Dec 12, 2003  |  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.

Coalition to oppose FMA
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.”