 |
 |
| Keith Boykin, a White House aide during the Clinton administration, is a co-founder
of the National Black Justice Coalition, a group of black leaders who support
equality for gays, including marriage rights. (Photo by Michael Wise)
|
|
|
| |  |
|
|  |
|  |
|
|
| |  |
HOME > NEWS > NATIONAL NEWS
By: LOU CHIBBARO
COMMENTS
A newly formed coalition of African-American gay leaders announced plans this
week for a $100,000 media campaign to promote support in the black community
for same-sex marriage and to fight a constitutional amendment banning such marriages.
At a Dec. 8 news conference in Washington, D.C., members of the National Black
Justice Coalition said their goal, among other things, is to refute claims
by anti-gay groups that the majority of African Americans oppose same-sex marriage.
“Do not be fooled by a few recent poll numbers into thinking that marriage
will divide the black community in the upcoming election year,” said
Keith Boykin, a White House aide during the Clinton administration and co-founder
of the coalition. “We are here to correct the record in the media and
to tell the public that marriage is not a wedge issue for African Americans.”
Boykin said the coalition’s media campaign calls for raising and spending
$100,000 for advertisements targeting the African-American media and to develop
a Web site to “counter right-wing misinformation about blacks and marriage
equality.”
He said the coalition would hold future news conferences to announce new supporters
of the campaign, including prominent African-American politicians, civil rights
leaders and entertainers.
“By the beginning of the New Year, we will launch the first-ever Web
site to counter right-wing misinformation about blacks and marriage equality,” Boykin
said. “And soon after the New Year, we will be holding new events to
announce new supporters of our campaign.”
Among those who have already endorsed the coalition’s efforts and who
pledged support for same-sex marriage, according to literature released by
the coalition, are Coretta Scott King, widow of the slain civil rights leader
Martin Luther King Jr.; comedian and actress Whoopi Goldberg; Democratic presidential
candidates Carol Moseley Braun and the Rev. Al Sharpton; U.S. Rep. John Lewis
(D-Ga.); and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.
The coalition will urge all major national African-American political and civil
rights leaders along with African-American religious leaders to support the
campaign, Boykin and other coalition members said. They said the coalition
would also urge these same leaders and groups to take a strong stand
 |
| Donna Payne, senior constituency field organizer for HRC, said conservatives
are trying to use the gay marriage issue to divide the black vote in the
2004 elections. (Photo by Michael Wise) |
against
the Federal Marriage Amendment, the proposed constitutional amendment seeking
to ban same-sex marriage that lawmakers have introduced into the Senate and
House of Representatives.
“The right-wing fired the first shots in this battle, but today we fire
back,” said coalition member Donna Payne, senior constituency field organizer
for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay political group.
“Make no mistake about it,” Payne said, “the proposed constitutional
amendment is being used by the white religious right in an attempt to scare
the African-American community into voting for their ultra-conservative agenda.
“We will not allow the out-of-touch radical right to divide the black
community on this issue.”
In addition to Boykin and Payne, coalition members speaking at the news conference,
which was held at the National Press Club in downtown D.C., included the Rev.
Michaele Moore, pastor of God’s Living Spirit Church in D.C.; Mandy Carter,
gay civil rights activist and national steering committee member of Freedom
to Marry, a group coordinating efforts to legalize same-sex marriage; and Maurice
Franklin, former executive staff member of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference.
Kenneth Reeves, the former mayor and current member of the Cambridge, Mass.,
City Council, was scheduled to attend the press conference but was held over
in Boston due to a snowstorm. Reeves, an attorney, submitted a written statement
pledging his support for the coalition’s efforts on behalf of same-sex
marriage.
“Contrary to popular belief, black elected officials are not all homophobic,” Reeves
said in his statement. “In fact, the Congressional Black Caucus has been
one of the most supportive demographic groups on gay issues of any group in
the United States Congress. Now I invite and encourage the caucus members and
other black elected officials to speak out against the proposed Federal Marriage
Amendment.”
|