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JOSHUA LYNSEN
Friday, July 25, 2008
Black pastor denounces ‘miseducation in the pulpit'
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Sylvia Rhue is still awed that Sen. Barack Obama broached gay rights at Ebenezer Baptist Church.
She said the nation’s first major black presidential candidate could have faced awkward silence in January when he mentioned gays at the church where Martin Luther King Jr. once preached.
“If we’re honest with ourselves,” Obama said, “we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community. If we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that there have been times when we’ve scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them.”
The lines were so well received, though, that they generated applause and were echoed in other speeches that Obama later gave.
Rhue, the National Black Justice Coalition’s religious affairs director, also noted the lines gave her and other gay activists new opportunities to plead their case to black Americans.
“It means that we’re worthy of discussion in a positive manner,” she said. “It means that we have a presidential candidate who sees the cultural shift that is leaning more toward gay rights — and that’s the future.”
Six months after Obama spoke at Ebenezer Baptist Church, gay activists are working toward making his inclusive vision a reality.
It’s not easy. Activists are challenged to surmount many prejudices, fears and misconceptions. Progress, they say, is agonizingly slow. But there is progress.
Rev. Ken Samuel, a black pastor at Victory Church near Atlanta and an outspoken proponent of gay rights, said ears that once were deaf to gay issues now are listening to carefully chosen words.
“It’s got to be addressed from an appeal to basic fairness,” he said. “If you appeal to the issue of fairness and equity, that resonates with black people, because then you can remind them how the Bible was used as a weapon against black people.”
Samuel said such considerations are spurring a growing number of black congregations to abandon “biblical literalism” and drop their attacks on homosexuality.
“What the Bible says is not erased, but put in a context,” he said. “It opens a door for black people to reinterpret what the Bible says about man laying with man in the same way we’ve had to reinterpret what the Bible has said about slaves being good to their masters.”
Activists said other arguments, such as those that focus on notions of justice and equality, also are causing some opponents of gay rights to reconsider their positions.
Rev. Larry Brumfield, a black pastor at Westminster Church of the Brethren in northern Mary-land, said black Americans should demand that gay Americans be treated equally.
Brumfield said anything less than full support is “out of tune with the experience that we have had as a people over the last 400 years in this country.”
“And by that, what I mean is we have been ostracized in the workplace and in the community,” he said. “In this culture, we have been downtrodden and been kicked around and have fought — and continue to struggle — for our rightful position in this community. To be doing the same to another community is shortsighted and a little bit self indulgent.”
Brumfield, like Samuel, said religious beliefs cannot rightly be used to justify the discrimination of gays.
He said although the Bible’s older books contain some passages that seemingly condemn same-sex relationships, Jesus, whose words in the New Testament are sometimes shown in red text, never addressed homosexuality.
“There’s nothing in any of those red letters where this was a priority to Jesus, about sexual identity or who one slept with, with respect to gender,” Brumfield said. “My position is: If it wasn’t a priority to him, it isn’t a priority to me.”
In addition to religious rebuttals, activists said education is crucial to any arguments for equality.
“The majority of the African- American community does not think about, and does not know about, the homosexual community,” said Elbridge James, director of the pro-gay Maryland Black Family Alliance. “They don’t have a clue.”
James said just as many white suburbanites understood little about black issues during the civil rights movement 50 years ago, many blacks don’t heed gay issues today.
He said such attitudes may partly explain why gay issues generally poll poorly among black Americans.
“I think if you look at the ’40s and ’50s, what white Americans thought about the rights of black Americans, you would find similar opposition,” James said.
And much like black Americans needed help to overcome “white privilege,” James said gay Americans need help to overcome “heterosexual privilege.”
“It’s the same in the black community on this issue,” he said. “It’s heterosexual privilege. They don’t think about it. They rely on their heterosexual privilege, but they don’t think about it.”
But such educational efforts, activists said, have a long way to go.
“There’s not a lot of dinner table, breakfast nook conversations that are happening about marriage in our community,” said H. Alexander Robinson, the National Black Justice Coalition’s executive director.
Part of the problem, James said, is that America is “a 30-second society.”
“We think about something for 30 seconds and then it’s gone,” he said. “So if you don’t keep affirming something and the value it has, we don’t think about it and it doesn’t exist.”
Also problematic for gay activists, James said, is that many black Americans have their attention elsewhere.
“We hear about killings, we hear about something bad happening to youth,” he said. “We hear about how young girls are sometimes being raped or going missing, about young men getting in trouble and getting shot.
“That’s in everybody’s face and it’s constantly reinforced as being important. There’s no one really picking up the banner and shouting about fairness and equality for lesbians and gay individuals and families in our community on a regular, routine basis.”
James said gay rights issues are occasionally discussed in various media outlets, “but it has to be reported on by all media at the same time for it to make an impact and for it to start a dialogue.
“The events that are happening around civil marriage in California and the dialogue that’s happening in New York is such an occurrence that’s going to force dialogue, conversations and an actual examination as to where people stand on that issue,” he said. “And that’s a good thing.”
California, which recently saw the onset of same-sex marriages, has spurred people in other states, such as New York, to reconsider how to best recognize those unions.
Robinson said the National Black Justice Coalition and other gay organizations are working with social justice groups to push for expanded recognition.
“We are partnering with the California State Conference of the NAACP to have a large community gathering and also smaller discussions at branch meetings once a month,” he said. “We’ll be there to make the case as to why excluding gay and lesbian families from marriage is, in fact, discrimination.”
James said such efforts are helping make the case for gay rights among black Americans and gaining steam.
“We’re making progress,” he said. “Fewer and fewer churches are railing against gay issues.”
Samuel said the most crucial advances, though, would only come when black gays demand equal respect and treatment for themselves and all gay Americans.
“The dialogue has begun,” he said. “And even black clerics who think that they have made the decision in their denominational meetings and in their clergy boards, in their heart of hearts, they know that this issue is not dead.
“They know as more and more black LGBT parishioners find their voice, realize their power and exercise their right to be valued, respected, embraced and affirmed in their congregations, as more and more black LGBT people find their voice and affirm their power, black ministers will have to reconsider.”
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