COLUMBIA, S.C., Oct. 26, 2007
Uproar Over Obama's Gospel Tour Continues
Gay Rights Groups Continue Campaign Against Donnie McClurkin's Scheduled Appearance In S.C.
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Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., speaks at a fundraising event at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, N.J., Monday, Oct. 22, 2007. (AP)
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Obama campaign spokesman Kevin Griffis refused to talk about what was discussed on the call with Steve Hildebrand, Obama's early voting state strategist, and Joshua DuBois, who runs faith programs for the campaign.
Afterward, the South Carolina Gay and Lesbian Pride Movement decided to hold a vigil outside the Sunday concert in Columbia to protest gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, said Tony Snell, the group's past president.
Snell listened to the call and said ll he heard was talking points and the campaign wasn't budging on McClurkin.
"This guy has a reputation. He has a past. It's well known," Snell said. "You guys should have researched this out," Snell said of the Obama campaign.
Snell said the call ended with the 15 gay and lesbian leaders making a final appeal to Hildebrand and DuBois to talk to Obama. "Please ask him one more time to stop Donnie McClurkin's appearance at Sunday's event," Snell said.
Griffis said McClurkin won't be booted from the program.
"The Obama campaign is trying to bridge real divides and bring people together. Two things are certain: We will never be able to bridge those divides if we are unwilling to listen to voices we don't agree with, and we will never change anyone's mind if we refuse to talk to him," Griffs said in a statement.
Obama's campaign invited the Rev. Andy Sidden, a South Carolina pastor who is openly gay, to appear at the same concert. But Snell said that doesn't right the program.
McClurkin is a Grammy Award winner who performed at the Republican National Convention in 2004. He told AP Radio in an interview that September that he was "once involved with those desires and those thoughts," but God turned him away from them.
Obama has spoken out against homophobia, including in the black community. He supports civil unions for same-sex couples but not the right for gay marriage.
© MMVII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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See all 84 CommentsGod Bless you!
Posted by singinrick
Tell me is that what jesus did to the harlet at the well...did he teach, rebuke, correct...nope he showed her love and understanding...he accepted her as she was..
You keep on in your piety...its a sin...
There is no comparision to me and the harlet at the well the point is that you are the first to condemn those that don''t agree with your brand of christianity...
Posted by singinrick
I didn''t say Hitler was doing God''s work..I said you reminded me of him. Thinking your taking up the cause for christianity, trying to "heal" us all from our wicked ways...trying to make the word safe from our homosexuality..
Your one step away from branding us with your pink triangles, and putting us into consentration camps...because God told you too...
This cause (the cause for equality, and tolerance) is near and dear to me because I am a lesbian....
but why is it such a pressing cause for you??
Was it singinrick or flamingrick, me thinks the lady doth protest to much........and thats not an insult just open that closet door and step out be true to yourself..
Posted by singinrick
I know..but I hate to be sterotypical and lump you all together..
It because the majority (you being a prime example) want to tell us how sinful we are, how wrong our love is..your the first to stand in line and judge..without cause..
Your the first to stand in our way of equal rights, and the freedoms that you enjoy..why is that Rick?
Keep talking and judging in the name of God, you remind me of someone else...
"I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews. I am doing the Lord''s work." Hitler
Unfortunately I don''t want to spend my time arguing a mute point - today is family day and I''d much rather spend my time with my children and wife over sitting at a computer....
Deal with it.
Posted by singinrick at 07:27 PM : Oct 28, 2007
Show me one place in my posts where I have said that you should not be permitted to spew your hatred toward gay people? You can''t. But I will refrain from calling you a liar. I fully support your legal right to spew your hateful message out loud and often. I just think it''s morally wrong for you to do so, and I am worried that Jesus will not look kindly on you for it, Rick. His message was to "love one another." You are so filled with and consumed by hatred of gay people that you can''t get to the real message of Christ, which was to "love one another." Rick, you must first learn to love and accept yourself before you will be able to love your gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. I pray you will work on loving and accepting yourself as you are.
The bible isn''t a tool for intolerane - it''s a tool to show mankind to love one and accept one another. You have much to learn...and I challenge you to reseach beyond what you hear and read from the King James.
You follow the word of the Protestants of the 20th century.....where only YOUR INTERPRETATION is valid.....how comical - thousands of years of the bible being handed down....and only you have the right interpretations and ideas on how to be saved by Christ?
No doubt you make judgements on other''s souls as well.....just like singinrick you have ALL the answers based on your viewpoints of scriptures. No doubt we could read the same scripture and see two different lessons....how pompous and pious of the modern day ''religious riot'' to force their ideology and absolutism on those that disagree....
Comical..
10. There is absolutely no condemnation of homosexuality in the Greek New Testament
Posted by simonsez40 at 06:15 PM : Oct 28, 2007
Your blatant lack of biblical knowledge is highly evident in your posts, evidence contrary to your ridicules assertions have been clearly manifested for thousands of years . your spouting and spewing is just self serving to justify your own agenda
This is well documented fact - I''m have no doubts the scholars were the best - but the point is if King James included his bias in scripture - what other biases were TRANSLATED within the scriptures?
Many of the original text meanings from the Greek and Hebrew transmissions were altered depending on the political stance of the translators........
So you have PROOF King James, John Wycliffe, an Oxford professor who provided the first hand-written English language Bible manuscripts in the 1380''s AD, Thomas Linacre or John Colet (this list is various prior to King James translation) upheld the EXACT meanings, verbiage and translations as the original authors?
Most likely not...
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Posted by sftodd
WELL SAID SFTODD - those that shout the loudest......
8. There is absolutely no condemnation of homosexuality in the Hebrew Old Testament.
10. There is absolutely no condemnation of homosexuality in the Greek New Testament.
11. All English translations (one of the earliest being 1611 AD, more than 200 years after the social tide turned against homosexuals, and more than 100 years after the church stopped performing most homosexual weddings) have been deliberately mistranslated to make it appear that God condemned homosexuality.
12. The Hebrew and Greek scriptures never connected Soddom and Gomorrah with homosexuality. The idea that those cities were destroyed for homosexuality is a man-made notion and is unsupported by scriptures.
13. The Greek New Testament, while not condemning homosexuality, does forbid people to attempt to alter their sexual orientation.
14. Both the Greek and Roman Empires considered exclusive heterosexuality and exclusive homosexuality to be abnormal. They believed that all people should be bisexual.
1. The Hebrew Old Testament clearly indicates that King David had a sexual relationship with Jonathan, the son of King Saul.
2. The Hebrew Old Testament clearly documents a sexual relationship between the prophet Daniel and a man named Ashpenaz, and indicates that God put Daniel into that relationship.
3. Much to the embarrassment of the Vatican, the Catholic theologian Boswell has uncovered proof that, up until the fourteenth century, the church was routinely performing wedding ceremonies for same-*** couples.
4. The social tides in Europe began to turn against homosexuality around the thirteenth century. Up until that time, there was no organized opposition to homosexuality, either from society or from the church.
5. The religious tide did not turn against homosexuals until after the social tides. The change in society''s attitude toward homosexuals was the only reason the church stopped marrying them and began to persecute them.
6. Boswell found that same-*** marriage continued in certain parts of eastern Europe until the nineteenth century, and that in a few villages, they still continue.
At the age of thirteen James fell madly in love with his cousin Esmi Stuart whom he made Duke of Lennox. James deferred to Esmi to the consternation of his ministers. In 1582 James was kidnapped and forced to issue a proclamation against his lover and send him back to France.
Despite his homosexual activities James later fell in love with and married Anne of Denmark with whom he had seven children.
In 1573 Francis Bacon and his elder brother Anthony (1558-1601), who was also gay, entered Trinity College, Cambridge. They then went to Gray''s Inn, London, in 1576. In 1582 Francis was called to the bar and began a very successful law practice. He became a Member of Parliament in 1584, and he was appointed Queen Elizabeth I''s Counsellor in 1591. James I (1566-1625) acceded to the thrown in 1603 and in the same year Francis Bacon was knighted. He became Solicitor General in 1607, Attorney General in 1613, and Lord High Chancellor in 1618. He was conferred the title of Baron Verulam in 1618, and of Viscount St. Albans in 1621.
Bacon''s personal friendship with King James I may have been a factor in his swift rise to power. James''s homosexual loves are well-established, and he was known as "Queen James".
Posted by simonsez40 at 05:26 PM : Oct 28, 2007 you obviously have no idea what your talking about, and resort to lies and innuendos to grasp at the thin straws of your liberal logic King James loved literature and wrote extensively including the Basilicon Doron which contains instructions to his son on how to live and be a just king. King James'' advice to his son concerning chastity:
"Keep your body clean and unpolluted while you give it to your wife whom to only it belongs for how can you justly crave to be joined with a Virgin if your body be polluted? Why should the one half be clean, and other defiled? And suppose I know, fornication is thought but a veniall sin by the most part of the world, yet remember well what I said to you in my first book regarding conscience, and count every sin an breach of God''s law, not according as the vain world esteems of it, but as God judge and maker of the law accounts of the same: hear God commanding by the mouth of Paul to abstain from fornication, declaring that the fornicator shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven, and by the mouth of John reckoning out fornication among other grievous sins that declares the commiters among dogs and swine..
Rick, there is no "pro-homosexual movement." It''s a civil rights movement. A heterosexual female, for example, is no more capable of deciding to join the movement and to be sexually turned on by other women than you can decide to be turned on by pictures of naked furniture. The jury is no longer out on this, Rick, no one would decide to be gay just to face persecution and hatred from the likes of you. You might ask yourself whether your own homosexual tendencies are anything you can control. For, on the topic of homosexuality, "[t]he LADY doth protest too much, methinks."
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