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August 21, 2020

Who is Mark Charles?

Mark Charles is, first of all, of Navajo and Dutch Anglo parentage. I've never met him personally, but as he, like I, grew up in the Gallup, New Mexico, famed in song and story, I know his background.

That background includes attending a private Christian school.

(Took me several minutes of teh Google to find his age. He's seven years younger than me, and since I left Gallup after my sophomore year in high school, and I went to the hospital run by the Christian Reformed more than once before that, it's possible I saw him sometime in my childhood life, but at a minimum, again, I have a feeling for his background.)

So, let's look more at the 2020 independent presidential candidate.

Charles is smooth, and slick enough to be releasing a policy piece a week at his campaign website, but, other than to be an independent candidate and, I believe, the first American Indian to run for prez, not veep, I see nothing, other than a point here and there specifically on American Indian rights and issues, that differentiates him from any Green. He's certainly not further left that that. And, as a former pastor in the Christian Reformed Church, and who still has ties to a conservative Calvinist seminary of that officially anti-gay church, I have other concerns. One is that the CRC is still officially anti-gay.

To put it another way? The CRC is the denominational home of the DeVos family, as in Betsy DeVos, Trump's Secretary of Education, daughter in law of Dick DeVos of Amway founding fame and married to his namesake son.

The denomination, while not quite wingnut, is conservative. Besides being anti-gay, per Wiki's link opposing being "actively homosexual," detailed here, it also:
Believes in an infallible bible;
Is anti-abortion;
Is "interesting" on labor unions;
Is anti-Masonic.

I tweeted Charles, asking his personal stance on gay rights issues given his CRC connections. No response.That said, his position paper on "gender equality" on his website has among the fullest abbreviation salad I've yet seen of gender groups (So, in THAT case, why does the CRC let him maintain the connections he does? He is violating church doctrine.)

I tweeted him again a week later, having seen Texas Green Party co-chair Laura Palmer retweet (presumably favorably, related to basic income) a tweet of his. Raised the CRC angle. No response. As for Palmer, nothing new here. She bromanced Yang, then Tulsi, during Dem primaries.

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