Civil Rights Belong to All People
Recently I spent an hour talking to Rev. Eric Lee, the President and CEO of the Los Angeles Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I told him how I met Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1964, my friends and I going door to door to raise money for the cause, how we saw Dr. King every time he came to Los Angeles. We talked about how the organizers of the King Day Parade in Atlanta invited Keith Boykin (one of the founders of the National Black Justice Coalition) and I to walk at the front of the March to represent LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people. I had just been interviewed for an article on Black clergy responses to equal marriage rights for same-sex couples and I was asked how I felt about Black clergy who work against LGBT rights. I told the journalist that if he had been around in the 60’s during the Civil Rights Movement he would know that many, many Black ministers didn’t sign on to the Civil Rights Movement. In fact, Dr. King was kicked out of the National Baptist Convention for his civil rights actions.
My conversation with Rev. Eric Lee was so important to me because Rev. Lee is a champion of universal rights for all people and he puts his heart, passion for justice, and credentials out there for LGBT people in a consistently dynamic way. He was front and center in the battle against Proposition 8, wrote a book entitled Prop 8 and the California Divide, and is about to embark on a book tour. Rev. Lee said, “I cannot side with religious persecution and the injustice of discrimination. It amazes me how quickly we side with the former oppressors to oppress others. It is a violation to deny someone the same rights that you have. Scripture does not call people of God to pass laws to judge or condemn. People quote John 3:16, but they forget John 3:17 “’For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.’” (KJV)
Rev. Lee spoke recently with the man Rev. Jesse Jackson called “the teacher of the Civil Rights Movement.” Dr. King called him “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.” We know him as Rev. James Lawson, the lionized and profoundly respected Civil Rights leader who taught nonviolent direct action to the Freedom Riders, the student sit-ins and the Southern Campaigns. Rev. Lawson, a United Methodist minister, told Rev. Lee that King would stand with us if he were here. Yes, Dr. King would stand with us for LGBT rights.
Coretta King stood with us because she knew that the sustaining of the Beloved Community meant that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people must be included.
We who work for full LGBT rights stand as heirs of the Civil Rights Movement because it is based on justice, equality, fair play, equal rights and profoundly deep spiritual roots that plumb the depths of the Golden Rule. Those of us whose characters were forged in the fires of the Civil Rights Movement continue the fight. We understand the words of James Baldwin, a Black gay man, who knew all of us were “snatching our humanity from the fires of human cruelty”.
I stood with King in the 60’s and he would stand with us now because challenging homophobia is a part of the unfinished business of Civil Rights Movement.
Those who work so feverishly against LGBT rights are on the wrong side of justice, the wrong side of history, the wrong side of love, and the wrong end of the ever-bending moral arc of the universe.
Those who stand for LGBT equality understand the importance of our work when we hear the words of Dr. King: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”.
To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr: If we are wrong, then the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong the Declaration of Independence is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a Utopian dreamer and never came to earth. If we are wrong justice is a lie. And we are determined here and now to work and fight until justice runs down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Dr. Sylvia Rhue is Director of NBJC's Religious Affairs Program.
