by Charing Ball
I always wondered what Martin Luther King Jr. would have thought about the fight to legalize same-sex marriages?
Many liberals and left leaning activist might argue that the famed civil rights leader would have been front and center opposing the recent attempts to ban same-sex marriages, viewing today’s battle as an extension of the civil rights movement. However, in all respects, King Jr. was very conservative in his beliefs and while he fought bravely against race and gender discrimination and oppression, nowhere in his writings did he mentioned explicitly his stances on whether or not gay rights were a matter of civil rights. Surely gay rights had to be as much as an issue in the 60s as they are today.
And while we’ll never know the answer to King’s stance for sure, we do know that the King family itself has been split for years over the idea of gay rights, particularly same-sex marriage, and whether the civil rights leader would have championed the cause of the full acceptance and equality of access for GLBT persons.
Back in 2005, King’s youngest daughter, Bernice King, publicly organized support for the proposed George W. Bush constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage even as Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin and mother to Bernice, made a point to call gay marriage a civil rights issue.
And just yesterday, a video of Alveda King, the conservative activist niece of Martin Luther King Jr., surfaced of her speaking at the National Organization for Marriage rally in Atlanta this weekend, in which she had not only equated gay marriage to a genocide but also stated that “marriage between one man and one woman remains the guard against human extinction.”
In an interview after the rally in which a teary-eyed interviewer asked Alveda whether or not Coretta’s views on gay marriage would have mimicked that of the late King Jr., Alveda remarked that her views come from God and the natural law and that “She (Coretta) was married to him (Martin Luther King, Jr.). I’ve got his DNA. She doesn’t. She didn’t. She’s passed.”
Does anyone else note the irony of Alveda, a divorcee herself, critical of Coretta for “only being married” to MLK Jr., while campaigning for the sanctity of marriage? Bad blood and twisted logic aside, as dysfunctional as the King family may seem on the issue, so goes the African American community as a whole.
According to a recent survey on gay marriage in California, conducted just a couple of weeks before the high courts had overturned the Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage, 60 percent of African Americans responders did not believe that gay marriage should be legal. This sentiment is probably representative of African Americans as a whole including President Obama, who may have opposed Proposition 8 on the merit of discrimination but has gone on record to say that he does not support gay marriage, in general.
Part of this paradox really comes down to what in many black folks’ minds is viewed as morally true and that is homosexuality is wrong and marriage is between a man and a woman. This persistent morality is deep-seated in not only the Christianity but other religious institutions frequented by the black community. As stated by Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr., Chairman of the High Impact Leadership Coalition, in a recent op-ed for CNN, “It is not bigotry, it is biology that discriminates between same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples.”
He also argues that same-sex marriage would not only threaten the sanctity of traditional marriage but would also condemn those who believe otherwise of being “akin to the racists of history, who opposed interracial marriage and supported slavery.”
While the Bishop is correct in that two people of opposite sex are needed for procreation purposes (that is until science has perfected a way to do so otherwise), he would be hard-pressed to explain how that particular belief has been parallel to our collective reality, in particular why the Black community is mostly headed by single parent households and the divorce rate amongst African Americans is almost double that of our white counterparts. That point can’t be attributed to the push for equality for the gay community.
And while I am vehemently opposed to the likening of gay rights to the civil rights movement as I believe there has never been an effort to create a subordinate class subject to exploitation based on sexual orientation, I certainly would not deny any person, regardless of sexual orientation, the human dignity and the right to live as they are.
The fight for parity for the GLBT community is a fight to be free from discrimination, which should be considered a universal entitlement that has been allotted through citizenship by various laws and the U.S. Constitution. And while Bishop Jackson, Alveda King and many others may be guided by their religion and moral beliefs, thankfully we live in a country that also supports the idea of the separation of church and state as well as equal rights for all.
