Julian Bond, the revered civil rights activist and protégé of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., famously boycotted the funeral of King widow Coretta Scott King in 2006 because the mega church chosen by her children was anti-gay.
So when he put together an LGBT workshop on July 15 at the NAACP’s 104th Annual at the Orange County Convention Center, all of the participating panelists were passionately in favor of LGBT rights.
“We believe it’s a human right to marry the person you love,” Bond said. “This is a fight for civil rights.”
When a self-ascribed anti-gay audience member accused Bond, 73, of not providing both sides of the debate on “The Christian Case for Marriage: Why All Marriages are Created Equal,” he and other panels members urged attendees to state their minds. And they did.
What followed was a dynamic three-plus hour discussion on issues surrounding gay rights, same sex marriage and religion in the black community. It began with a discussion on Bible verses that conservative Christians often use to defend the point of view that same sex marriage is a sin.
“You can use sacred texts to support slavery, violence against women and a whole host of ideas that don’t belong in modern times,” said Amos Brown, with the NAACP National Board in San Francisco. “You need to make the effort to think for yourself and not allow yourself to be imprisoned by the oppressive side of Christian culture.”
Bond, who served as Chairman of the NAACP from 1998-2010, reminded attendees that the NAACP board voted to endorse same sex marriage in June 2012, a week after President Obama’s endorsement. The Coalition of African American Pastors protested that decision, criticizing the NAACP for abandoning its core mission.
Bishop Othal Lakey, of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Troy, Va., said he followed the anti-gay stance of many churches until a gay parishioner approached him and asked why he should be treated differently by his place of worship.
Lakey subsequently researched and wrote the book Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered: An Analysis of Homosexuality and the Black Church. He said black men often hold onto their manhood as a symbol of power in a society that has been oppressive them and that there is a fear that being gay is a threat to that power.
“We need to have a dialogue about the difference between rights and what is right,” Lakey said. “People have the right to love whomever they want to love.”
Rev. MacArthur Flournoy, Director of Religious Partnerships for the Human Rights Council and Sharon J. Letterman-Hicks, Executive Director of the National Black Justice Coalition, warned the audience that conservative groups use same sex-marriage to create a wedge in the black community.
“Our own community treats us as second class citizens,” Flournoy said. “That’s reminiscent of segregation where there were two water fountains-one for the coloreds and one for the whites-or two bathrooms-one for the coloreds and one for the whites. We can’t let that happen.”
The event, sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Black Justice Coalition, also included Bishop Allyson D. Nelson Abrams, of Zion Progressive Baptist Church in Detroit, and Rev. Dr. Christine Willey, of the Covenant Baptist United Church of Washington D.C.
