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Sen. Barack Obama is in hot water over his affiliation with controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But sources say that Wright has a long record of supporting gay rights. (Photo by Trinity United Church of Christ/AP)
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HOME > NEWS > NATIONAL NEWS
By: LOU CHIBBARO J COMMENTS
 
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written at that time by Wright in The Trumpet, his church’s magazine, calling the same-sex marriage issue a distraction that diverted attention from other, more important issues such as health care and poverty.
“Are 44 million Americans with no health care insurance less important than ‘gay marriage?’ he wrote. “Why aren’t Black Christians in an uproar about that? Maybe I’m missing something.”
In a column slated to be published this week in the gay press, Monroe said Wright’s comments in the church magazine highlighted what appeared to be his decision to break ranks with “his liberal denomination to stand in solidarity with a more conservative black church position.”
Tracy Baines, editor of Windy City Times, a gay newspaper in Chicago, said Wright has never carried any religious objections to same-sex marriage into the political sphere in Illinois, where the City of Chicago and the state legislature have passed far-reaching gay rights laws.
“He has never been a barrier to gay rights at all,” Baines said.
Ben LaBolt, a spokesperson for the Obama campaign, said Obama recognizes that Wright and Trinity Church have an inclusive policy toward gays and people with HIV.
“Sen. Obama has made it clear that he views Rev. Wright as a religious adviser who introduced him to his Christian faith, not a political adviser,” LaBolt said.
Cheeks, of D.C.’s Inner Light Ministries, said Wright has championed gay rights causes by speaking out on behalf of gays in religious forums for nearly two decades, a development that Cheeks said provides a counterbalance to claims by critics that Wright has delivered divisive sermons.
In one of his sermons of the early 1990s, titled, “Good News for Homosexuals,” Wright told of how he believes God does not limit his love to heterosexuals.
“I refuse to limit my God, to lock God into my cultural understandings because culture is fickle,” Wright said. “And culture is often wrong. Culture was wrong about slavery.
Culture was wrong about women. Culture was wrong about Africans and Indians, and culture was wrong about Christ,” he said. “I have been the pariah among many of my clergy colleagues who somehow see me as defective or not quite saved because I won’t join them in their homophobic gay bashing and misquoting of scripture.”
Cheeks and Wadley, who said they have heard many of Wright’s sermons, called the criticism directed at him for his controversial, pol
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