why is it that I can’t register for the blog and leave a comment? I know, you don’t want any facts posted!!!
You want Hillary elected really bad don’t you!!
I read the email out loud to my better half, and as soon as we finish laughing, I reply to the Obamabot, mostly because I want to know what the heck “care groups” are. (So far, my hysterical little correspondent hasn’t responded.) I also explain that s/he did just leave a comment. Duh!
(P.S. to “dbdors”: You should be grateful I don’t sue your butt off for libel, twerp.)
4. I check the link to Caldwell’s anti-gay ministry page, and find it missing. Or, more accurately, it’s been scrubbed — deleted, suicided, tossed into the memory hole, gone — *poof!* — as nonexistent as Obama’s plan for a workable healthcare system.
6. But, thanks to the wonders of The Wayback Machine, I resurrect the original page from the dead. Some of the images are broken, so I check the properties of each broken image, figure out its original URL, copy the missing images directly from the live Kingdombuilders site, and reconstruct the page completely. I then tuck away the reconstructed page in case it’s no longer available on The Wayback Machine.
I also discover that the text of the original page is still on the Kingdombuilders site, in PDF form. (I save a copy of that, too.)
I also discover that a linked MSN Group (which may or may not have been affiliated with Caldwell’s church — but they liked it enough to link it), “The African American Recovery Corner” — has also mysteriously vanished.
Still, a directory listing at CrossDaily.com shows us the description of the group, presumably submitted by whoever ran it:
Site URL: http://groups.msn.com/TheAfricanAmericanRecoveryKornerTheArk Title: The African American Recovery Korner Description: An Christian support group for those seeking freedom from homosexuality. Although we believe that no one chooses to have homosexual desires, we do believe that you can choose to change your identity. Top Category: Ministries & Organizations Subcategory: Support Groups City: Riverside State/Prov./Region: California Country: United States Start Date: February 2, 2006 (719 days)…
(Heh… Couldn’t get enough momentum to keep your self-loathing homophobe group going a whole year, eh? *snort*)
I decide to search for other scrubbed pages, but before I start, I see that, in the meantime…
7.John Aravosis writes about the Caldwell dust-up, but concludes that there’s nothing to see here, so move along — and adds that “on this one we can give him [Obama] a pass” (I disagree, but I’ll take that up some other time):
I’ve talked to the Obama campaign about this, and they assure me of a few things:
1. Caldwell has not, and will not, be asked to do anything for the campaign (and this means, we hope, that Obama won’t be doing appearances with the man any time soon).
2. Caldwell was simply wrong when he told the papers this weekend that the campaign asked him to travel around the country on their behalf. In other words, Caldwell was freelancing when he called the paper for an interview.
My Skept-O-Meter is tweaked. I don’t doubt a word John says, but something smells fishy, and it’s coming from the Obama camp — where the people who run things either have a very short memory, or think you do. From the Washington Post, October 29, 2007:
“He’s more than a conqueror through Jesus Christ,” said Kirbyjon Caldwell, a Houston pastor who was on the tour and is backing on Obama.
The “he” Caldwell was talking about was Barack Obama. The “tour” was — you guessed it — Obama’s “Embrace the Homophobia Change” gospel tour.
“So?” the Obamaites will cry in unison. “It was one concert! Caldwell probably just got all fired up over Obama and went too far in saying he was ‘campaigning’ for Obama, when he’s never campaigned for him before!”
“Then,” I’ll respond, “I guess you’d better write to Washington Times reporter Christina Bellantoni and ask her if she was lying when she wrote this on December 3, 2007 — after the gospel tour, and before the South Carolina primaries”:
Religious leaders to hold Obama event
I hear that Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign will be doing a big event in Charleston, S.C., with several prominent black religious leaders in the morning.
Among them will be Kirbyjon Caldwell, the Methodist minister who delivered the inaugural prayer for President Bush and is a longtime friend and spiritual adviser to the president. Mr. Caldwell has been campaigning for Obama all year.
Ahem.
No, we’re not done with this Obama-Caldwell matter yet. There are more interesting things I’ll share with you shortly, but I want to get this entry up now.
I tell you, ‘though: The more I dig, the curiouser and curiouser this story gets.
A post on a mydd.com blog was re-posted on another message board (which, because I genuinely like the board admin and don’t want to embarrass him any more than he’s already been by the mere presence of said post, shall remain nameless), under the subject line:
“This is what the Obama ‘movement’ is all about…”
Here’s the original post:
THE BAM”… PASS IT ON AT THE NEXT OBAMA RALLY!
Having caught “Obama fever” like so many others rallying in support of Barack, I experienced something at a Barack Obama Rally on Thursday, January 10 at the College of Charleston here in Charleston, South Carolina, which I felt was both inspirational and spontaneous!
As Barack worked the line following the close of his speech, there was a surge of people moving forward hoping to get close enough to shake Barack’s hand. Since I was standing about 20 feet back from center stage in the crowd, I felt the crowd down front tighten as many of us stood on our toes, stretched our bodies forward while reaching out to Barack. I noticed that a six foot tall guy who was standing in front of me had stretched far enough above the crowd and shook hands with Barack. As the guy drew back his hand I asked him, “You shook his hand didn’t you?” Happily the guy said “Yes.” I then said, “give me some of that” and the guy shook my hand with the same hand he had just clasped with Barack’s. A woman friend of mine who was standing next to me saw me shake hands with the guy. I turned to her and said “He [the guy] just shook hands with Barack,” to which she responded…”Hey, give it up.” We then shook hands. She then turned to the person next to her and shook hands. This chain of hand shakes went on for about five or six more persons.
I did not know the tall guy in front of me; he is white, I am black. But at the moment we shook hands, I felt some solidarity with this stranger, consummated by a handshake and signifying some unspoken agreement presumably about Barack Obama and his core message of UNITY!
I call this hand-shake scenario the “BAM” because, descriptively, it takes a bit of Obama’s name and it’s the sound of a collision, of People Coming Together!
My reaction:
If that’s “what the Obama ‘movement’ is all about” — the blind frenzy of a mob clamoring to touch the hem of his garment — then the Obama camp is scaring the absolute crap out of me.
What next? Obama raises the dead? Where does the line start to worship a fragment of The One’s sandal?
“Give me some of that”? Jesus Christ, people, GET A GRIP! Obama is NOT GOD!
“You don’t get it! Why do you hate hope? Why do you hate change? Let Obama change your life…!
Holy crap. Ho. Lee. Crap.
Oh, yes, I “get it” — which is precisely why it scares me. The writer sounds like every “est” convert I ever knew in the 1970s. And I remember People’s Temple, and Heaven’s Gate, and Waco, much too well not to be shaken to the bone by this blind madness over Obama.
This is beyond 1960s-era teenyboppers spending a precious five dollars on a one-inch square of bedsheet that one of the Beatles supposedly slept on. This is the guy in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert wearing a vial containing the holy relic of an ABBA turd. Neither Anni-Frid nor Agnetha — nor Obama — is the Second Coming of Christ!
To the writer, and especially to the rest of the adoring throngs blinded into a froth:
How do you expect the rest of us “non-believers” to take you — or your candidate — even half-seriously when all you can offer is this kind of cult worship I thought died out with the 1970s?
And people think Kucinich is nuts for admitting to seeing a UFO? This craziness dwarfs any UFO talk — by light years.
And: Do you have any clue whatsoever as to the fodder you’re providing far-right sites that exist solely for the opportunity to point out how wacko Democrats are? Do you even care how embarrassing posts like that are? I don’t know if such lunacy makes me more ashamed to be associated with the message board to which the message was cross-posted, or with the entire party.
Thank God I’m as dissociated from Obama and his apostles as I ever can be!
Somebody, somewhere, said that the Obama-McClurkin fiasco was being ignored by the MSM.
Well, guess what? It’s been picked up by AP, and, as this is being posted, is the number-one story on CNN Politics:
Obama’s gospel concerts raise hornet’s nest of a dilemma
Democratic Sen. Barack Obama kicked off a series of local outreach gospel concerts Friday in Charleston, South Carolina, that unexpectedly came back to bite his campaign.
The concerts were meant to boost black voters’ support for his presidential nominee bid — the kind of events that would normally fly under the national radar.
The ensuing controversy highlighted that Obama’s desire to unite disparate voting blocs — especially religious voters — under his umbrella of “change” is not without some serious pitfalls.
. . .
When the story bubbled up into the mainstream media, it took the Obama campaign by surprise.
. . .
The campaign has vigorously promoted the candidate’s faith … Campaigners have run three radio ads, one of which called Obama a “Christian family man,” that aired on gospel stations across the state.
. . .
But on Tuesday, Obama was forced to confront the uncomfortable truth that some Christians and gays are a little more than just strange bedfellows, especially among blacks. …
Obama Explains Why He’s the Best Candidate for LGBT Americans
When the Obama campaign announced that Donnie McClurkin would be among the featured singers on the presidential candidate’s gospel tour in South Carolina this weekend, it inadvertently ventured into the void between African-American Christians and gays and lesbians.
. . .
For LGBT people, it prompts the question, Weren’t Obama and, by extension, the people who run his campaign versed enough in the pain of the people he calls his “gay brothers and sisters” to see the McClurkin land mine before they rolled over it?
And can Obama really, as he claims, create the “big tent” movement he’s been selling, where voters who vehemently disagree on something as fundamental as what constitutes love put aside their differences to rally around a single candidate?
The Advocate: How did this happen? Was Mr. McClurkin vetted?
Senator Obama: Obviously, not vetted to the extent that people were aware of his attitudes with respect to gay and lesbians, LGBT issues — at least not vetted as well as I would have liked to see.
Having said that, we viewed this simply as an opportunity to have a gospel concert as part of our overall outreach, and since he was singing at a concert along with a number of other artists, as opposed to being a spokesperson for us, probably it didn’t undergo the same kind of vet that someone who was serving as a surrogate for me might have.
Some black gay activists I’ve spoken to say this doesn’t make them question Obama the senator, but it does make them question the campaign — do they really understand the nuances of these issues, are they really sitting down and talking with gay folks, because it seems like this decision came purely through the lens of faith?
Look, these kinds of issues are going to crop up inevitably through the course of campaigns. It’s important to recognize that these are issues that every Democratic candidate who has African-American ministers as supporters may have to confront. It just so happened that it popped up on the screen in this particular instance. But I assure you, I am not the only candidate who’s got a black minister or a white minister who’s supporting them prominently wh
