Posted on 11/24/2003 2:45:58 PM PST by presidio9
Same-sex marriage is as controversial among local African-Americans as it is across the nation, but blacks are more likely than the population as a whole to oppose gay marriage, according to polls.
"I'm glad there's a separation of church and state," said the Rev. J. Anthony Lloyd of Greater Framingham Community Church. "I'm not going to marry same-sex couples in my church."
But the movement has gathered some high-profile supporters.
The two African-American candidates for president, Carol Mosely Braun of Illinois and the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York, have previously spoken in favor of the rights of gays and lesbians to marry.
U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a speaker at the historic 1963 March on Washington and one of the people on the balcony of the Memphis motel when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed, recently said he had "fought too hard and too long against discrimination based on race and color not to stand up against discrimination based on sexual orientation."
But others take offense to comparing the struggles of homosexuals to the 200-plus years of discrimination blacks have suffered in the United States.
"I think it's an afront to King and the movement he stood for to compare the two," said the Rev. Ben Marshall, a pastor at Zion MetroWest Church in the Nobscot section of Framingham.
Marshall said he would have no problem with lawmakers establishing civil unions to expand benefits to individuals, but to undo the sacred institution of marriage is wrong.
"Some say it's just a word. It's not," he said. "It's biblically and scripturally based."
Nationwide opinion polls show that 53 percent to 55 percent of Americans object to legal marriage for homosexuals. The opposition is strong among blacks, 63 percent, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll, and 64 percent according to a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Both polls were done in July.
The coalition of same-sex marriage supporters in Massachusetts is a multicultural and bipartisan group, mirroring that of the civil rights movement.
Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King Jr., defended her support in a 1998 speech saying: "I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.'"
But her grandnephew, Jarrett Ellis, takes an opposite view, writing in testimony submitted to Massachusetts House and Senate in April that "same-sex marriage is not a civil right because, simply, homosexuality is not a civil right."
In the aftermath of the Supreme Judicial Court decision last Tuesday to allow same-sex marriage, one of the critics taking part in a State House press conference of the Massachusetts Family Institute was a member of the Black Ministerial Alliance.
The BMA, a coalition of several predominately African-American churches in Boston, is fearful that same-sex marriage will increase the number of fatherless families in the black community.
Lloyd, of the Greater Framingham Community Church, said that line of argument makes perfect sense.
He believes the SJC had no other choice to rule as it did based on the narrowly defined legal question the court was asked to address, and he said he agrees that homosexuals face discrimination.
But the way to fix the problem is to change the specific laws that cause the discrimination, he said, such as the laws that prohibit hospital visitation rights for same-sex partners.
"You don't go and change marriage," he said. "One does not take and destroy the fabric of society to get what you want."
Lloyd said he, too, finds it odd that same-sex marriage supporters invoke the struggles of black Americans to defend their position.
"A vast number of folks use that argument so much to justify their struggle," he said. "The difference is our (struggle) continues."
Lloyd said that due to the experience of growing up in America, people of color are generally in tune with issues of justice and have a heart for those who are suffering.
But having a heart and supporting gay marriages are two different issues, he said.
Another layer peeling away from the Dim voter base???
The ultimate in "fuzzy math." Appealing to less than 2% of the population by alienating 12.3%....
I just made a similar remark in a different manner. Great minds... and all that.
Creepy is dumpy blobs with no contour, projection, just floppy flab.
Bullet Bras were the only style you could buy in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.
Guess you never heard of the "Sweater Girl" look or saw a glamour pin-up girl. All of the babes in WWII, Bikini Beach, Elvis movies wrore these. Go to Google and type in the word "vintage." I guess you're too young to understand. IMOHO.
Next: The fight against discrimination based on culinary preferences.
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