XPost: dc.urban-planning, wa.politics   
   From: illegal@barackobama.com   
      
   After nearly four years in office, many Americans still express   
   frustration that much about Barack Obama remains a mystery as   
   establishment media remain incurious about the Democratic   
   president, while seemingly ready to dispatch crack investigative   
   teams at a moment’s notice to probe into the personal lives of   
   Republican figures such as Sarah Palin. Largely ignored in 2008   
   was research by the Hillary Clinton campaign based on contacts   
   developed with members of the church Obama attended for two   
   decades, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. This is the   
   first of a series of articles WND has developed from months of   
   in-person interviews with church members who have known Barack   
   and Michelle Obama over many years. The sources requested that   
   their identities not be published because they believe their   
   disclosures would put their security at risk.   
      
   NEW YORK – Ten years ago, the New York Times reported on a   
   growing underground subculture in the black community known as   
   Down Low, comprised largely of men who secretly engage in   
   homosexual activity while living “straight” lives in public.   
      
   It’s within that subtext that opposition researchers for Hillary   
   Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign began investigating rumors   
   that Rev. Jeremiah Wright was running a “matchmaking service”   
   for members of his Trinity United Church of Christ known as the   
   Down Low Club, which included Barack Obama.   
      
   Over the past several months, WND investigators have interviewed   
   a number of members of the church who claim the president   
   benefited from Wright’s efforts to help black men who engage in   
   homosexual activity appear respectable in black society by   
   finding them a wife.   
      
   The 2003 New York Times story, “Double Lives on the Down Low,”   
   said that though many black men reject “a gay culture they   
   perceive as white and effeminate,” they “have settled on a new   
   identity, with its own vocabulary and customs and its own name:   
   Down Low.”   
      
   The Times said that while “there are black men who are openly   
   gay, it seems that the majority of those having sex with men   
   still lead secret lives, products of a black culture that deems   
   masculinity and fatherhood as a black man’s primary   
   responsibility – and homosexuality as a white man’s perversion.”   
      
   The Down Low Club at Trinity “doesn’t have meetings, and it   
   isn’t like the Rotary Club,” a source identified for this   
   article as “Carolyn” explained to a WND investigator in Chicago.   
      
   “It was more that Wright served as a matchmaker,” said Carolyn,   
   a 20-year member of Trinity who has played a role in church   
   administration and knows the Obamas personally.   
      
   “He kept his eye on the young guys coming up in Trinity,” she   
   said, “and if he spotted someone that acted or looked gay, then   
   Wright would give them kind of a guidance counselor-type   
   direction on how to keep down low – how to do the things they   
   wanted to do, but then also getting married and looking   
   ‘respectable’ – being part of black society.”   
      
   To Trinity insiders, the Down Low Club was simply known as “the   
   program.”   
      
   “That’s the terminology. At Trinity, you’re urged to ‘get with   
   the program,’” explained a male beneficiary of the Down Low   
   Club. “What that means is it’s OK to go ahead and have sex with   
   men, just as long as you ‘get with the program’ and marry a   
   woman, somebody no straight guy would want to marry.”   
      
   The wife, the Down Low Club member explained, is “your ‘beard,’   
   your cover – so you can look like you’re living a straight life,   
   even though you’re not.”   
      
   The male source was a “computer consultant” who claims not to   
   know “scratch” about computers. But “getting with the program”   
   at Trinity meant he could keep living a “gay” life and receive   
   lots of computer consulting work thrown his way by Trinity, as   
   long as he was willing to marry an unattractive woman who   
   otherwise might have ended up a lonely spinster with no means to   
   provide for living.   
      
   Carolyn explained that for many black families, attending   
   Trinity was a way out of poverty.   
      
   “Trinity was a chance to network,” she said. “The stuff preached   
   was hateful, but about 70 percent of those who go there ignore   
   the radical rhetoric and just trying to get ahead.”   
      
   Carolyn said Trinity “helped a lot of blacks get successful and   
   connected.”   
      
   “That’s what Wright did for Obama,” she claimed. “He connected   
   Obama in the community, and he helped Obama hide his   
   homosexuality.”   
      
   Openly homosexual author and commentator Keith Boykin, a former   
   White House adviser to President Bill Clinton, mentions Obama’s   
   former pastor, Wright, on pages 264-265 of his 2005 book “Beyond   
   the Down Low: Sex, Lies, and Denial in Black America.” While   
   Boykin doesn’t refer to the Down Low Club by name, he regards   
   Wright as among a small group of ministers who are “coming to   
   grips with sexuality and opening up a dialogue with   
   heterosexuals, homosexuals, and bisexuals in the pews.”   
      
   Chicago-based author, businessman, speaker and HIV/AIDS activist   
   J.L. King wrote a controversial book in 2005 called “On the Down   
   Low: A Journey into the Lives of ‘Straight’ Black Men who Sleep   
   with Men.”   
      
   He was a guest on Oprah Winfrey’s Chicago-based TV show in 2004,   
   which described him this way: “J.L. King had a life most would   
   envy. He married his high school sweetheart, had two healthy   
   children and was on the fast track to success. But, unbeknownst   
   to his family and friends, he had a dark secret—he was living on   
   the down low.”   
      
   Remember the choir director   
      
   Carolyn and the other members of Trinity who provided statements   
   corroborating her testimony were insistent that WND conceal   
   their identities as a condition of being interviewed.   
      
   “I’m still scared to discuss any of this,” Carolyn said.   
      
   “At Trinity, if you even hint at talking about Obama being gay,   
   you are reminded of our dear departed choir director,” she said.   
   “He was killed, and it wasn’t a robbery. The Christmas presents   
   weren’t touched. The TV was not taken, nothing in the apartment   
   was missing.”   
      
   Carolyn’s reference was to Donald Young, the 47-year-old   
   homosexual choirmaster at Trinity who died of multiple gunshot   
   wounds in his Chicago apartment Dec. 24, 2007.   
      
   Young’s murder was preceded Nov. 17, 2007, with the execution-   
   style murder of 25-year-old Larry Bland, another black gay   
   member of Trinity United. He also was murdered in his home,   
   dying of multiple gunshot wounds, according to his death   
   certificate.   
      
   Just two days after the murder of Young, a third openly “gay”   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)