Southern Baptists have just passed a resolution declaring their regret "that homosexual rights activists and those who are promoting the recognition of 'same-sex marriage' have misappropriated the rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement." However reasonable it may sound, the resolution reveals a basic failure to understand the language of freedom used by Martin Luther King, Jr., the de facto leader of the modern civil rights movement.
King commented on homosexuality in an advice column he penned for Ebony magazine in 1958. A young man had written him for advice about homosexual feelings he was struggling with, and King replied that he considered such feelings to be problematic, "probably not innate," and in need of psychiatric care.
That's not exactly the type of rhetoric that fuels so many who support same-sex marriages -- the conviction that homosexuality is an immutable characteristic, similar to left-handedness or the color of one's skin.
Unfortunately, too, that's all King ever stated, at least in public. As psychiatrists decoupled homosexuality from pathology, as progressive Christians depicted homosexuality as a gift from God, and as national headlines reported on gay rights pioneers marching on the White House -- all during his lifetime -- King remained deafeningly silent on homosexuality and gay rights.
Yes, some observers point to the presence of the openly gay Bayard Rustin in his inner circle as evidence that King was gay-friendly even if his public rhetoric did not indicate as much. But in 1960 King cut his formal ties to the brilliant strategist after Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., of Harlem had threatened to tell the media that King and Rustin were having a gay affair. Even though the threat was hollow, King was terrified of such negative publicity, and so he banished Rustin for a few years.
The historical evidence is actually quite clear: The public rhetoric of Martin Luther King, Jr., never welcomed gays at the front gate of his beloved community.
But this does not mean that it is right for Southern Baptists to fault homosexual rights activists for appropriating the rhetoric of the civil rights movement led by King. For though he never welcomed gays at the front gate of the beloved community, King certainly left behind a rhetorical key -- his expressed belief that the government has no compelling reason to abridge or deny an adult's freedom to love and marry whomever he or she chooses.
King articulated this prophetic principle of freedom in a 1958 interview that addressed interracial marriage. "When any society says that I cannot marry a certain person, that society has cut off a segment of my freedom," King stated. "It hasn't given me the possibility of alternatives."
Because he left his rhetoric of freedom unqualified, its implications remain potentially explosive, able to extend far beyond issues of color and ethnicity. Indeed, by implication, King's principle of freedom can easily extend to gays and lesbians, just as it can to all other adults, simply by virtue of their humanity -- their God-given freedom as individuals to love and marry whomever they desire.
King never stated this about gays. Unfortunately, he was too prejudiced to see or at least articulate the implications of his own rhetoric. Just like the slave-owner Thomas Jefferson, King expressed a philosophy whose full importance he never quite grasped, let alone enacted.
But just as King took Jefferson's words in the Declaration of Independence more seriously than the prejudiced founding father himself did, we can take King's rhetoric of freedom more seriously than the civil rights leader himself ever did -- and rightly celebrate adult gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender individuals who simply want to be free to love and marry without discrimination.
What better way to honor the rhetoric of freedom expressed by a black Baptist preacher who gave his life while trying to ensure that all of us would get to the Promised Land?
Paul Brandeis Raushenbush: Religious People Celebrate LGBT Pride
Warren Throckmorton, Ph.D.: Thomas Jefferson: American Enigma
JamieAnn Meyers: Lutherans for Full LGBT Participation
And really, why do you have to trample on a man's grave like this? Calling MLK and Jefferson bigots doesn't really help your cause. They were products of their time. For all we know, the next generation could be calling us bigots for not accepting adultery or the next trendy thing.
Ultimately, we will never know what trajectory MLK's thoughts on human sexuality would take were his life not cut short. However, it is quite safe to say that he would have come out on the side of supportiveness to the point of the same rights and freedoms that heterosexuals enjoy.
There are legal hurdles that are practically identical and the comparisons are unavoidable, particularly on the marriage issue which is the hottest topic of debate. Would we be having this same discussion if we refer to a woman's right to vote as a 'civil right'? Jews and Catholics were denied the right to vote in some states at one time, this was also a civil rights issue.
No one is claiming that LGBT people are suffering today in the same way that African Americans suffered in the 1950s and 60s and the centuries prior, or that we have ever suffered in the same way. This does not discount our own history of oppression which many people are unaware of. It's been a struggle for civil rights, this is simply a fact.
LGBT people were treated brutally as sex criminals in the 1950s if they were caught, women were largely powerless over this society's misogyny and African Americans went through hell; subjected to violence, murder and economic suppression. We have made a lot of progress but LGBT people still do not have equal rights under the law. The Southern Baptists are trying desperately to make their bigotry against LGBT people acceptable by using this divisive controversy.
I do fault the Southern Baptists for their position however. They seem to be under the impression that black people somehow "own" civil rights. I think a big part of that comes from their chosen religious beliefs that condemn homosexuality. So obviously, for them, equating rights for homosexuals to black people is offensive. I would like to remind them that religion IS a choice. A choice that the government protects. So even if they wrongly believe that sexual orientation is a (sinful) choice, why shouldn't that choice also be protected by our government? I also fault them for not respecting our country's separation of church and state, and using their chosen religious beliefs as the basis for civil laws in our country. That sounds a lot like a theocracy, if you ask me. Something the Founding Fathers would definitely be against.
It seems to me that he was afraid to express his real beliefs due to political expediency. When Biden screwed-up, that forced his hand. I suspect Obama was going to wait until after the election to let people know of his "evolution"