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 SYBIL WILKES :  Dang.

TOM JOYNER:  Not even a deposit?

DONNIE MCCLURKIN:  Nothing. 

ROLAND MARTIN:  Now yesterday, they released a statement in an interview saying that you have been paid, or were going to be paid every cent.  You are saying that has not happened.

DONNIE MCCLURKIN:  That hasn’t happened, and it wasn’t communicated to us by the mayor’s office at all.

ROLAND MARTIN:  Do you believe it’s fair, Donnie?  I mean the comments that gays and lesbians are upset about you made more than a decade ago about formerly being gay, talking about it as being a sin.  You made those comments more than a decade ago.  Is it fair for an activist to, you know, a decade later to say, oh, because he made those comments in that period he shouldn’t do something today here in 2013?

DONNIE MCCLURKIN:  Well, it’s not fair, and it’s been an ongoing battle. It’s been an ongoing political battle.  But in fairness we’re talking about a peace rally.  And we’re talking about a group of people who have been lobbying for a long time for equality and tolerance.  But now to have none concerning anybody else who said anything that is against, or not through their agenda.  I don’t have a problem. 

 You can’t call me a homophobic if I’ve been a homosexual. That’s quite a stretch.  But for them to think that it’s fair, or okay, or tolerant, to uninvite someone simply because they have opposing views, but have never said anything derogatory about them, just simply gave my testimony about what happened with myself.

TOM JOYNER:  Would you give that testimony again, Donnie?

DONNIE MCCLURKIN:  Would I give it again?

TOM JOYNER:  Yeah, right now.

DONNIE MCCLURKIN:  My thing was from the time I was eight years old and raped three times by my uncle in one night, a prepubescent boy who doesn’t have any barriers or bustles; this was something that was instilled in me. And growing up it grew up in me.  And, you know, broken family, broken home, broken psyche. You’re looking for attention. And I felt like I wasn’t adequate. And the only ones that really paid attention to me were men.  And that’s how I grew into this. 

 Thirteen years old, molested in a car in church by my same uncle’s son. And this started a pathology. It started a situation. And growing up in the church, it was in the church, hidden.  And it was like people, like an animal smelling dead meat.  They gravitated to me at a young age.  That’s how this whole process started. But my conviction biblically, and spiritually, let me know that this was not for me.  This was not the lifestyle for me.  And consequently, through a series of prayer, people are like praying the gay away, it wasn’t praying the gay away, it was finding out who I really am. 

 Finding out who God made me to be. And then agreeing with God even if it was a fight inside of me. And that’s how this whole thing happened. So through a couple of, well not, several years, of homosexual behavior and activity, finally coming to the point, in the church – now mind this, I was always in the church – that’s another story altogether. But I finally came to realize that this is not who God wants me to be.  And then allowing God to show me who I am, make me who I am, and thus that’s who I am now. That’s all I’ve ever testified.

 ROLAND MARTIN:  Donnie, has the mayor of D.C., Vincent Gray, reached out to you, talked to you?  Or has it been his aides around him?

DONNIE MCCLURKIN:  It’s simply been Chris Murphy.

 ROLAND MARTIN:  Do you believe the mayor of D.C., owes you an apology for disinviting you to this concert?

DONNIE MCCLURKIN:  I believe that he owes the City of D.C., an apology. He’s done a disservice to the faith based community. And I can take the blow, but he needs to be more concerned about his constituency.  And to do something like this at a Martin Luther King peace rally is totally against what Martin Luther King stood for.

Donnie McClurkin: ‘You Can’t Call Me Homophobic if I’ve Been in Homosexuality’  was originally published on blackamericaweb.com

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