Faith in Action

I must admit that this year, I was feeling a certain way about Tavis Smiley’s State of the Black Union Roundtable. I’ve watched in previous years and have been inspired but this time around, I just wasn’t interested in the linguistic olympics featuring Dr. Mike Eric Dyson, Dr. Cornell West, Dr. Na’im Akbar and the other usual suspects. I think Tavis needs greater diversity…ideological diversity. It’s getting to the point now where you pretty much know how people are going to come down on the issues. I would like to see more grassroots-activist types, artists, OG’s from street oganizations…I mean let’s really shake it up! Allow the crowd to benefit from the wide variety of thought that is found within our rich culture. I feel like the panel is getting too academic…too “talented tenth”…too…dare I say - bourgeois. That’s not directed at any individual panelist, just the feeling I got from the event this year as a whole. (Disclaimer: to be fair I only watched the 2nd panel) I was thankful last year to see Min. Louis Farrakhan on the panel. In some respects he made the discussion for me with his fiery rhetoric.

This year, Dick Gregory’s participation made the discussion for me. He communicated his truth in lay language - down where the goats could get it and do something with it. He made great sense and though he was the oldest participant, he was, in my estimation, the most courageous. As he said himself - he was the turtle….hard on the outside, soft on inside, and willing to stick his neck out from time to time. I’m not sure I could say that about the others.

Enjoy this clip of Dick Gregory from this year’s State of the Black Union 2008. I uploaded the rest of his sharing to my youtube page.

Today, Rev. Scott Adams and Pastor Reginald Thomas (Greater Gethsemane Church) will be holding it down in my absence on Faith in Action. I have some business to take care of today, but the show will be left in very capable hands.

They’ll be talking about Gay Marriage in Maryland. This has been a perennial issue in Maryland for the past few year’s in our state’s General Assembly and some say that the “pro-gay marriage” activists have built the necessary support needed to push this over the top.

There are a plethora of bills that the Legislature is considering. The State Senate had its first round of hearings on these bills on Feb. 14th. The House will be hearing its bills in committee this Thursday, February 28, 2008. (Click here to see the full rundown of bills being considered.) Some say the issue is whether or not same-sex partners should be afforded the same rights that heterosexual partners are afforded under the law. Others say the issue is the normalizing and legislating of deviant behavior that goes against natural order and God’s design.

How should the state of Maryland come down on this issue?

That’s the question we’ll be asking Sen. C. Anthony Muse who is a member of one of the committees considering this issue and Chair of the Prince George’s County Legislative Delegation. Muse is also the pastor of The Ark of Safety Christian Church in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. He is the lone democrat who has joined five republican senators in pushing legislation that would authorize a man and woman to enter into a “covenant marriage” - a move intended to strengthen heterosexual marriages, but does not address same-sex marriages.

Find out what he, Pastor Reggie Thomas, and our spirited callers have to say about this issue today at 1PM on Faith in Action on Spirit 1400AM (Baltimore). For those outside of the Baltimore area, the audio will be posted to the blog later this week, but in the meantime feel free to post your comments/questions here and we’ll possibly address them on air.

Democratic hopeful, Hilary Clinton, took it to the next level over the weekend as she accused Obama’s campaign of engaging in dirty politics. At the center of it were two mailings that Obama is sending around that Hilary says are false. Obama responded that there is nothing false about them and they’ve been around for weeks. He suggested that this was a tactical move by Clinton being that all of her hopes hinge on how she does in the next round of primaries on March 4. Desperate times calls for desperate measures.

In the CNN/Univision debate last week, some of that desperation from Hilary came out again when she accused Obama of plagiarism saying that he stole lines from one of his national co-chairs, Massachusetts Governor, Deval Patrick. Obama explained that Patrick told him to use the lines before saying that we were entering “silly season” in the political race. That’s when Hilary came back saying that Obama isn’t offering change you can believe in, but “change you can xerox.”

“BOOOOOO!“, the crowd responded.

Interestingly enough, I found this youtube video this morning that points out some interesting passages that Hilary has seemed to “borrow” from past candidates and her husband. Her regurgitation of her husband’s lines is especially interesting because that was her closing line at the CNN debate that many of the TV talking-heads said gave her the slight edge in the contest.

Silly Season indeed.