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Barack's Gay Gospel Scandal

The Progressive Media Project asked me to weigh in on the scandal around the gospel tour organized by the Obama camp that featured controversial "ex-gay" minister (and Grammy award winner) Donnie McClurkin... Check below for what I came up with.  I focused less on the scandal itself and more on Obama's inability to capitalize on it.  I think Hilary's strength in the campaign so far is that her team has been able to make a gallon of lemonade out of every lemon tossed her way.   Similarly, Obama might have used this as a moment to define the vision and savvy of his campaign as opposed to underscoring its general mediocrity at politics as usual.

Also check out my friend Kenyon's take on it if you're hungry for more...

Sen. Barack Obama needs to draw the right lessons from his recent gay gospel scandal.

The Obama campaign announced a few days ago the lineup for "Embrace the Change," a series of gospel concerts in South Carolina designed to woo African-American votes in a state holding one of the nation's early, attention-grabbing primaries. What the campaign thought would be a popular event with superstar gospel acts turned into a political and PR nightmare when it was revealed that the roster included gospel star, minister and avowed "ex-gay" Donnie McClurkin.

The Grammy award-winning McClurkin has come under sharp criticism for his position that LGBT people have made a choice that goes against God.  This teaching is underscored by his description of his own life — after 20 years living in the shadows as a closeted gay man, he argues that God gave him the "wherewithal" to become a heterosexual.

The Obama team was put on the defensive. The senator claimed he didn't know about the minister's anti-gay views and that his staff had not properly vetted him.

What should really concern us about this campaign misstep isn't the initial mistake. If this was a simple error, the Obama team could have pulled McClurkin, citing a clear difference of opinion. But a recent poll by Winthrop University shows that 74 percent of African-Americans in South Carolina find "homosexuality" to be "unacceptable." Thus the campaign saw itself on the opposite side of this issue than its constituency. So, McClurkin was allowed to remain on the tour, alongside Mary Mary, a popular duo that has compared being gay to being a "murderer" or a "prostitute."

The Obama team felt caught between alienating the LGBT community, in particular the largely white institutions that the campaign is close to, and being seen as out of step with a black community on the fence between Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton.

The controversy presented a real opportunity, however. That 74 percent number hides a real diversity within the black community on LGBT issues. Even concert-goers surveyed by CNN who expressed support for McClurkin offered a range of explanations, including First Amendment rights and nuanced views on his positions. Here was an opportunity for Obama, who claims to be the great uniting force, to bring in some of the many black faith leaders who are actively participating in a dialogue within the church about homophobia.

Instead of calling on one of these faith leaders, the Obama team turned to a white gay minister to join the tour and put the black community on the right road.

Obama had the chance to show the nation he could take a long-standing division in the African-American community and use his power and celebrity to build a bridge that helped all move forward. However, we've gotten the usual — engaging black folks through spectacle instead of real politics and looking away from the diverse leadership in Black communities in favor of a quick fix that leaves the political crisis intact.

In the beginning, Obama offered us more than politics as usual. If he continues to let a coldly calculating campaign turn him into just another politician, the failures of the gay gospel scandal, though fleeting, will foreshadow the defeat of real leadership at the hands of cynical politics.

Remember Kenneth Foster

Last month, Kenneth Foster woke up knowing it was his last day on death row.

The manner of his exit would be death or life in prison, to be determined by the state of Texas. Sentenced to execution under a law that sanctions death for murder by association – no one, including the state, thought Kenneth guilty of killing anyone – a growing cry came up demanding his exoneration.

And on August 29th, he was saved.

With the help of a campaign led by ColorofChange.org, the Governor commuted his sentence. But he will still live out his life in prison under a law that is ridiculous, unconstitutional and grossly misapplied. Too Sense had this to say about it:

I hope Governor Rick Perry breaks his arm attempting to pat himself on the back. By commuting the death sentence of Kenneth Foster to life imprisonment, he has spared a man from being executed for a crime he did not commit only to condemn him to life in prison for that same crime.

I think that’s right, especially considering news breaking this week on the Save Kenneth campaign blog that he has been held in solitary confinement since the commutation.  His life is saved.  A victory hard won.  But it's a sad day when even our victories are enraging, as they must be when they are so dangerously incomplete.

In Texas, Kenneth Foster faced an injustice in the letter of the law (the "law of parties" being dubious at best) and that flaw allowed him to be victimized by a racist, but entirely legal, misapplication of justice that the system left him defenseless against. Denied adequate representation, his freedom stripped with the stroke of a pen, Foster's story is the story of 10,000 men falsely arrested and imprisoned under innumerable laws that we defend and in our intransigence support. The laws haven't changed and won't unless we remember that Kenneth Foster's story is an important chapter in a long and arduous novel.

So today as we prepare to march for the Jena 6, I'm trying to remember Kenneth.  He's still in jail for life with so many others Black people who don't belong there.  I'm trying to remind myself to push harder.  Because I'm tired of commutations and exonerations for the falsely charged. 

I'm trying to remind myself that the legal victories are critical, but it's 2007 and I'm in the mood for justice.

Mychal Bell of Jena 6 Conviction Vacated - Breaking News

I just got word from folks on the ground that a judge in the 3rd District Court has vacated the conviction of Mychal Bell of the Jena 6.

This is just breaking and details are rolling in.... Check out these posts for more on Jena 6:

Real Justice in Jena by Me.

A bunch of posts on the Jena 6 by Too Sense

Oprah and Obama Combine Superpowers

This nice lady is Oprah.  She is a billionairess.  The ladies love her, and when she tells them what to purchase, they get it, and a lot of it.  But the question of the day is, will they buy a Barack, the latest luxury item attached to the O brand?

CNN reports that Oprah and Obama are combining forces.  This shouldn't be a huge surprise (she told the man she'd campaign for him on her show - I was watching - and in May  announced her formal endorsement on Larry King).   O is making her promise real this weekend by throwing the other O a fundraiser at her lovely California ranch that's expected to net between $2-3 million.

People with good sense struggle with Oprah.  And I challenge anyone who would dismiss her outright.  (Did you see her coverage in New Orleans just after Katrina?)  But for every moment that Oprah uses her global brand to do good, there are 100 other disparaging, salacious remarks made at gay guests, hours spent selling people things they don't need and endless episodes reinforcing bizarre myths (Secret, swinging, S&M couples babysitting YOUR kids - next week's Oprah!) that aid the culture of fear plaguing America and driving the ugliest part of the culture wars.

But the thing that really gets me about Oprah - the brand - is that its construction has been consciously and comprehensively a-political.  Everything in Oprah-land is about the individual; their ability to triumph over adversity; their personal victimhood; their need for stainless steel appliances and meticulously arched eyebrows.  This connection to people's personal stories is what has made  Oprah - the woman - a star, an icon, a billionaire and the authority that the Obama camp wants to draw on to gain support, particularly among women.

But while  Oprah is allowed to leave politics to the professionals, Obama does not have that luxury.  My major criticism of his candidacy has not been his "lack of experience" but that he has substituted the "audacity of hope" or "fervor for courage" or whatever it is for a rigorous, attention-grabbing denunciation of the policies that have left people in this country hopeless and afraid.  He gives me "every child should be healthy" when I want "the scandal of private health care that leaves 40+ million vulnerable is on its way out".

I am perfectly happy to know that Miss Sophia Winfrey, won't spend any time this camapaign season being kissed on by Republican democracy-killers, but if the new campaign slogan is to be O + O  for National Self-Help, I'm going to call Michelle Obama (cause she has good sense) and tell her just what I think.

Real Justice in Jena?

Today a judge in Jena, LA threw out a conspiracy conviction against Mychal Bell, one of the Jena 6.  The district attorney also reduced the charges for two of the other accused students from attempted murder to aggravated battery.  Bell’s conviction on the lesser charge may send him to jail for 15 years.  The Chicago Tribune reports:

The six black youths were all initially charged with attempted second-degree murder after an incident in December at the local high school in which a white student was attacked and knocked unconscious after an alleged taunt by him. That altercation capped months of violent racial unrest between blacks and whites throughout the town that was triggered in September 2006, when three white students hung nooses from a shade tree in the high school courtyard in a warning aimed at discouraging blacks from sitting there. The white youths received brief suspensions after the Jena school superintendent termed the incident an "adolescent prank," which in turn angered black students and parents who saw the nooses as a hate crime because of the history of lynchings in the Old South.

Clearly we're dealing with misapplication of the law .  The white kids who incited violence received misdemeanors or other slaps on the wrist by school officials.  And the idea of charging these kids with attempted murder (and going even further to push for a charge of assault with a deadly weapon, that weapon, prosecutors argued, was a shoe) is egregious, and a ridiculous travesty of the laws on the books.  The defense attorneys for the Jena 6 are working hard to unravel and rectify those abuses:

Bell's new defense attorneys said they plan further appeals before the Sept. 20 sentencing hearing in a bid to get his remaining conviction vacated. "Basically, we are knocking things out one piece at a time," said Louis Scott, the lead defense attorney. "We are going to try to knock the rest of it out soon."

But the piece by piece undoing of a criminally unjust Jim-Crow redux court system is only part of the story.  The law alone can't provide justice for the Jena 6 and the assaults they faced at the hands of their schoolmates with the acquiescence of school administrators.   Even if they get their charges and convictions narrowed or dropped, it may be that, fundamentally, nothing will have changed in Jena.  There could be more nooses, more fights, more convictions. 

In the fight against racism, we must be concerned not only with the cruelty of punishments delivered on the color line, but also the barriers to privileges large and small that characterize contemporary racism in Jena and beyond. Because there was no way for Black kids in Jena to fight for their right to public space, no law that could or would prevent the creation of a "white tree" where Blacks were barred, they fought peacefully by taking over that space.  It wasn't until they were confronted with violent symbols of racial hatred- the noose-the wholesale symbol of pornographic, vigilante murder and social control that they took it seriously and they fought with their fists.

What this means for those standing with the Jena 6 - demanding justice, not just equality under the law - is that while the lawyers work, we have to stand against Mychal Bell's incarceration, but also for his freedom.  So that when he and the rest of the Jena 6 get free - and they must - they are released into a Jena, in an America that is changed.  They should be released into a nation that has stood up for them as victims of racism in the legal process. 

But we also stand because we won’t tolerate racism in their lives or our own; we stand to tell the 6 kids in St. Louis or Cincinnati that they too should fight back; and we stand to show those that would strike fear in the hearts of a few Black kids in this small town and many others, that their days are numbered.