In an attempt to further his campaign for President of the United States, Barack Obama is going to have a "Gospel Tour" in South Carolina. One of the participants in Obama's tour will be the openly anti-gay "ex-gay" singer and preacher Donnie McClurkin. There's been a lot of discussion of this already here on Daily Kos, and as I read over many of the comments, I came across a quotation of McClurkin posted by anastasia p. Curious, I googled for the source of the quotation, and I came across an article written by McClurkin for Charisma Magazine.
I was both shocked and not really shocked to find that McClurkin actively preaches hate. He advocates for it as if hatred is a good thing.
...I read in Ecclesiastes 3 that there is a time to love and a time to hate. That struck me as odd because I had never heard anyone preach about the time to hate.
Any sermons dealing with emotions only addressed love, peace, patience, forgiveness, compassion, sadness and so on, but they never dealt with why to, what to, who to and how to hate. I had to learn how to actually hate the thing that was abhorrent to God--even if it's in me.
God started to deal with me through that Scripture and show me what He meant:
- Why to hate. Because He hates the things that are purposed to destroy the ones He loves and are against His nature and design. He created me to be a man a whole man and to love one woman. Anything else is perversion of the male purpose.
He cites the Bible and proceeds to elaborate on God's calling him to hate. Given that his article is a condemnation of homosexuality, we know that when he refers to "things that are purposed to destroy", he means homosexuality. When he refers to things that are "against [God's] nature and design", he means homosexuality. He says that a man can only be a whole man if he "love[s]" women. He says being gay is "a perversion of the male purpose"; in other words, being gay makes you not a man. He says that being gay is "abhorrent to God".
This is the person that Obama has invited to sing on his "Gospel Tour".
- How to hate. You have to make yourself develop a "dislike" for the things that have interrupted your happiness. You have to see wrong as being wrong and convince yourself that no matter how you feel, this can never be right. The appetite that has been molded and developed through years of abuse for things that are harmful must change, regardless of how comfortable you've become in these situations.
I began to pray daily, especially when the lust would stir up: "Lord, teach me how to hate. Give me a hatred for what You hate." I would constantly recite--and still do to this day--"Every enemy of God is an enemy of mine."
He prayed daily for God to make him hate. He actively wanted to hate, and he sought God's guidance as to how to do so.
Knowing that this whole article is him condemning homosexuality, we know that when he says one has to make oneself "develop a 'dislike' for the things that have interrupted your happiness", he means homosexuality. Because, I guess to him, gay people cannot be happy. Being gay is wrong, no matter what. By "things that are harmful", we know he means homosexuality.
This is the person that Obama has invited to sing on his "Gospel Tour".
There may be some who will read this and resent some of the statements made about homosexuality. I understand. Some have no desire to change this lifestyle. But there are countless numbers of people who are not happy in this lifestyle and want to be freed from it. They were thrust into homosexuality by neglect, abuse and molestation, and want desperately to live normal lives and one day have a happy home and family.
I've many times tried to get people who fling around the word "lifestyle" when talking about homosexuality to actually define "homosexual lifestyle". In what way must a gay person live in order to be living a "homosexual lifestyle", and if they don't live those ways, are they still homosexual? No one's ever defined "homosexual lifestyle" for me. "Lifestyle" is a word that has little-to-no meaning, which makes it perfect for people to use in their execution of hatred.
He goes on to talk about gay people wanting "desperately to live normal lives", which apparently they cannot do if they're gay. He says they want to "have a happy home and a family", which apparently, again, they cannot do if they're gay.
This is the person that Obama has invited to sing on his "Gospel Tour".
This is the part that anastasia p posted that caused me to want to read more.
Yet in spite of all of this, my love for Christ continued to grow. And in that growth God sent people to my rescue to help with my deliverance. Ironically, it wasn't the men of the church who helped mold my masculinity. There really weren't enough of them there. It was the sisters and mothers of the church who became active in breaking this curse. Although these older mothers did not know exactly what I struggled with, the Holy Spirit revealed to them that there was a struggle.
They would pray with me, talk with me, and a few of them--Sister Kitty Braizley in particular--would even teach me how to carry myself like a man. When I wanted to sing soprano, they'd say things like, "Get some bass in your voice!" or, "Men don't sing soprano!" Sister Braizley even taught me how to walk. If I held my hand up in a feminine way, she'd hit it and say: "Put your hands at your side. Men don't hold their hands like that!"
Knowing that this article is a condemnation of homosexuality, when he talks about his masculinity being molded in his rescue and deliverance, we know that he is saying that gay men aren't masculine. He calls homosexuality a curse. He talks about those who helped in his rescue and deliverance "teach[ing him] how to carry [himself] like a man"; in other words, gay men don't act the way men are supposed to act. Men are supposed to have deep voices. Men are supposed to walk a certain way. Men are supposed to move their bodies in specific ways. If a man does not do these things, then they're not men. Not only is this homophobic, it's sexist.
This is the person that Obama has invited to sing on his "Gospel Tour".
McClurkin is a broken person; his mind is fractured. He actively pursues hatred, and he directs that hatred at gay people. No matter how much he tries to cushion himself by using that great lie that those like him often use -- hate the sin, not the sinner -- he does hate the sinner. Homophobic people who wrap their hatred in God always hate the sinner. They just try to claim that they don't because they don't want to face the fact that they do.
Let me tell you about hatred. For a long time, I hated -- not other gay people, I hated myself. I did so specifically because I heard too many people like McClurkin say that God hated homosexuality. So, when I realized that I was attracted to men, I believed that God hated me. The church told me God hated me. People like McClurkin told me God hated me. They said that I deserved to go to Hell, that I deserved to experience endless pain, that I was evil. This is what I learned from people like McClurkin.
I hated myself because there had to be something wrong with me for me to be attracted to men. I didn't want to go against God, so I prayed. I prayed every day for years for God to make me straight. But I never became straight. I never stopped being attracted to men. People like McClurkin would tell me that all I had to do was pray to God and he'd fulfill that prayer because God didn't want me to be gay. So with my prayers to be straight unfulfilled, I saw no other possible conclusion other than God must have hated me so much that he turned his back on me. So I started trying to punish myself for being attracted to men. I physically abused myself. One time, I walked barefoot over scorching hot asphalt for a mile specifically to feel my feet burn, and in the end my feet were covered in large blisters that made it nearly debilitatingly painful to walk for at least a week. Another time, I spent an hour repetitiously bashing my shoulder into a big, wooden fence post causing my shoulder and half of my chest to bruise. Many times, I would hit myself hard in the head over and over. Many times, I would gouge my car key up and down the length of my forearm causing numerous welts to form. But despite punishing myself, I still remained attracted to men.
God wouldn't help me change, and I couldn't force myself to change. So that's when I turned to considering suicide. If God hated me so much that he wouldn't make me straight, I believed I must be extraordinarily evil. And I decided that I couldn't allow something as evil as I apparently was to continue to live. I believed I belonged in Hell, after all, that's what people like McClurkin had taught me. I could never decide on how to kill myself though because I didn't want to leave a mess behind for my family to have to clean up. I considered pills, and more than once found myself staring at a handful of them on the verge of swallowing them all. I considered trying to find some antifreeze and drink it; I had always heard that it was poisonous but tasted sweet. I thought of driving my car head-on into a tree or a pole. I considered forcing myself to drown. I considered slitting my wrists. I cried alone on my bed in the middle of the night too many times to count. I cried so hard that I would hyperventilate. I felt horrible.
This is the result of the hatred that McClurkin claims God wants his followers to have. And Obama has invited McClurkin to sing on his "Gospel Tour". The word "gospel" means "good news". What is so good about hatred?