Sandi Patty
We received a message last night from a member of the Turtle Creek Chorale calling our attention to the appearance of gospel singer Sandi Patty’s name on a list of speakers and VIPs at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s ongoing Road to Majority Conference in Washington, D.C.
The Faith and Freedom Coalition is headed by former moral majority leader Ralph Reed, and the conference is being headlined by the likes of Sarah Palin, Sen. Ted Cruz and Brian Brown of the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage.
According to ThinkProgress, the three-day conference will include “a massive lobbying effort including hundreds of Tea Party evangelicals knocking on the doors of their U.S. senators and congressmen today, demanding a replacement law for what most expects to be a Supreme Court ruling that DOMA is unconstitutional.”
Patty, a five-time Grammy Award winner, is scheduled to join the chorale next Thursday for “Inspiration & Hope,” a one-night-only concert at the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas — which brings us back to the message from the TCC member, who asked to remain anonymous.
“The TCC is set to sing next Thursday with Sandi Patty, even as her name appears on the list in this article,” he wrote. “There is quite a conversation going on today among the members.”
We reached out to outgoing TCC executive director David Fisher, who began by correcting our assertion that TCC is a “gay” chorus.
“We have gay and straight. We have Democrat and Republican. We have evangelical and Catholic and atheist and Buddhist and probably a Hindu in there somewhere,” Fisher said. “We have all faiths, colors, ages and sexual orientations in the chorus. The unifying fact among all it that we sing, we make music together, and that is what we are going to do with Sandi Patty. The chorale has always been about building bridges between communities and being a symbol of solidarity and unity and finding our commonalities rather than focusing on our differences.”
Fisher said he doesn’t know the details of why Patty’s name appears on the list for the Road to Majority conference. An online search reveals that she regularly performs at tea party events, but she also apparently has her share of gay fans — and we could find no record of her doing anything explicitly anti-gay.
Fisher said when TCC booked Patty for the paid gig, “We certainly knew that she had a devoted fan base that was different than our core base.” But he added, “She obviously is making a statement by coming and singing with us.” Fisher said he assumes Patty knows TCC is a predominantly gay chorus although he hasn’t discussed the fact with her.
Fisher acknowledged that Patty’s appearance has generated some discussion on the chorale’s internal Facebook page in response to a post by a member this morning. But he said discussion is good and compared it to when the chorale appeared with former first lady Laura Bush last year.
“We have a history of working with and sharing the stage with other communities, other people, and we believe that by finding that commonality, by finding that unity — the thing we share is music — that we bring people together and we open people’s minds,” he said. “There will be people at this concert who are coming just to see Sandi Patty, but they’ll hear the marvelous music we make, and they may hear that, ‘Oh my word, some of those guys are gay.’ And perhaps it will change their mind.”
We’ve also reached out to Patty’s publicist, and we’ll update if we hear back.
