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Obama Lacks ’Black Experience,’ Charges African American Evangelical Pastorby Kilian MelloyMonday Jul 6, 2009 Anti-gay pundits have targeted President Obama as lacking "black experience" and being insufficiently Christian after Obama addressed a gathering of GLBT Americans and paralleled their journey toward full legal equality with an earlier chapter in the civil rights movement that saw African Americans making the same demands and the same progress.
Moreover, that the president addressed gay constituents--but not abortion foes--galled right-wing African American pundits, who took Obama’s decision to address GLBT Americans, but not participants in the "Right to Life" march, as well as his statement of an opinion that anti-gay attitudes are outmoded, as evidence that Obama scorns Christians.
Anti-gay Web site One News Now posted a pair of articles centering on the comments of an African American anti-gay pastor.
In a July 3 article, anti-gay Web publication One News Now noted that Obama had met with what the site termed "a gathering of homosexuals" and expressed sympathy with those assembled, saying that the GLBT road to fully equal status before the law was similar to that of African Americans.
The article then quoted Antioch Bible Church’s Ken Hutcherson, a former NFL player, as calling into question Obama’s connection to "the black experience" in America.
As quoted by One News Now, Hutcherson said that African Americans would "have to ask, ’Even though he is black because his father was, what is his "black experience"?’
Claimed Hutcherson, "He doesn’t have any.
"He was raised by a white mother and a white grandmother, so this man has about as much black experience as my Doberman Pinscher," Hutcherson went on.
Added Hutcherson, "There is nothing, nothing that compares between what the Afro-Americans went through and what homosexuals are going through now."
Hutcherson declared that his Christianity would prevent him from giving any support for Obama, saying, "A person can be as black as a piece of coal, [but] if he goes against God’s biblical views, I would not support him, I would not endorse him, I would not even give a smile in his direction so people could even think that I endorse him, because God is my God, the Bible is my playbook, and I run it the way it is written."
Hutcherson dismissed those in the evangelical community who support the president as "evangellyfish," the article reported.
In a separate One News Now article, Hutcherson was quoted as saying that remarks made by Obama to gay constituents contained "absolutely no truth," adding that in supporting GLBT equality, Obama is "supporting what destroys the family."
The article quoted Hutcherson as saying, "There is no such thing as [a] biblical stance for homosexuality, if you use the Bible.
"If you want to use any other denomination, feel free," Hutcherson went on, "but where I stand... it is marriage between one man [and] one woman, and that is the relationship, heterosexual, that is ordained, blessed, and called by God."
The article noted that Obama has observed that, "There are still fellow citizens, perhaps neighbors or even family members and loved ones, who still hold fast to worn arguments and old attitudes" regarding gays.
Hutcherson suggested that the president was promoting elitist views, saying, "I think this president has a disdain for anyone who disagrees with anything about him--don’t just limit it to Christians and conservatives."
Added Hutcherson, "Brother, this man doesn’t like anyone who doesn’t think he’s the smartest man in the world."
At conservative Webb site Townhall.com, columnist Star Parker, in an article headlined, "When color trumps Christianity," wrote, "It tells us something that Mr. Obama had no time to host an event for the National Day of Prayer.
"Nor did he have time to accept the invitation to convey greetings and a few remarks to the couple hundred thousand who came to Washington, as they do every January, for the March for Life," Parker went on.
"However, the LGBT Pride event did make it onto the president’s busy schedule."
Parker took note of some "of his remarks I think noteworthy for black Christians," including Obama’s comparison of the struggle for full legal equality by gays with the struggle by African Americans.
Wrote Parker, "Perhaps Obama can extend some of his famous empathy to a black Christian woman, Crystal Dixon, who lost her University of Toledo job for writing a column in her local paper challenging this premise.
"Dixon was fired for being uppity enough to write ’....I take great umbrage at the notion that those choosing the homosexual lifestyle are ’civil rights victims’ ...I cannot wake up tomorrow and not be a black woman,’" Parker recollected.
Citing Obama’s remark that many African Americans "don’t yet fully embrace their gay brothers and sisters," Parker also defaulted to the charge of elitism, writing, "Maybe a lot of us black folks, still readin’ our Bibles, just haven’t had enough of that Harvard learnin’."
Parker also criticized Obama’s remarks about AIDS, writing, "Why would our black president discuss HIV/AIDS and not mention that although blacks represent 12 percent of our population, they account for 50 percent of HIV/AIDS cases and half of HIV related deaths?
"Or that the incidence of HIV/AIDS infection per every 100,000 people is 9 times higher among blacks than whites?"
Wrote Parker, "Of course, it would have been bad form for Obama to sour the punch bowl at the LBGT Pride month festivities by mentioning the disproportionate toll this lifestyle takes on blacks."
Parker pointed to the notion, challenged in some quarters, that, "Blacks, of course, made the difference in getting Proposition 8 passed in California, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman."
Wrote the columnist, "They then switched over and voted for Obama."
Setting GLBT equality and Christianity in direct opposition to one another, Parker went on to write, "Black Christians have a lot of soul searching to do.
"We know the pain of black history. But we also must retain clarity that these many injustices were the result of race and color trumping Christian principles."
Continuing in the same vein, Parker wrote, "How can black Christians do this themselves? How can black Christians allow race and color to trump Christian principles in driving their support for a leader?"
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Kilian Melloy reviews media, conducts interviews, and writes commentary for EDGEBoston, where he also serves as Assistant Arts Editor.
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