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| Charles Keener, of the National City Christian Church’s
Celebration of the Spirit Coalition, said gay rights advocates should not allow
opponents to have a monopoly on faith.
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HOME > NEWS > NATIONAL NEWS
By: JOE CREA COMMENTS
Editors’ note: This is the third
of a continuing series of articles examining similarities and differences between
the African-American civil rights movement and the gay rights movement.
In the debate over marriage for same-sex couples, evangelicals typically couch
their opposition to gay marriage in religious terms.
In “Eleven Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage,” Rev. James Dobson,
founder of the Colorado-based Focus on the Family, writes that the family “has
been God’s primary vehicle for evangelism since the beginning” and
if the traditional family lineup is changed, over time “that responsibility
to teach the next generation will never recover from the loss of committed,
God-fearing families.”
“The younger generation and those yet to come will be deprived of the
Good News,” Dobson argues.
Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.), chief sponsor of the Federal Marriage
Amendment in the House, said in an August 2003 Agape Press report that religion
motivates the debate over the FMA, which seeks to ban gay marriage in the U.S.
Constitution.
The FMA was defeated by both House and Senate, but Karl Rove, President Bush’s
chief political adviser, said Sunday that Bush will renew his call to ban same-sex
marriage via constitutional amendment.
“I am a Christian and I have a Christian worldview, but I think we should
be aware that all of the world’s major religions — not just Christianity,
not just Judaism — define marriage as a union between a man and a woman,”
Musgrave said.
Earlier this year as the Massachusetts Legislature held contentious debates
over a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in that state,
many religious leaders — particularly black pastors — often injected
religion into their arguments against marriage rights for same-sex couples.
Rev. Gregory G. Groover Sr., pastor of Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal
Church in Boston told the Boston Globe in February, “As black preachers
… our first call is to hear the voice of God in our Scriptures, and where
an issue clearly contradicts our understanding of Scripture, we have to apply
that understanding.”
Religion played a similar role during the African-American civil rights struggle
in the 1950s and ‘60s. Both sides used religion to deny or support civil
equality for blacks.
Despite attacks by social conservatives who often invoke the Bible to justify
their opposition to gay marriage rights, a growing number of gays and progressive
religious groups want to see religion become a part of the argument for marriage
equality, similar to the way it was used to argue for African-American rights
in the last century.
“You don’t have a choice when the other side continually invokes
religion and acts as if they have a monopoly on faith. One can’t remain
silent in the face of that,” said Charles Keener of the National City
Christian Church/Celebration of the Spirit Coalition. “Not all people
of faith believe gay marriage is against the Bible or that all communities of
faith are opponents of justice for the gay community.”
During the African-American civil rights struggle, the progressives used religion
as a way to advance their case for equality long before the boycotts and sit-ins.
Mandy Carter, one of the founding members of the National Black Justice Coalition,
said that one of the reasons the church played such a pivotal role in the struggle
for African-American equality was because it was the one place where blacks
could go to have a sense of community.
“The church didn’t have control of our life, that is why —
culturally and organizationally — the church played such a pivotal role,”
Carter said. “That legacy has not ended.”
But the effort is complicated for gays who — unlike African Americans
in the last century — are not united by one church. Many gays feel disenfranchised
and don’t belong to a church at all, while others are spread through many
different denominations, whereas blacks attended black churches, said Mary A.
Tolbert, executive director of the Center for Lesbian & Gay Studies in Religion
& Ministry at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, Calif.
“The critical mass is not nearly as great as it was for black churches,”
Tolbert said. “On the other hand, there is much organizing going on amongst
gay members of faith but it’s ...
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