Updated Aug. 27 to include reaction by the ex-gay network Exodus.
John Aravosis first pulled together the news Aug. 26 that an antigay ideologue will provide entertainment at the GOP convention:
“I’m not in the mood to play with those who are trying to kill our children.” — Donnie McClurkin, GOP Convention entertainer speaking about gays.
Donnie McClurkin, one of the just-announced entertainers to be performing at the GOP Convention in NYC, thinks homosexuality is a “curse,” that it’s caused by men raping small children, that being gay is a choice, that it can be cured, and most explosively, that gays are trying to “kill our children.”
Aravosis provides quotations by and about McClurkin from numerous sources. They make McClurkin sound like a loose cannon ready to blow.
Keith Boykin’s analysis of McClurkin is excellent — thoughtful, sensitive, and fair. Go read it.
While Boykin’s appeals to a mix of compassion and skepticism over McClurkin’s troubled life and unsound ideology, exgay-activism expert Wayne Besen quickly cuts to political ramifications.
In his press release (copied below), Besen calls McClurkin’s accusations “patently false” and says the GOP’s selection of McClurkin places a man opposing “respect, fairness and inclusion” on the convention stage.
But in its own press release (also copied below), Exodus defends McClurkin’s rhetoric without daring to actually quote it. Exodus says simply that “Donnie is not shy about his testimony.” Finding no reason to place conditions on its praise of McClurkin, Exodus instead takes time to gratuitously wag a finger at “sexually permissive Hollywood elitists” — citing Ben Affleck, a former working-class Bostonian, as a prime example.
In apparent contrast to Affleck, Exodus says, “Donnie represents freedom of speech, freedom of religious expression, freedom to rise above adversity and the freedom of self-determination”; Exodus thanks the Republican Party for celebrating this “true freedom.”
McClurkin’s incendiary speeches are, presumably, constitutionally protected. McClurkin’s participation in the convention probably will not receive due media attention — neither political convention has received adequate coverage. If it does gain notice, then we shall see whether Exodus and their political allies equate criticism of McClurkin with “intolerance.”
Here are the press releases issued by Wayne Besen and by Exodus:
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