IGF CultureWatch

In 1968, his second campaign for the White House, Richard Nixon rode into office on what later became known as the "Southern Strategy." While running as a moderate in most states, Nixon used code words like "states' rights" and "busing" to appeal to the racist tendencies of southern whites. This was the nail in the coffin of black support for the GOP, which, since the days of Abraham Lincoln, had traditionally been the party of civil rights. Two years ago, former Republican National Committee Chair Ken Mehlman officially apologized for his party's attempt to "benefit politically from racial polarization."

How ironic that Barack Obama - the first, serious black presidential candidate in the history of the United States - would resurrect one of the most disreputable features of the Republican Party's campaign playbook.

Obama is the candidate of the same liberal elites who supported Howard Dean, ecstatic about the opportunity to challenge the old guard represented by Hillary Clinton. He's promising to end the cynicism embodied by Clinton, the sort that "triangulates," as he put it in a thinly veiled attack several weeks ago. He is also hungry, however, for black southern voters, many of whom are social conservatives on the subjects of homosexuality and the separation of church and state. So Obama decided to sign Donnie McClurkin, a Grammy-winning, African-American, "ex-gay" singer, onto his campaign as part of a gospel tour of the important primary state of South Carolina.

McClurkin denies being homophobic (explaining away his views with the usual "Christian" apologetics, loving the sinner but hating the sin), yet his message about gay people is egregious. He states that he was drawn into homosexuality by the rape and abuse he suffered as a child. Homosexuality, he says, is an affliction that its victims can overcome.

This sort of bigotry would be bad enough coming from a Pat Robertson or a Lou Sheldon - men far removed from the "gay lifestyle" - but it is especially harmful when spoken by someone who identifies as "ex-gay." Such individuals can at least claim to have a personal experience, and sympathy toward, homosexuality and their "past" thus gives them bogus credibility.

Would any major presidential candidate associate with a black pastor who spoke of Jews or black people in the denigrating way that McClurkin talks about gays? It's inconceivable. But gays are the one minority group that it's still acceptable to ridicule, and Obama - despite his preachy talk of "hope" - is perpetuating this phenomenon. The Obama campaign's continued advertising of its endorsement by McClurkin once again signifies that the Democrats are perfectly willing to use homophobia for their electoral advantage.

The Clintons perfected the art of speaking out of both sides of their mouths on gay rights - passing the Defense of Marriage Act along with "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," all the while scooping up massive amounts of campaign contributions from gay bigwigs - and it appears that Obama is learning from his party's most skilled set of campaigners. So much for his recent promise to part ways with the cynics who "tout their experience working the system in Washington." Obama's starting to "work the system" just fine himself.

Atlantic Monthly blogger and Obama fan Andrew Sullivan has suggested that the benighted one should fire the staffer who invited McClurkin onto the campaign. This is wise counsel, but how can Obama fire the person who welcomed McClurkin onto the "gospel tour" while keeping McClurkin onboard? In a presidential campaign, the buck stops with the candidate and unless Obama is willing to dump McClurkin he cannot, in good faith, dump some hapless staffer.

Singling out a class of Americans as a basis for that fear - as Nixon did 1968 - is reprehensible and destroyed Bush's pledge to be a "uniter, not a divider." For many years, the Human Rights Campaign and the Democratic presidential candidates have promised to offer us something different.

But the events of the past week have shown that even the most platitudinous of liberals is not immune from utilizing the cynical election tactics concocted by the right.

It wasn't the first time an audience defied expectations. This time it was in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. I was there with Glenn Stanton, my "debate buddy" from Focus on the Family, to discuss same-sex marriage. The only thing we knew about Rhinelander before arriving was that its number one cause of death is bar-room brawls-or so we had been told by several Wisconsinites, who warned us of the small town's "redneck" reputation.

"Bar-room brawls?" Glenn joked. "I suppose that has heterosexuality written all over it."

"Oh, we gays have them too," I responded. "We just call them 'hissy-fits.'"

Unlike most of our university debates, the Rhinelander event was advertised primarily to local residents, rather than students, and when we arrived we noticed lots of gray hair in the audience. An older crowd in a redneck town-Glenn's territory. I braced myself.

Then the Q&A began, and one audience member after another attacked Glenn. I kept waiting for a critical question directed at me. Nothing.

After about an hour of Glenn's getting grilled while I fielded softballs, I turned to him and announced, "Well, Glenn, this has been exactly the right-wing audience we expected in rural Wisconsin!" The audience howled with laughter.

"Are you sure they didn't bus you guys in from Madison?" Glenn quipped back. I could tell that he was weary and that he appreciated the lighthearted moment.

The following week we debated again in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the same thing happened. I found myself wanting to stand up and shout, "This is the deep South, people. You're supposed to be on HIS SIDE!"

It's not that I'm complaining. I do these debates to convince people. Not to convince Glenn (although I'd like to think my time with him has had a positive effect). And not to convince ideologues, who have made up their minds and won't budge no matter what. I do them to convince the fence sitters-folks who show up curious about the issue, eager to listen, willing to engage arguments. So when people agree with me, I should be happy, and I am.

But…

But there are plenty of people who don't agree with me. One merely has to look at voting patterns to realize this. Last November, Wisconsin voters passed an anti-gay marriage amendment 59-41%-and much of that majority came from more liberal towns than Rhinelander. Even college students are far from unanimous in supporting marriage equality. Which means that opponents are either not showing up, or not speaking up, at our debate events. Either way, I miss the opportunity to engage them.

Such engagement would have two potential benefits. First, it might help convince the opponents themselves-even if slowly and gradually. Second, it might help convince the fence-sitters who are watching, since they would receive "the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error" (in the words of the great liberal theorist John Stuart Mill). The more we confront the opposition head-on, the more obvious their fallacies become. That's why I'm willing to travel the country with someone from Focus on the Family addressing the same bad arguments over and over again.

It was the hope for such engagement that led me to interrupt the Q&A in Baton Rouge to plead for some audience opposition. "Any critical questions for me? Please?" I asked no fewer than three times. It felt like announcing "last call" at the bar: "Last call…last call for traditionalists…" Finally, a woman took me up on my challenge-sort of:

"I'm a religious conservative," she began gently. "And I appreciate your kindness to Glenn and to us. But I haven't spoken up because I feel a lot of hostility from the audience. I think more of us would show up and speak up if we didn't feel like we would automatically be shouted down." She didn't offer any question-just that observation.

I was both impressed and surprised-impressed by her courage in speaking against the (immediate) tide, and surprised that she found the audience hostile. I could recall no anger or viciousness from the various questioners. But since they were on my side, perhaps I simply failed to notice.

Her remarks spotlighted an important distinction: it's one thing to silence your opponents; it's quite another to convince them. And sometimes-perhaps often-silencing is done at the expense of convincing.

The social pressure that makes certain views "taboo" has its uses. But political reality indicates that it's not yet time to halt the conversation over same-sex marriage-certainly not in Rhinelander or Baton Rouge. Strange as it sounds, we may sometimes need to work at making people more comfortable-not less-in voicing their opposition to us.

Meet Mike.

Mike is 30, has a girlfriend, and on the evening we talked on the phone, he was preparing to do laundry at his local Laundromat.

And, oh yeah - Mike is a seminary student and minister with the evangelical Church of the Nazarene.

Mike called me because he's writing a paper on homosexuality, and I've written about being gay and Christian. And he's writing that paper, he said, because he really didn't understand the issue. He doesn't know anyone who is openly gay.

"I didn't grow up in a Christian family," he said, "After becoming Christian I jumped right into all the evangelical Christian nonsense, 'hate the sin, love the sinner,' all of it.

"But in the past two years, I started to think about how this sets up a divide between two groups - you're a sinner and I'm not. Your homosexuality makes me more perfect. That's not how it works. That's where I get frustrated."

He is writing the paper, he said, with two assumptions:

1. Theologically, for his church, homosexuality is a sin (I know, I know, but bear with me. Mike understands it's a selective reading of the Bible - but he's leaving theology for another day.)

2. As he says, "God loves everyone, regardless of - well, everything."

Given those two things, he said to me, he is looking for a third way. A way for his church (and he himself is the minister of a small congregation) to keep its theology while also welcoming gays and lesbians into the pews. A way "to value people as people."

How would that happen? What would that look like?

At first, I couldn't imagine it. Without new theology, how could gays and lesbians be comfortable in evangelical churches? How can we worship at a place that calls our deepest, most important relationships "sinful"?

I sighed. "Honestly, it would be a giant step if evangelical churches just didn't stand in the way of equality for gays and lesbians," I said, more or less (I was taking good notes when Mike talked, but the pen trailed off the page when I myself had the floor).

"Conservative churches can keep their beliefs- it's your church, you can do that. Just don't actively fight for the legislation of discrimination."

"So you can't see gays and lesbians worshipping with us and being part of a community?" Mike said.

"No," I responded. "Not unless they're incredibly self-hating."

But then Mike showed me where he thought his "third way" was.

What if the Nazarene Church could buy into the idea that yes, you can hate the homosexual sin and love the homosexual sinner; and you can hate the heterosexual sin and love the heterosexual sinner?

What if, instead of eliminating this deeply held belief, they expanded it to include everyone, so that everyone was equally a sinner and in the same ways? Where you value the worth of all people?

This is radical stuff Mike is saying. I liked him for it.

"Isn't there a way we can worship together?" he asked again.

"Huh," I said. "Maybe then there is a third way - and maybe some churches are currently practicing it."

Most mainline denominations, like Methodists, don't marry gays and lesbians and won't ordain them (or else they are nearly in schism over these questions, like the Episcopals).

But even though the denomination doesn't honor gays and lesbians, individual churches can and do.

I worshipped happily at a Presbyterian church in Chicago that couldn't marry gays and lesbians or ordain us as ministers. Yet the pastor asked after my girlfriend and we were invited to events as a couple, there was a gay and lesbian group, and I never had to worry about viciousness from the next pew if I held my girlfriend's hand during the service. The minister never condemned gays and lesbians from the pulpit, and in fact talked about us in a loving, flattering light.

That church honored my humanity. And although that is not the same as equality, it was warming enough that the church became a home. That position now seems regressive for mainline denominations, but it would be a leap forward for evangelicals.

Mike thought for a moment. What if, he said, "There was a switch of emphasis. Instead of someone being gay or straight, if there was an emphasis instead on Christ, why couldn't you bring your girlfriend to worship?"

He added, "I feel like, if you lived nearby, we would be friends. And I would hope you and your girlfriend were comfortable worshipping with us."

I wish I could relate here every second of our conversation. I wish I could convey how unexpectedly affirming it was to listen to an evangelical minister as he struggles over this issue.

We don't know about this struggle, we don't hear about it. We assume that all evangelicals hate us - but then there is Mike, who is looking for a way to welcome gays and lesbians within the context of his beloved religion.

And then Mike said the most heartening thing of all. "Know that I'm not the only one. There are more evangelicals where I am than most people realize."

To me, his words sounded like a miracle.