Thoughts on Obama, Race and Homosexuality

We celebrate racial reconciliation, which has nothing to do with the pro-homosexuality agenda

Who could not have been moved by FOX News commentator Juan Williams (left) tearing up as he described how he never thought he would see this day when a fellow African American would rise to the highest office in the land? President Obama is a testimony to America as a land of freedom and opportunity, but he is wrong to oppose pro-life laws restricting abortion and to equate his radical pro-homosexual agenda — already posted on the White House website — with genuine “civil rights.” 

By Peter LaBarbera

Today we get back to dealing with policy but yesterday we celebrated America. Our differences with President Barack Obama are significant [read AFTAH Board Member Matt Barber’s statement on Obama’s newly published, radical “LGBT” agenda HERE]– and many of the claims being made about him are ridiculous, such as when one TV commentator said yesterday that Obama “transcends the culture wars” — but in this moment we cherish what is good and great about the United States.

It is astonishing to behold — in a nation that once allowed the shipment of slaves from Africa, bound in shackles and shipped across the Atlantic like cargo, then sold in auctions like cattle — the induction of the first man of African ancestry as President of the United States. Who can doubt that this is truly a land of freedom and opportunity, where anyone who works hard can succeed and where goodness (in this case, the triumph over centuries of racism) can prevail through struggle and democratic reform?

We don’t walk in their shoes, so it is impossible for white people to understand the joy of Blacks in seeing history made yesterday. Who could not be moved by FOX News commentator Juan Williams tearing up as he described how he never thought he would see this day when a fellow African American would rise to the highest office in the land? It was a patriotic moment.

On Election Day 2008, I served as a Republican poll-watcher in Aurora, Illinois, and I will never forget the beaming faces of African Americans, especially older people voting for the first time. One woman who appeared to be in her late thirties or early forties excitedly inquired as to how to cast her ballot; she was a first-time voter and could barely contain her happiness and pride. Later, a black man stepped in front of the election judges and proclaimed: “I’m here to vote for BARACK OBAMA!” For a moment ideology went out the window and my heart was warmed by these citizens of color seeing their American dream fulfilled in a way they never thought possible.

Most of us have seen racism in action and many have also experienced it. Yes, racism is a two-way street, but whites who are occasionally treated rudely or otherwise mistreated by Blacks cannot compare that to the history of institutional oppression that Blacks have had to overcome in America. (That’s no excuse of black racism.) In college, one of my roommates, who is white, fell in love with a beautiful African-American girl. On his wedding day, his best man boycotted the ceremony because of her skin color. Today, my college buddy and his wife have a wonderful family — and they would reject the notion that somehow their interracial marriage should in any way be compared to or used to rationalize homosexual “marriage.”

Are we like past racists?

This brings me to the argument — or we should say a slander — put forth by the Social Left that opponents of homosexual agenda (i.e., the “Religious Right”) are the “racists” of today — as if pro-family advocates would be defending Jim Crow in an another era. (Occasionally in moments of weakness and doubt, some on our side buy into this nonsense.) One liberal publisher of a magazine that purports to promote corporate “diversity” even equated this writer with a 19th Century preacher who used the Bible to justify slavery. This is a calumny against people of faith, including African Americans, who favor the natural, created moral order — based upon the complementarity of the sexes.

We’ve said it many times and will keep on saying it: homosexual behavior — changeable, sinful and unhealthy — has nothing whatsoever to do with race. Racial/ethnic diversity is good; sexual “diversity” is wrong when it attempts to legitimize unnatural sex and sex outside of marriage. If the race-homosexuality (or racist-“homophobe”) analogy were correct, how does one explain my great satisfaction in that portion of Obama’s ascendancy that thrusts a spear into the heart of racism? And I am not alone; in my 20-plus years as a conservative activist, I have only rarely met a fellow conservative or Christian (or religious person) for whom race — rather than ideology or policy — is a deciding factor in assessing politicians. In fact, if anything, most pro-family friends I know are eager to support Black conservatives.

As a kid growing up in mostly white middle-class suburbs of Chicago and then Detroit, I came to hate racism — due partly to being educated on slavery, Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement but also due to a type of “liberal white guilt.” By that I mean the part of me that cheers racial progress and roots for the underdog. I became, like many educated whites, a bit of a bleeding heart on race. One of our family’s favorite movies is “Remember the Titans,” starring Denzel Washington, which uses football to teach about racial harmony. It’s embellished history, but I love it. There is a terrific scene where the two defensive stars in a forcibly integrated Virginia school — one black, one white — finally put their racist attitudes aside and gel as a defensive unit. Ultimately, they become close, lifelong friends. In another scene, Washington, playing the black coach, lectures his white assistant coach for coddling the black players but not the white ones. Thus, even this movie makes the point that true equality will come only when Blacks do not receive special treatment but are treated like everybody else.

We’re probably not even close to living in an America where race doesn’t matter. Surely race affected the liberal media’s coddling of Obama, but much of their love affair with the Obama derives from his liberal agenda. (His “coolness” helped, too.) The question in my mind is: when will the media and liberals get over their own biases and bigotry and give black Christian conservatives a fair shake? Can you imagine a Republican black conservative candidate for president getting the kid glove treatment from media that Obama received? Remember how the media savaged Clarence Thomas?

Homosexuals grab the “civil rights” mantle

The American maturation on race — e.g., the growing acceptance of interracial couples — is a good thing. So it’s no surprise that homosexual activists would seek to grab the “civil rights” mantle for themselves. But there is a key difference between their cause and the genuine civil rights movement: the latter strove against a sin: racism; the former promotes sin — i.e., the acceptance of homo-sexual behavior (which God calls “detestable”) — and radically redefining marriage and family.

But what about “gays”? Don’t they experience discrimination? The problem arises when homosexual activists falsely claim that — like skin color — their sexual desires are unchangeable and the basis for government-backed rights. The whole concept of “sexual orientation,” which seeks to take responsibility away from people for their sinful choice to embrace homosexual practice, violates Scripture, natural law, and thousands of years of Judeo-Christian history. And now we are facing a battle between “gay rights” and the rest of Americans’ freedom of religion, which includes the right to act on one’s belief that homosexual behavior is wrong.

It’s so uncool to say so in the Age of Obama, but it’s still true: a healthy society “discriminates” against homosexuality and other destructive sins; a deteriorating culture promotes sin. Thankfully, thousands of men and women have successfully abandoned the homosexual lifestyle, giving true hope to men and women struggling with this sexual sin.

Egalitarian “gay” activists demand that their (relationships be treated exactly like normal marriages. Give us “marriage equality!” they cry. Problem is, there is no “equality” between the natural family and traditional marriage — and the homosexual variety, which is missing one of the sexes. Homosexual sex, especially between men, is much riskier than normal sex — so much so that our federal government bans blood donations from men who’ve engaged in gay sodomy — and even women who have had sex with a ‘man who has had sex with a man.’ To pretend that homosexuality is equivalent to civil rights in the law only encourages men and women to embrace this destructive and immoral lifestyles. To do so in our schools only leads impressionable children into immoral and risky behaviors.

Thus, it is entirely consistent from a moral, justice and faith perspective to both oppose racial injustice and support the primacy in law and culture of the natural, mother-father family and God-ordained marriage.

It is not consistent with Christianity, however, to equate racism with “homophobia,” as the Left in its arrogance and ignorance now does as a matter of faith (in much the same way that it marches in lockstep for unrestricted killing of unborn babies abortion-on-demand). That activst term “homophobe” has become a catch-all to demonize anyone who opposes the homosexual political and cultural agenda — including African Americans, who surveys and election results show have a greater moral opposition to homosexuality and “gay marriage” than whites.

So I am happy that Barack Obama shattered the presidential color barrier and I will be praying for him. But in the spirit of true racial equality I am going to fight his no-hope campaign to repeal pro-life laws restricting abortion and his administration’s attempt to enact the homosexual lobby’s bogus “civil rights” agenda — in exactly the same way I would if Obama were a white liberal.