Organizing for America | Maxim Thorne's Blog: Why I Support Barack Obama

Why I Support Barack Obama

By Maxim - Aug 10th, 2007 at 2:21 am EDT

Also listed in: Gay Christians for Obama | Florida GLBT Supporters | Yale for Barack

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Tags: finance committee, LGBT, Maxim Thorne, yale

I wrote in 2004, before Barack Obama won his U.S. Senate seat that I saw in him America's first black President. And while I love Bill Clinton, he was not it.

I'm fortunate to have met Barack a few times and I want to share what it's like. He exudes a spiritual quality, the kind one gets from the Dali Lama and Deepak Chopra. More important, you feel how he transforms a room, a stadium, an inner office. You look around and you see a multicultural group of folks, keenly listening, being listened too, and accepting leadership.

I've watched up close Bill Clinton's sexual magnetism and keen intellect at work, and the way women (and men) respond to him. Barack's quality is equally compelling but richer, more familial, and less manipulative. A Barack audience reflects what is best about America - you feel the culmination of the American Dream and its promise. I see WASP investment bankers, Chinese ballet dancers, Native American grandfathers, Jewish teachers, West Indian bakers, a Somali model, a Yale budding novelist, a Mormon gynecologist, a Kentucky entrepreneur beer maker - and I see reflected in their eyes the absolute belief that they connect with this man and that he gets them.

Barack Obama seems to transcend things rather than merely overcome them. And that's a major distinction. In electing Barack we are not electing an alternative to a White president...we are electing someone who transcends race itself because he is comfortable and happy in his own skin. He may be affected by race but is not defined by it. Barack embodies a long awaited moment in American history when ideas and vision transcend race. He is the future vs. the past.

Barack is also able to speak to the issues of America, Black America and gay Black America in ways that no other politician can or has or is willing to- Black or White. Yes there are White politicians who speak out against racism and discrimination and injustice. And there are certainly major black politicians who are pro-gay rights and speak out in favor of equality, civil unions and gay marriage...but Barack doesn't have to play this kind of trademark special interest politics because he is not dependent on a particular constituency.

Barack can talk about both the historic legacy of injustice AND individual social responsibility in contemporary Black America. He was the only candidate to mention the word 'homophobia' at the Democrat Presidential Candidates debate at the historically Black Howard University. Many of the devastating effects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the Black community is rooted in homophobia in Black culture, from the stigma of getting tested for the virus (which Barack and Michelle have done publicly and in Africa) to the pressures it has put on young Black men to be 'hardcore' and 'not soft' or 'feminine'.

What Barack offers to the America the ability to live the dream - make it our reality.

America is the greatest country on Earth, but it is young and fragile and must constantly be nurtured by our faith in the American Dream, the dynamic of progress, and our belief that Americans can overcome anything regardless of the accident of birth.

I think America stands alone against a hideous vortex of ancient bigotries, religious rivalries, and violent, uninspiring and unequal societies. George Bush has brought us to the brink of being sucked in to this vortex, this "crusade" - so that our brilliant American experiment in democracy of almost three hundred years may simply become a blip if we are sucked into the ancient battles of the Middle East. This exactly what the founding fathers feared most - and why they enshrined the values they did in the Constitution.

Barack Obama is the embodiment of that hope, that experiment, that joy that is America.

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