President Obama’s declaration of support formarriage equality has created an uproar in Christian communities across America, and nowhere more poignantly than in the Black Church where the President is largely admired, but which has traditionally been more socially conservative on issues of sexuality.
Many African American leaders have come out strongly in support of same-sex marriage and the president as a fundamental issue of justice and civil rights. The NAACP made the decision to support marriage equality with the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Roslyn M. Brock, stating: “The mission of the NAACP has always been to ensure the political, social and economic equality of all people.
We have and will oppose efforts to codify discrimination into law.”
Likewise, Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III, said to his church: The question I believe we should pose to our congregations is, “Should all Americans have the same civil rights?”
Of course, many black Christian leaders are pushing back against the president and his “slap in the face of black clergy” and “declaration of political war against the venerable institution of marriage,” according to Bishop Harry Jackson.
Recently, and not surprisingly, the emotional battle over LGBT rights has focused on America’s moral giant Martin Luther King, Jr. and the question: “What Would Martin Do?”
A recent press release from Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King, Jr., came with the Headline: “My Uncle Martin Luther King, Jr. Did Not March For Same Sex Marriage.” And MLK’s daughter, Bernice King, famously said in a 2004 march against same-sex marriage with the now disgraced Eddie Long “”I know deep down in my sanctified soul that he [Dr. King] did not take a bullet for same-sex marriage.”
The only time King publicly mentions homosexuality was in 1958 while answering a question in his advice column in Ebony magazine in which a boy asked:
“I am a boy. But I feel about boys the way I ought to feel about girls. I don’t want my parents to know about me.
What can I do?”
King answered: “Your problem is not at all an uncommon one. However, it does require careful attention. The type of feeling that you have toward boys is probably not an innate tendency, but something that has been culturally acquired. You are already on the right road toward a solution, since you honestly recognize the problem and have a desire to solve it.
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Professor Michael Long, who is the editor of “I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life in Letters” explains that King’s response was notable for how temperate it was given that during this time LGBT people were commonly referred to as perverts and sociopaths by religious leaders such as Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and Billy Graham.
However, Long is clear that King did not ever publicly proclaim or embrace the views that fuels the modern LGBT civil rights movement. In fact, King remained silent during the beginnings of thehomophile movement of the ’50s which, at the time, was taking inspiration from the black civil rights movement.
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