A few people have called me to ask me to comment on the fact that certain Black Preachers are supporting George Bush because he is against homosexual marriage. My comment is to cite comments I recently heard from Reverend Jesse Jackson.

Jackson says he was speaking at a Black Church recently and he asked the congregation to answer a few questions in order to make a decision about who to vote for. The questions went something like this:

1. How many of you have a family member that have problems with health and/or health care? Hands went up.

2. How many of you have problems with someone involved with the criminal justice system? Hands went up.

3. How many of you have someone in your family that has problems with their employment or discrimination or with their school? Hands again went up.

4. How many of you have someone in the war? Hands went up

Then he asked question #5. How many of you have a family member who is engaged to marry a person of the same sex? No hands went up.

The point he was making is that Black Christians are being encouraged to vote for a Republican President because he said he was a Christian and was going to get a Constitutional amendment to stop homosexual marriage. If you believe that a Constitutional amendment (which by the way will never be adopted) could stop homosexuality then you believe that the Constitutional statement that all men are created equal will stop discrimination. Well in the words of Malcolm X, in his 1963 speech called, The Ballot Or The Bullet, "you've been tricked." Malcolm said then what could be said now about this year’s election, 40 years later. "The election of 1964 threatens to be the most explosive year America has ever witnessed." He said it was the year when "all of the white politicians will be back in the so-called Negro community jiving you and me for some votes. The year when all of the white political crooks will be right back in your community with their false promises, building up our hopes for a letdown with trickery, and their treachery, with their false promises...they don’t intend to keep." Well the party that gave us tricky Dick Nixon will now give us tricky George Dubya, if we listen to certain people. I can only ask, "Haven’t we learned anything about certain so- called Black leaders?"

George Bush and the Republicans are against the Democratic health care programs, and have been since Hilary Clinton tried to get a Universal Health Care program some years ago. Most people have no idea of what Universal Health care is about, and I didn’t either until my son moved to England a few years ago. A few months after moving there, I was on the phone with him and he told me that my grandson was ill and needed to go to the doctor. I asked how much money would he need to take care of the doctor’s bill, and he answered there was no bill because health care was free in England. A couple of years later when my grand daughter was born, the cost for prenatal care for her birth was nothing.

The Republicans want you to think that there is something wrong with that system, which houses a clinic in neighborhoods throughout the cities. I’m sure the Republicans are responding to their American medical doctor constituency who want to keep the cost of medical care as high as the traffic will bear. Likewise, it is interesting to watch the Republicans as they pass laws to keep elders from going to Canada to purchase low cost medicine because they say American medicines are safer. Does anyone really believe that. If that were true then you would be hearing about the health crisis in Canada with their faulty medicines. I suggest you watch how much money the American drug companies are putting into the Republican party and you will find out the real reason they don’t want us going to Canada to buy medicine. They are like the mafia protecting their territory. I note that Canada also has a Universal health care program similar to Britains’ but certain Black leaders who support Bush probably have never spent more than a week in foreign countries, or they simply missed the idea of Universal health care. The other interesting program to watch is the educational programs the Republicans are forcing down our throats. The so-called - "No Child Left Behind Program." According to teachers and educators I talk to, it’s a colossal failure. It thrives on the faulty idea that all children learn the same way and testing is the only way to determine if education is working. Well all children don’t learn the same way and testing is a learned skill, in itself. A fact that I learned when I had to take the bar examination.

Someone has suggested that the Black preachers who are supporting Bush are chasing the dollars in Bush’s Faith Based Initiative. They all deny it, but a quick audit of the church programs and books will tell the real story. The truth is that there have been faith based programs forever, from Catholic charities to drug programs to senior housing programs that are attached to churches, YWCA’s and YMCA’s. All were considered Christian programs and have been funded through the years. The question is where is the faith of these so- called leaders? Is there faith that God will provide, or do they somehow believe that an admitted alcoholic and drug user named Bush will provide? The next question is who will he provide for? Certainly not for the average Black American.

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