http://gaywired.com/article.cfm?section=163&id=18614Barack Obama’s Latest Pastor Problem: Anti-Gay Rev. James T. Meeks
Article Date: 03/31/2008
By Duane Wells
Just as the dust surrounding Sen. Barack Obama’s long-term association with controversial minister Rev. Jeremiah Wright has begun to settle comes new reports of the democratic presidential hopeful’s connection to another racially divisive public figure—the stridently homophobic Rev. James T. Meeks, an Illinois state senator who also serves as the pastor of Chicago’s 22,000 member strong Salem Baptist Church.
Described in a 2004 Chicago Sun Times article as someone Barack Obama regularly seeks out for “spiritual counsel”, James Meeks, who will serve as an Obama delegate at the 2008 Democratic convention in Denver, is a long-time political ally to the democratic frontrunner.
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A spring 2007 newsletter from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) named Meeks one of the "10 leading black religious voices in the anti-gay movement". The newsletter cites him as both “a key member of Chicago's ‘Gatekeepers’ network, an interracial group of evangelical ministers who strive to erase the division between church and state” and “a stalwart anti-gay activist…
… has used his House of Hope mega-church to launch petition drives for the Illinois Family Institute (IFI), a major state-level ‘family values’ pressure group that lauded him last year for leading African Americans in ‘clearly understanding the threat of gay marriage.'”
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On a more personal level, Meeks has reportedly blamed "Hollywood Jews for bringing us Brokeback Mountain" and actively campaigned to defeat SB3186, an Illinois LGBT non-discrimination bill, while serving in the Illinois state legislature alongside Obama. According to a 2006 Chicago Sun Times article, his church sponsored a "Halloween fright night" which "consigned to the flames of hell two mincing young men wearing body glitter who were supposed to be homosexuals."
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I mean, COME ON, PEOPLE. This Candidate is looking more and more like a closet homophobe than anything else. Either he IS NOT a bigot and repudiates these people...ALL OF THEM...or he IS a bigot and holds their views.
Does anyone else see a third way on this?