Black Pastors Launch Anti-Obama Campaign Over Marriage Views
A group of African-American faith leaders have announced they have launched a $1 million campaign against President Barack Obama because they do not agree with his support for marriage equality, the Daily Caller reports.
The newly created group, called God Said, wants to take away 25 percent of the black vote that went to Obama in the 2008 presidential election. In 2008 Obama received 98 percent of the black vote.
Officials from the nonprofit say they will set their sights on voters in Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Florida by launching television and radio ads as well as a grassroots campaign to urge individuals to vote with the Bible in mind.
"The black community is among the most religious in America and we are offended that President Obama has announced his support of same-sex marriage, that the NAACP has blindly supported the secular views of the Democratic Party, and that their national platform plainly supports same-sex marriage," Apostle Claver Kamau-Imani of RagingElephants.org, and a founder of God Said, said in a statement. "I am confident that this message will be well received and acted upon on Election Day."
God Said's members claim their main goal is to give a voice to black voters who believe in traditional marriage and do not feel like the Democratic Party is representing them.
Dr. Day Gardner, who also help find the group and is president of the National Black Pro-Life Union, said, "If you're a believer in Jesus Christ then you have to say all that matters no matter what you think or feel about anything, the most important thing is what God says and God said that marriage is between one man and one woman."
Gardner says that marriage equality is one of the biggest issues in this year's presidential race.
"This is a defining time for us," she said. "To say either we stand on the principles of God or we don't. That's the bottom line. If you're a believer then you believe everything. You can't just choose to believe what you want to believe."
The group has 22 advisory board members and will used about $1 million for the campaign, according to a spokesman. The spokesman also told the Daily Caller that God Said has support from prominent black faith leaders from the Coalition of African-American Pastors, which has strongly opposed Obama's endorsement of same-sex marriage.
"During the 2008 elections, 70 percent of African Americans voted to ban same-sex marriage in California while they also voted for Barack Obama for president," Dr. Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and black outreach director of the pro-life Priests for Life, said. "We fully intend to shift 25 percent of the black vote from the 2008 election by charging every voter to examine each candidate and vote for the one that supports their core belief in natural marriage."
But CAAP's president, Rev. William Owens, said that the organization has nothing to do with God Said.
"CAAP is a group of pastors and faith leaders dismayed at the President's support for same-sex marriage. It is an offense to the African-American community especially when he equates gay rights to civil rights. Our organization is not affiliated with the God Said campaign," he told the publication in a written statement. "Our effort has been to educate and encourage black voters to abide by their conscience and their faith. We have never advocated for or against any candidate, nor for black Christians to stay home on election day. African Americans have sacrificed and fought too hard for the right to vote ."
The members of God Said aren't the only African-Americans rallying against Obama for his views on same-sex marriage. The New American reported that Bishop E.W. Jackson, pastor of Exodus Faith Ministries in Chesapeake, Va., has criticized the Democratic Party for supporting abortion and gay marriage. In a four-minute video the bishop says that black Americans need to end their "slavish devotion to the Democratic Party."
"They have insulted us, used us, and manipulated us," Jackson admonishes black voters of the tactics used by Democratic operatives over the past several decades. "They have saturated the black community with ridiculous lies" and think that they can "hold us captive while they violate everything we believe as Christians."
He goes on to say that the "Democrat Party has equated homosexuality with being black," which he claims is an "another outrageous lie." Jackson adds that he believes gay men and lesbians can hide their orientation but "you and I cannot hide being black."
Additionally, Jackson notes that Democrats "say opposition to same-sex marriage is the same as opposition to interracial marriage. That is an insult to human intelligence. It is a lie. No Christian should support this. Yet the Democrat Party has declared same-sex marriage an official part of its platform. And black Christians remain in that party?"
The bishop also spoke at the National Press Club in late September, Town Hall reports, and he insisted that black Americans leave the Democratic Party because of its "irreconcilable conflict" between its views and their faith in God.
Watch Jackson's video below: