Mat Staver and Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel on Faith & Freedom today were rankled by a speech Attorney General Eric Holder delivered to a meeting of the Conference of National Black Churches and the Congressional Black Caucus where he denounced the new wave of voter suppression measures like voter ID laws and curtailing early voting that have a disproportionate impact on people of color.
Naturally, Barber tied this back to the issue of gay rights, arguing that black voters should no longer trust President Obama since he “infuriated black pastors across the country” by endorsing marriage equality. “Now he goes to them with hat and hand and expects them to fire up the base for his cause when he has alienated them in such a way,” Barber asserted.
Staver went on to say that most African Americans oppose marriage equality because it “compounds the breakdown of the family.” However, the latest polling shows that 59% of African Americans support marriage equality and 90% of black voters approve of President Obama’s job performance. Similarly, last June Barber predicted that Jewish voters will rebuff Obama’s “anti-Semitism” but a strong majority of Jewish voters continues to back Obama.
Staver: Anything that is biblical, anything that you want to speak on with regards to the Bible or our culture is not off-limits simply because politicians are also talking about it.
Barber: You mentioned biblical issues, that brings up another case tied into this idea of the Obama administration going to these black churches. Again, it just displays an amount of hubris and arrogance on the part of this administration and this President that I’ve never seen before. This after on the heels of the President thumbing his nose at these very black pastors around the country by coming out in support of counterfeit, same-sex marriage. He has infuriated black pastors across the country with this and now he goes to them with hat and hand and expects them to fire up the base for his cause when he has alienated them in such a way.
Staver: In fact, he talked to some black pastors before he went out to do this announcement on same-sex marriage and they opposed it, many of them did oppose it. Now there were some obviously that were in favor but there were many black pastors, and I would say there are most black pastors by far that don’t agree with same-sex marriage. They understand the breakdown of the family. Of many communities, you see the breakdown of the family with regards to the father, and same-sex marriage creates a fatherless home, it just does, it creates a fatherless situation. It compounds the breakdown of the family. Most black pastors and people in the black community understand that. So he’s thumbed his nose at them and then he wants to now recruit them.
