Obama's anti-gay South Carolina road show

NOTE: Sue Sturgis and R. Neal on vacation this week, light blogging.Barack Obama -- stalled in the primary polls -- is getting some Old Time Religion, enlisting a slate of gospel acts to join him on a South Carolina barnstorming tour, the NY Times reported last week.

So old-timey, in fact, that he's headlining a black preacher infamous for attacking gay people.

Donnie McClurkin -- a 48-year old unmarried gospel singer and minister who supported Bush in 2004 -- will be featured in Obama's "Embrace the Change" tour, which aims to "engage people of faith."

More like "Embrace the Homophobia," according to Keith Boykin, someone who has been following McClurkin for a while. Boykin paints a picture of a man who is using his own "conversion story" -- McClurkin "wrestled" with his own homosexuality for years, which he then "overcame" -- to attack gays:

It began with McClurkin's 2001 book, Eternal Victim/Eternal Victor, where he explained his 20-year experience with homosexuality, which he said started after he was raped by an uncle.

"Love is pulling you one way and lust is pulling you another and your relationship with Jesus is tearing you," McClurkin told the media. He says that God delivered him from homosexuality, and since that time, he has been counseling adolescent boys that homosexuality is merely a lifestyle choice that can be overcome.

After years of avoiding the issue, McClurkin has come out strong as a leader in the "war" against gays. He now describes churches as places infested with gay predators, and says gay people have a "lying problem."

Commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson says it's time for Obama to ditch McClurkin's too-old-timey message:

Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama ripped a page straight from the Bush campaign playbook with his announced upcoming three date barnstorm tour through South Carolina with notorious gay basher, gospel singer Donnie McClurkin. [...]

Obama has hitched his string to McClurkin's high flying gay bash kite in part out of religious belief (he purports to be somewhat of an evangelical), in bigger part because he's falling further and further behind Hillary Clinton with the black vote in South Carolina and everywhere else, and in the biggest part of all because he hopes that what worked for Bush's reelection will work for him. [...]

[Obama has] sold himself as a healer and consensus builder. Legions have bought his pitch, and have shelled out millions to bankroll his campaign. But healing and consensus building does not mean sucking up to someone that publicly boasts that he's in "a war" against gays, and that the aim of his war is to "cure" them. [...]

Obama has spent months telling everyone that he's everything that Bush isn't. He can prove it by saying a resounding no to McClurkin and to gay bashing. He can cancel and repudiate the South Carolina "gospel" tour, and do it now.