Media, Politics, Society

“Ex-Gay” Gospel Singer Barred From Martin Luther King Anniversary Event

199955_159748477414952_1948853_nmlkihaveadreamgogoFifty years ago, Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and gave his “I Have A Dream” speech and spoke of the day when people would be judged by the content of their character. I am not sure that the recent controversy over singer Donnie McClurkin is what MLK had in mind. McClurkin is a deeply religious man who says that God delivered him from being gay. That reportedly led to his being told that he was no longer welcomed at the anniversary performance of the speech.


McClurkin was scheduled to perform at the concert Saturday evening but gay rights activities objected to his participation ahead of the event.

Yet, Doxie McCoy, a spokeswoman for Mayor Vincent Gray, insisted that it was McClurkin who removed himself from the lineup to avoid controversy over his participation. She issued a statement that “[t]he Arts and Humanities Commission and Donnie McClurkin’s management decided that it would be best for him to withdraw because the purpose of the event is to bring people together.”

McClurkin however contradicted that account and said that he did not agree to be excluded. He states that he was “asked not to attend” the concert. That is quite a difference in accounts. Where the Mayor’s office is claiming that he removed himself, he is saying that he was barred because of his religious beliefs.

I can understand the feelings of gay rights advocates, particularly given the clear analogies of their own current struggle with the fight of Martin Luther King. However, the greater symbol of division can be found in barring people who share their admiration for MLK but subscribe to opposing religious views. I am equally concerned over what McClurkin is clearly suggesting is a false account from the office of Mayor Gray on the matter. The burden is now on Gray’s office to produce proof that the singer did opt not to attend to avoid controversy.

What do you think?


Source: Washington Post

338 thoughts on ““Ex-Gay” Gospel Singer Barred From Martin Luther King Anniversary Event”

  2. For Squeeky:
    There once was a girl who had hate
    whose unvetted info she easily states
    so obviously foolish her choices.
    its hard to take seriously anything she voices.
    A girl who shouldn’t be surprised at her Turley blog fate.

  3. @GeneH:

    Poor Dear! You just can’t help yourself, can you??? OK, here is you your own special Irish Poem!

    With Impugnity???

    There once was a guy who got miffed,
    Giving un-vetted info short shrift.
    When a bum said, “Hey, pal!”
    “The lift is out!” Wow!
    His descent to the basement was swift!

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

  4. Gene,

    We are espresso only drinkers in this household but, no, I have never had cherry infused grappa

  5. Blouise,

    That would be fantastic.

    Brandied cherries are wonderful, but have you ever had cherry infused grappa? I had Italian landlords in law school. Really neat people. The wife used to bring me homemade pesto (with herbs grown in her garden) all the time. Molto bene. And we’d often have afternoon chats over espresso and/or a shot of grappa, usually infused with cherries or baby pine cones. High test, but tasty.

    Good times. 😀

  6. Actually, vetting sources is the start of all good analysis.

    I didn’t believe Nixon either when he said he wasn’t a crook.

    Nietzsche is hardly a good source for making a philosophical stand . . . unless you’re a nihilist or a sociopath looking to give a veneer of respectability simply because he was/is famous. That only means he was famous. Famous and crazy are not mutually exclusive states of being.

    Just because you didn’t realize that he’s taught in context as a counterexample only illustrates the superficial nature of your analysis.

  7. nick and Gene,

    I order my pitted cherries from Mich in five gallon containers. I freeze the fruit and use the juice for cherry jelly. Cherry pies, tarts, cakes, muffins, compotes, meat dishes … frozen cherries soaked in brandy make a marvelous palate cleansers between courses and warmed, homemade, cherry brandy is a great dessert wine and cherry juice flavored sangria is fantastic.

    We should get together and have a cook-off

  9. nick,

    Oh, no. You totally mistake me for hatin’ on cherries, my man. I LOVE cherries. It’s practically an obsession. Pies, tarts, cakes, straight off the tree . . . I never met a cherry I didn’t like. I have a big bowl of them in the fridge right now. Even my bedroom furniture? Cherry. I love every part of a cherry tree. Cherry pickers? Eh, there are a subset of those I’m not crazy about and they usually have nothing to do with one of nature’s perfect foods.

  10. Oh yeah. Quoting Nietzsche will get you a lot of traction. Because nihilistic syphilitic madmen provide almost as good a philosophical template upon which to base a society as sociopathic dystopian romance writers. You do realize that Nietzsche is taught by in large as a counterexample in philosophy? A negative used to teach positives? Nah. I didn’t think so.

    “The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates

    “It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.” – Agnes Repplier

    “Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” – Buddha

  11. Don’t go hatin’ on cherries!! This is my favorite time of year. I buy cherries @ the grocery store. I have them packed separately so I can have the cherries on the front seat. I eat the cherries as I drive home, spitting the pits out the window. When you’re sixty, this is a guilty pleasure.

  12. @GeneH:

    There are ages in which the rational [wo]man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic. They both desire to rule over life: the former, by knowing how to meet his principle needs by means of foresight, prudence, and regularity; the latter, by disregarding these needs and, as an “overjoyed hero,” counting as real only that life which has been disguised as illusion and beauty.

    Whenever, as was perhaps the case in ancient Greece, the intuitive man handles his weapons more authoritatively and victoriously than his opponent, then, under favorable circumstances, a culture can take shape and art’s mastery over life can be established. All the manifestations of such a life will be accompanied by this dissimulation, this disavowal of indigence, this glitter of metaphorical intuitions, and, in general, this immediacy of deception: neither the house, nor the gait, nor the clothes, nor the clay jugs give evidence of having been invented because of a pressing need. It seems as if they were all intended to express an exalted happiness, an Olympian cloudlessness, and, as it were, a playing with seriousness.

    The man who is guided by concepts and abstractions only succeeds by such means in warding off misfortune, without ever gaining any happiness for himself from these abstractions. And while he aims for the greatest possible freedom from pain, the intuitive man, standing in the midst of a culture, already reaps from his intuition a harvest of continually inflowing illumination, cheer, and redemption-in addition to obtaining a defense against misfortune.

    To be sure, he suffers more intensely, when he suffers; he even suffers more frequently, since he does not understand how to learn from experience and keeps falling over and over again into the same ditch. He is then just as irrational in sorrow as he is in happiness: he cries aloud and will not be consoled.

    How differently the stoical man who learns from experience and governs himself by concepts is affected by the same misfortunes! This man, who at other times seeks nothing but sincerity, truth, freedom from deception, and protection against ensnaring surprise attacks, now executes a masterpiece of deception: he executes his masterpiece of deception in misfortune, as the other type of man executes his in times of happiness. He wears no quivering and changeable human face, but, as it were, a mask with dignified, symmetrical features. He does not cry; he does not even alter his voice. When a real storm cloud thunders above him, he wraps himself in his cloak, and with slow steps he walks from beneath it.

    On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense by Friedrich Nietzsche

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

  15. davidm,

    “Hi Chaz. I’m sorry, but Gene H apparently has misled you with his gross misunderstanding of Natural Law Theory. If you are interested in this subject, I recommend you google a phrase like Natural Law Theory Finnis. John Finnis is an Oxford professor who is one of the world’s foremost experts in the field of Natural Law Theory.”

    *****

    I guess the “foremost experts” who agree with your views are experts whose pronouncements can be trusted to be the truth…factually/scientifically correct–unlike the pronouncements of the members of the National Academy of Sciences. We all know the members of NAS are all too human and biased…right?

    You pointed that out on another thread. you wrote:

    “The NAS is an elite political body of scientists who collectively know much more science than I could possibly know. Nevertheless, they are humans and they operate with bias like many other humans. In this one area, they are wrong and they have caused severe harm to public education because the Judiciary has accepted their advice and ruled accordingly.”

    BTW, are you ever going to tell us how old you believe the Earth is?

  16. Sqweak,

    Making an observation – especially a valid one – about someone is not name calling. It is the process of identification and interrogation of nature.

    Every nature is contented with itself when it goes on its way well; and a rational nature goes on its way well, when in its thoughts it assents to nothing false or uncertain, and when it directs its movements to social acts only, and when it confines its desires and aversions to the things which are in its power, and when it is satisfied with everything that is assigned to it by the common nature. For of this common nature every particular nature is a part, as the nature of the leaf is a part of the nature of the plant; except that in the plant the nature of the leaf is part of a nature which has not perception or reason, and is subject to be impeded; but the nature of man is part of a nature which is not subject to impediments, and is intelligent and just, since it gives to everything in equal portions and according to its worth, times, substance, cause [form], activity, and incident. But examine, not to discover that any one thing compared with any other single thing is equal in all respects, but by taking all the parts together of one thing and comparing them with all the parts together of another . . . This thing, what is it in itself, in its own constitution? What is its substance and material? And what its causal nature [or form]? And what is it doing in the world? And how long does it subsist?” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VII – 7, 11.

  17. Nope, David. Natural Law as a philosophy and as it relates to the law is precisely as I described it and ChaZ understands it. An understanding, by the way, he acquired independently of me. Yes, I do know a lot and more so I understand a lot. Knowing facts is only part of the integration that is the process of acquiring understanding. Being able to discern relationships in the data – applied proper logic and pattern recognition – and make proper logically and factually consistent extrapolations is the difference between actual practical intelligence and simply parroting or spewing rote. But I am not the fount of all knowledge. People learn true things independently of me every day. Unlike you, however, ChaZ seems to have learned what Natural Law actually entails – seeking universal principles free from ideological constraint and applying them to the law such as the proposition that rights are inherent to the individual and not granted by the state in non-despotic non-tyrannical forms of government – whereas you simply conflate it it to mean whatever you need it to mean to rationalize away that you aren’t a bigot, a theocrat or simply stupid and/or a bad person because of your prime facie discriminatory bigoted policy endorsements.

    Good luck with that.

  18. Juliet and Gene,
    She has been in the gutter a lot already. Not sure what her problem is but good social skills, sensitivity to the feelings of others and civility are certainly not her strong points.

  19. @JulietN:

    You need a remedial reading class. Really badly.

    @GeneH:

    Have you ever thought about a profession in “Name Calling”??? Because I am sure that Code Pink, or some other gay advocacy group could give you a job! If not in “name calling”, perhaps as a “pie thrower.”

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

  20. Wow, Sqweak,

    That was a new low even for you.

    Then again, there have always been some kids who were born bereft of empathy and/or good character.

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