Oakland, Calif. -
There's a strange group trying to get lesbian Rebecca Kaplan elected mayor of Oakland, Calif., including some anti-gay black preachers who pushed hard to have the ban on gay marriage passed.
Kaplan's appeal is that she's a former rabbinical student, and quotes psalms as well as any reverend. She carries her bible with her, reports the New York Times, and she's spending a lot of time in Oakland's many black churches.
The other candidates, Don Perata and Jean Quan, are courting Oakland's religious black voters, too. But even though she's a lesbian, Kaplan seems to fit in better.
"You have got a Jewish lesbian white woman who comes to black churches and sings with the choir and quotes Scripture better than the members — I just love her," Pastor Ray Williams of First Morning Star Baptist Church told the New York Times. He was a supporter of Prop. 8, which banned gay marriage, but he's now supporting Kaplan for mayor.
Kaplan has also won over one of the city's Mormon leaders, 96-year-old Lorenzo Hoopes. He donated $26,000 to the "Yes on 8" campaign. However, after one-on-one meeting with Kaplan, he donated to her campaign as well.
"She's very well educated with her law degree, very energetic, and very well versed in religion," Hoopes told the New York Times. Her sexuality, he said, is "not a concern to me or rarely to anyone else."