Op-Ed, 247Gay.com
Article Date: 02/29/2008
By Duane Wells

With the critical March 4th Democratic primaries in Texas and Ohio looming near, this week, Barack Obama released an open letter to the gay community in which he writes:

“I’m running for President to build an America that lives up to our founding promise of equality for all—a promise that extends to our gay brothers and sisters. It’s wrong to have millions of Americans living as second-class citizens in this nation.”

In addition to this magnificently worded missive, Obama also announced plans to run the aforementioned open letter in an ad campaign specifically targeted to the gay community.

But my question is: Where was all this love, respect and concern for the gay community back in October, 2007, when the junior Senator from Illinois was actively courting the conservative African-American vote in South Carolina with his pal and supporter, ex-gay minister Donnie McClurkin? The same Donnie McClurkin who performed at the 2004 Republican convention and cozied up to that famous agent of change, George W. Bush.

Where were the ads in the local gay press in South Carolina talking about what a friend the Senator was to the LGBT community? South Carolina: An area where such pronouncements might not have been so well received by the stridently homophobic demographic whose support the Obama campaign needed to defeat Hillary Clinton in that state’s primary?

And in what forum back in South Carolina, when his campaign was struggling, did Obama espouse lofty goals like using “the bully pulpit to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws,” as he does in this new and timely appeal to the LGBT community?

Senator Obama had none of these messages in South Carolina, more than likely because it was not politically expedient for him to write such a letter back then. However now, with the race tight and the stakes high, Obama is now finally extending an olive branch to the very gay community that he quite unashamedly distanced himself from in South Carolina.

The fact of the matter is that when the Human Rights Campaign’s Joe Solmonese and other gay rights leaders urged Obama to cancel Donnie McClurkin’s appearance at one of his Faith and Family Values tour stops, their arguments fell on deaf ears. This despite the suggestion that the endorsement of someone as antagonistic to the gay community as McClurkin could be construed as an effort by his campaign to cultivate the support of black evangelicals at the expense of the campaign’s stated commitment to gay and lesbian equality.

Boldly ignoring the obvious implications of such a slight, Obama and his staff brushed off the criticism simply citing the Senator’s belief that the country needed to broaden its reach of equal rights.

In all fairness, the campaign reiterated that Obama did not agree with McClurkin’s stance on homosexuality and even reportedly went so far as to distribute memos detailing the candidate’s differences with McClurkin on gay and lesbian issues to the media following McClurkin’s performance. Sadly, the campaign did not distribute the same memo to the many voting "believers" gathered to hear McClurkin perform and proclaim, “God saved me from homosexuality!”.

While all of these actions on behalf of the Obama campaign were fine, good and indeed necessary, they did not address the fundamental question at hand: Why did Obama circle the wagons around his decision to have McClurkin perform? Might it have had something to do with how beloved the Grammy award-winning Christian performer is in the African-American Christian community?

And might it also have had something to do with how McClurkin’s performance might shape the junior Senator’s perception among an African-American electorate whose support had been tipped in favor of Hillary Clinton theretofore? One wonders.

It’s clear that if McClurkin had been a Nazi sympathizer, Senator Obama would not have expected the Jewish community to accept the singer’s appearance on a program designed to attract votes from a constituency known to have neo-Nazi tendencies. Nor would the Obama campaign now be reaching out to the Jewish community in Texas and Ohio touting their candidate’s long-standing friendship and support for them.

So in what way does Obama’s latest outreach to the LGBT community at this critical juncture in Texas and Ohio not appear disingenuous? In what way have his actions leading up to this moment not sidelined and marginalized the gay community as ‘second-class’ in terms of where they have fallen on his campaign’s list of priorities?

How on earth is “equality for all” achieved when one constituency’s value is weighted differently from others possessed of more mainstream appeal, until such a time as that constituency’s support becomes critical?

Sorry Mr. Obama, this is where the rubber hits the road. Prior to your cowardly actions during the South Carolina primary, the LGBT community willingly accepted you at your word, believing that you would be a true friend, despite your imited record of support on gay and lesbian issues.

But that was then and this is now.

Because he did nothng when he was asked to take action on behalf of an issue of importance the LGBT community, and yet now asks the LGBT community to accept him as a friend and support his political ambitions in Texas and Ohio, Senator Barack Obama is the Hypocrite of the Week.