Last month marked the anniversary of President
Barack Obama’s inauguration as the nation’s
forty-fourth president. One of my New Year’s
resolutions is to daily pray for the safety of our
country’s leader while speaking out against the
wicked actions of other so-called Christians and
conservatives who have created an atmosphere where
our President can be harmed.
Each week we get news of
virulent Barack Obama opposition. If it’s not
Republicans claiming that he is a socialist, it’s
nutcases like Rush Limbaugh publicly pronouncing
their desire for Obama to fail. The Obama haters
have now attempted to enlist the help of the
Almighty as their partner. That’s right, you can now
purchase merchandise asking people to pray for
Obama, and then referring to the biblical passage,
Psalm 109:8, which is code to call for Obama’s
death.
The actual verse reads: Let his days be
few, And let another take his office. The
following verse says: Let his children be
fatherless, And his wife a widow.
I’m aware that presidential criticism through witty
slogans is nothing new; however, the use of the
109th Psalm is much more ominous than previous ones.
The Pray for Obama Movement comes at a time
of heightened concern about antigovernment anger.
Earlier last year, the president’s senior adviser,
David Axelrod, predicted that the so-called Tea
Parties amongst conservatives would lead to
something unhealthy. Last September, authorities
shut down a poll on Facebook asking if President
Obama should be killed.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says that
the Psalms citation doesn’t push into the realm of
hate speech as it is ambiguous as to what its users
are calling for. The Anti-Defamation League agrees
that the bumper sticker falls within acceptable
political discourse. Their interpretation states
that for it to be considered hate speech, it “would
advocate actual violence or cite scripture that was
more clear in its message.” I wholeheartedly
disagree. This message is not referring to President
Obama being out of office; it’s referring to him
being dead. It’s completely offensive to me that it
can be considered protected speech. Someone has to
correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t remember a time
when there was a Christian movement that encouraged
people to actually pray for the president’s death
until a Black man took the office.
I believe it’s time for the religious community to
publicly condemn talk like this. The organizers of
the so-called movement have the right to free
speech, but so do critics within the religious
community if they had the testicular fortitude to do
so. Where are the voices of rational Christians
against such abominable actions? We don’t hear a
peep from the John Hagee’s, Rod Parsley’s or James
Dobson’s of the world, men who would have come to
the defense of such actions against former President
Bush in a heartbeat. It’s hard to believe that
people go to church to be associated with some idiot
who sends out veiled threats to the president. I
thought people went to church because they wanted to
enrich their spirits. Well, in the words of the
older generation, “God don’t like ugly.”
Those of you who read my column know I’m not one to
sugarcoat, so let’s call it what it is: the simply,
plain hate of racists who don’t like the fact that
the President of the United States is a Black man.
Yes, he is Black. His father was Black, his wife is
Black, his children are Black. He identifies himself
as Black — not biracial — just like so many other
African Americans with a non-Black parent. No other
president has experienced this kind of vitriol. The
reason we know that this is racism is because the
main people who deny being racist are racists. The
main people denying that race has anything to do
with their opposition to Obama are in denial about
their bigotry.
So, when you say that they are only defending the
honor of this country, but had nothing to say about
the backward direction we were being pulled in under
Bush and Reagan, while at the same time enlisting
God to the point of wishing ill on Obama and his
family, something about that doesn’t hold holy
water.
n