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He may have the boyish
flair of a young John F. Kennedy, but with black voters, his
political persona is flat lining due to a giant elephant on
his back.
This is no mystery.
Buttigieg is an open and practicing homosexual and,
according to U. S. Congressman James Clyburn of South
Carolina, for many in the older, black Democratic voting
community and, especially those in the Southern Bible belt,
that moniker is an anathema to many black voters.
Homosexuality does
not play well in many Southern states with either white or
black voters but especially for black voters where such an
affinity or a practice is abhorrent to their Christian
beliefs.
I know…. I know…I
hear it all the time about keeping the church and the state
separate from each other. Yeah, right!
People vote their
consciences and they are also informed by their religious
training and beliefs; and if the Bible says that
homosexuality is a sin (it does say so in many places),
black adherents are not going to jettison a closely-held
belief in order to be politically correct.
Buttigieg’s polling
with black voters and especially in the looming and
critically important make-or-break South Carolina primary is
low – very, very low.
Oh, you can throw
money at it by devising interesting and attractive plans
like his Douglass Plan (named after the late famed orator
and activist, Frederick Douglass); and you can attend black
church services in which you try to spread around your
gospel of being persecuted because you are gay.
But those strategies,
to date, are not gaining traction for the South Bend,
Indiana mayor.
Let’s cut to the
chase and pin the tail on the donkey: black people are not
enthused about voting for a candidate that
would be holding hands and
kissing on another man in public and having intimate sexual
relations with a man in the White House Lincoln bedroom!
There, I said it.
Deal with it! From my vantage point, those images, to many
black voters, is in the same political kill shot path as if
a Klansman, wearing his full white robed regalia, was
running to be in the White House.
To Buttigieg and his
fans, this ain’t going to happen in this election cycle.
Maybe 10 to 20 years later but the black voters in South
Carolina have the capacity to put the kibosh on his current
political aspirations.
TWO: WE WANT CAESAR…NOT
JESUS! This is the underlying wish of 80 percent or more of
white evangelicals who are, according to the polls,
fervently in favor of a second term for Herr Trump.
Yeah…yeah. White
evangelicals talk a good game about how much they love Jesus
and how the Word of God is their moral compass, but we now
know that such jibber-jabber is just wispy cotton candy.
White evangelicals want
power and they want access to power and if that means that
they must put the tenets of the Bible in a lock box and
close the door on Jesus, so be it!
It reminds me of the
mobs in the New Testament when Jesus was before Pontius
Pilate and when Pilate found no wrong in Jesus, he washed
his hands of the matter and urged the crowd to let this
Jesus alone.
But, what did this
rabid mob want? They wanted to crucify Jesus and have Pilate
release back to them the person of Barabbas, a leader of a
motley crew of insurrectionist rabble rousers.
The scribes and chief
priest and religious leaders of that day did not want to do
the right thing because they wanted power and influence with
the Roman government and Jesus was an impediment to their
plans.
When you fast forward
that scenario to that of today, we have white evangelicals
willing to botch and butcher the Word (especially the tenets
of the Gospel of Matthew) and
sear their conscience and
follow the follies of Herr Trump who by his acts and
utterances is as far from Jesus and Christianity as the East
is from the West!
Those white
evangelicals and their falsely pious leaders love to be
photographed with Herr Trump as opposed to being
photographed with a baby separated at the Mexican border
from his Mommy or they being pictured at a halfway house for
opioid addicts who need their prayers and support.
No, these craven white
evangelicals have made a calculated decision that their
destiny and fortunes are best left to a boaster of sexual
exploits, a champion of white supremacy and one who delights
in degrading people of color.
This is the type of
character that so many white evangelicals are frenetic about
and who comprise part of Herr Trump’s bedrock support.
Trump is their real
idol and this Jesus character can wait!
Contact Lafe Tolliver at
tolliver@juno.com
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