Black Pastors in Oakland buy Bush's Wedge issue of Same Sex Marriage Amendment

 

 

 

Last week about 15 Black ministers held a press conference to announce they would be voting Republican this coming election because they agree with Bush on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Strangely, these Baptist ministers accepted what the Republicans know is a wedge issue. A wedge issue is one that will split off votes from one party to another, so a certain party takes a particular stance on thatissue.

What the Republicans have done is given up the gay vote in large part by selecting a general religious right stance of a constitutional amendment against gay marry, an issue that has largely been propelled into the political arena by newly elected San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom when he permitted his county to give out 3,000 marriage licenses to same sex couple--an action that the State Supreme Court has reversed and invalidated the same-sex marriages that occurred in California. After Newsom's act, other cities and localities moved speedily to also do as he had done.

Seeing that this was a good issue that he could merely feign action on without really doing anything, but possibly pull some of the black vote from the Democrats, Bush handlers sent him off running on this issue. Bush then proposed a US Constitutional amendment banning gay marriages and defining marriage as an institution between a man and a woman. This feels good to the religious right because of biblical prohibitions against homosexuality. But though it may feel good, it is a Bush-Republican placebo and little more.

Bush knows that getting a constitutional amendment through Congress and ratified by Three-fourth of the states is almost a pipedream. It is not going to even get out of Congress, let alone get to the states. So such an amendment is only used as a political issue that will peel off black votes.

Furthermore, these Oakland Black ministers have somehow overlooked the fact that Dick Cheney is a great and powerful influence in this Bush Administration; some argue that he is the real decision-maker in a Bush's foreign policy that is killing Americans and Iraqis daily. That influence stated, Dick Cheney is in opposition to George W. Bush's constitutional amendment, since Cheney's daughter is an open lesbian and his wife has written a very racy novel that is filled with lesbianism, adultery, incest, and other forms of deviant sexual behavior--a book she refuses to allow to be reprinted at this crucial re-election time. Indeed, the Vice President Dick Cheney and his family are not paragons of virtue or someone the religious right can look to proudly and tout religious or ethical values--this Vice President only a few weeks ago cursed a US Senator on the Senate floor and told him, "You can go F..K yourself." And when called on it, he said that he felt good about uttering such obscenities.

These few Black ministers in Oakland who called a press conference to announce that they would vote for Bush exemplify the behavior of most of the religious right. They are prompted by others and their own political ambitions to influence non-thinking religious people to vote as they vote; they have looked at this issue as if it is a one-sided coin, hence, hiding their faces from the full picture because, in sum, it flies in the face of what they say they stand for, or, at least, it flies in the face of what the Bible stands for, which may prompt us to look at how religious these religious right they are, or how right/correct/moral they are!

The Bush campaign sent out a memo about how to use and organize the religious right and churches around wedge issues such as this. Clearly, in Oakland, among these few Black ministers, the Bush Campaign is making inroads. And thier press conference was held a week before the start of the Republican Convention in New York. It does not take swiftness of mind to see Shannon Reeves, a local conservative Black Republican, is scoring a few Republican points by getting these ministers to hold a press conference to announce how they are going to vote. This unusual action is much reminiscent of New Jersey governor's press conference a week or so ago to announce that he is a gay politician. Who cares?

But to announce that you are voting for a candidate because he is for a constitutional amendment against gay marriage and not see that person's running mate who is extremely powerful in that person's administration and totally against the position your candidate supposedly stands for, and to disregard the fact that your candidate has no chance to bring to fruition his position is really dishonest, especially if you are ministers that are supposed to represent ethics and honesty and morality.

These Oakland ministers are like most of the religious right: they hide their faces from the two sides of a coin and declare it a one-sided coin, accepting the Bush Campaign strategy to use the non-thinking factor of the religious right. There is a problem with this campaign strategy, however, and it is this. There are many that are religious and right, but they are also thinking and will not buy into the Bush Campaign's strategy that uses the church for their political mules; nor will they allow un-thinking ministers to guide them to New York and political madness by a wedge issue. []

Frank A. Jones