It seemed like a pretty good idea at the time. Late last week, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign announced it had recruited several gospel acts for a tour of South Carolina. As campaign strategies go, this didn’t look controversial — a gospel tour, featuring predominantly African-American artists, would target black evangelical voters in an early primary state, while reinforcing Obama’s religious background.
“This is another example of how Barack Obama is defying conventional wisdom about how politics is done and giving new meaning to meeting people at the grassroots level,” Joshua DuBois, the campaign’s religious affairs director, said in a release.
What started as a clever idea has quickly turned into a serious political mistake.
Senator Barack Obama is drawing criticism for signing up a gospel singer with controversial views about gay men and lesbians for his campaign in South Carolina. The Obama campaign has recruited several gospel acts, including Donnie McClurkin, for a statewide tour to begin this week in Charleston. Gospel music is one of many ways the campaign is trying to reach black evangelicals in South Carolina, an early voting state where half the Democratic primary voters are black and where at least one recent survey shows Mr. Obama is losing ground to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Mr. McClurkin, a black preacher who sang at the Republican National Convention in 2004, has gained notoriety for his view that homosexuality is a choice and can be “cured” through prayer, a view ridiculed by gay people.
Well, it’s actually ridiculed by most people, gay or straight, because it’s ridiculous. But that’s beside the point.
The fact that Obama’s campaign would launch a tour featuring an anti-gay bigot like McClurkin has, not surprisingly, prompted quite a bit of disappointment. The question remains, however, how the campaign got to this point, and what it’ll do next.
At the Huffington Post, author and political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson argued that Obama intentionally picked McClurkin to appeal to anti-gay voters, describing the announcement as a “Bush pander to anti-gay mania,” which is “shameless and reprehensible.”
Whether Hutchinson’s criticisms are fair remains to be seen. There’s no evidence that the Obama campaign deliberately picked McClurkin because of his offensive beliefs. It seems just as likely, if not more so, that the campaign put together a roster of popular gospel artists, most of whom do not have an anti-gay history, and simply didn’t know (and didn’t check) McClurkin had a history of bigoted remarks.
In other words, chances are, this isn’t an example of malice, so much as it was a staff mistake. There’s supposed to be a vetting process, and it broke down. If the campaign knew about McClurkin’s comments, he wouldn’t have been invited to participate.
Hutchinson, among others, called on Obama to repudiate McClurkin’s anti-gay animus. The senator did that last night.
“I have clearly stated my belief that gays and lesbians are our brothers and sisters and should be provided the respect, dignity, and rights of all other citizens. I have consistently spoken directly to African-American religious leaders about the need to overcome the homophobia that persists in some parts our community so that we can confront issues like HIV/AIDS and broaden the reach of equal rights in this country.
“I strongly believe that African Americans and the LGBT community must stand together in the fight for equal rights. And so I strongly disagree with Reverend McClurkin’s views and will continue to fight for these rights as President of the United States to ensure that America is a country that spreads tolerance instead of division.”
Obama’s critics were not, however, persuaded by this in the least. The repudiation was the first of what was supposed to be a two-step process — first was denouncing McClurkin’s bizarre beliefs, the second was dropping McClurkin from the South Carolina tour.
Now, it’s a mess. If Obama keeps McClurkin on the gospel-tour lineup, he’ll anger supporters of gay rights. If Obama drops McClurkin, he runs the risk of offending African-American evangelicals in South Carolina. Last night’s forceful denunciation didn’t resolve much.
Let this be a lesson to campaign staffers everywhere: Google is your friend. Before lining up guests to be associated with a campaign, check to see if they’re crazy.
Post Script: Ideally, McClurkin would just do the honorable thing, do Obama a favor, and step aside. If the campaign could push him in that direction, it’d be a good idea.