That's how the Boston Globe reported it, anyway.
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2007/10/dissonance_over.htmlThe call happened today, and what was going to be said was hashed out last night, per The Hill:
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/obama-pressured-on-gay-cure-preacher-2007-10-24.html Senior Obama aides had planned to hash the issue out Tuesday evening and discuss it in a conference call with gay supporters advising the campaign at noon Wednesday, said sources in contact with the campaign.
Here's another cite, talking about the run-up to the conference call, from TIME mag's blog:
http://time-blog.com/real_clear_politics/2007/10/obamas_antigay_supporter.html You might try calling Obama's gay outreach guy and asking him if you still think this is some nefarious trick by DU rabblerousers. I guess if you weren't a gay supporter (read: Moneyed Contributor, maybe?) of the BO campaign, you weren't invited to participate in the call, perhaps?
I really do think that it happened. It took me two seconds to find those cites. You might as well stop torturing the question and realize that this did go down, and it isn't terribly helpful to the campaign, frankly.
More on the imbroglio from New York Times, Caucus Blog:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/obama-adds-openly-gay-minister-to-concert/The Human Rights Campaign, the largest gay-rights organization in the country, says it appreciates the gesture but is still “disappointed” that the Obama campaign is giving a platform to someone it considers homophobic. The activists and many bloggers want the Obama campaign to bump the signer, Donnie McClurkin, from the tour.
But in a phone call that just concluded, Mr. Obama told Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, that he intended to keep Mr. McClurkin in the lineup. He is to appear Sunday in Columbia as part of a three-day gospel tour to help Mr. Obama reach out to black evangelicals.
Mr. McClurkin, a black minister, says in an interview with The Chicago Tribune that he is being unfairly maligned and that his words and his ministry have been misconstrued. He has said he was raped by male relatives when he was a child and was gay for many years but is now straight. Gay rights activists say that Mr. McClurkin is homophobic and counsels that homosexuality is a curse that can be cured through prayer.
Mr. Solmonese said in a statement tonight: “There is no gospel in Donnie McClurkin’s message for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people and their allies. That’s a message that certainly doesn’t belong on any Presidential candidate’s stage.”
He added that in his phone call with Mr. Obama, “I did thank thank him for announcing he would be adding an openly gay minister as part of the tour and for his willingness to call on religious leaders to open a dialogue about homophobia. We hope that Senator Obama will move forward and facilitate face to face meetings with religious leaders, like Rev. McClurkin, and the GLBT community to confront the issue of homophobia.”
HRC was offering the campaign suggestions to mitigate the mess, according to Joshua Micah Marshall:
According to sources familiar with the fast-evolving situation, the Obama campaign has been in discussions with the HRC throughout the day, and had sought to delay the HRC's release of a statement so it could settle on a way to deal with the crisis.
According to sources, HRC offered various suggestions to the Obama camp to avoid criticism by the group, among them dropping McClurkin from the gospel act. But the Obama campaign said that there were too many logistical difficulties attendant with such a move, sources said. Dumping McClurkin, of course, could also have political repercussions, as the South Carolina gospel campaign concerts come amid an intense battle for the state's black vote.
One intriguing idea that was privately floated, according to sources, was the possibility of having a gay gospel group as the opening act for the concerts. The idea, sources said, was that this might prompt the antigay McClurkin to pull himself out of the concerts, thus solving the problem. It's not clear where that idea originated, and at any rate it didn't go anywhere.
The Obama campaign ultimately settled on a slightly different solution, though this didn't mollify HRC: It has decided to have an openly gay minister open the gospel shows. Obama advisers informed the campaign's top gay supporters of this decision on a conference call this afternoon.
After it became obvious that HRC would be releasing their statement today, HRC and the Obama campaign set up a private call for Obama himself to talk to HRC chief Solomonese. The call was set for 5:20 P.M. Solomonese thanked Obama for the gay minister idea but expressed his disappointment in the continued use of McClurkin. Soon after, HRC's statement went out.
The full statement is after the jump.
http://tpmelectioncentral.com/2007/10/big_gay_group_condemns_obama_for_campaign_event_with_antigay_singer.phpIt's not just McClurkin, either. There's another group of less-than-enlightened gals named Mary Mary performing who cheerfully compared gays to murderers and prostitutes--but hey, they pray for THEM too! A blog called QUEERTY breaks it down pretty brutally:
Meanwhile, you guys may want to read Jasmyne Cannick’s assessment of the situation, in which she sheds some more light on Mary Mary’s homophobic attitudes, including this doozy from a 2007 interview with Vibe:
I feel how God feels about it, um… but I still love them. You know what I mean? I don’t agree with the lifestyle, but I love them. They can come to the concert; I’m going to hug them just like I hug everybody else. They have issues and need somebody to encourage them like everybody else - just like the murderer, just like the one full of pride, just like the prostitute, everybody needs God.
Cannick also uses her column to deflect blame from Barack Obama to his ignorant white staff. Yes, really. Cannick would rather point a finger at Obama’s melanin-deprived staffers than the candidate - a candidate who should a. know better and b. have the brain power to check his staff’s decisions. Here’s Cannick’s take:
However, I am surprised that given the number of high profile openly gay men and women working on Obama’s campaign, that neither one of those choices set off a red flag for any of them. Perhaps that’s because most, if not all of the gays working on the Obama campaign are predominantly white, followed by Asians and Latinos. Pair that up with a set of campaign advisors that probably never heard of Donnie McClurkin or Mary Mary until recently, and you can easily see how the stage could be set for something like this.
It’s not Obama’s fault! He can’t be held accountable for his own campaign!
Are we the only ones who see fundamental flaws in this argument?
Cannick also says that Obama needs to sit down with black gay people to get a sense of their lives and issues. By neglecting to do so, she says, Obama’s ruling out an important social population. We totally agree with Cannick’s thinking, but does she truly believe Obama’s going to give up millions of gospel-loving churchies for a few black queens? It’s not likely…
http://www.queerty.com/news/obama-comes-out-about-anti-gay-gospel-ally-20071023/ There's no nice way to play this--it is a fucking PR disaster, getting worse by the hour, and Obama has decided to go with the South Carolina Holy Haters as opposed to the national progressives. He clearly is hoping to win South Carolina, and maybe place or show in Iowa and or NH, and use SC as a springboard to national momentum. But he's trying to do it on the springy gay backs of some of his best, deep-pocketed, supporters. That ain't cool. This is, IMO, a massive fuckup. It was bad and fixable two days ago, now, it's a damned mess.
FWIW, I am an undecided voter, but this hasn't endeared me to Obama. I have been saying, here on DU, for two full days that he still has time to fix this shit, but time IS running out--and he does seem disinclined to really fix it.
His "solution" to mollify the GLBT communtiy--shoving a gay guy up on stage to open the show, but still keeping the homophobes-- is like putting a bandaid on a sucking chest wound...IMO.