Some Black Preachers
Embrace Homosexuality
By AP from the
NYTimes on the Web, August 1, 2005
NEW YORK -- The words that the
Rev. James A. Forbes chose to share with the roomful of black gay and lesbian
faithful might have come straight from the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.
Forbes reminded his listeners that discrimination has no place in this world and
urged them to lay down the notion put forward by some black ministers that they
are less favored by God.
''Your job is to get up every day and be grateful to God for your DNA,'' Forbes
said. ''It took an artist divine to make this design!''
Forbes, senior minister at the Riverside Church, was among several religious
leaders and politicians who attended a revival meeting Sunday aimed at
countering what organizers said was a surge in anti-gay rhetoric coming from
pulpits in conservative parishes.
The program for the event bore the pictures of 10 black men and women who were
murdered, or severely injured, in recent years in attacks believed to have been
motivated by their sexual orientation.
Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields likened the treatment of
homosexuals today to the discrimination she faced growing up black in the old
South, and Arun Gandhi, a grandson of Mohandas Gandhi, drew parallels to the
repression once experienced by nonwhite citizens in South Africa.
Religious conservatives have chafed at similar comparisons between the gay
rights movement, and civil rights struggles of the past.
The issue has been an especially sensitive one in some predominantly black
congregations, where pastors have maintained that homosexuality is a sin or a
social disorder that should not be compared with race or ethnicity.
Last winter, hundreds of black clergy attended summits aimed at opposing gay
marriage held in cities across the country. The Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr.'s youngest daughter even led a march through Atlanta to advocate a ban on
gay marriage.
Speaking at the Riverside Church, the Rev. Cari Jackson of the Center of
Spiritual Light said some conservative black clergy had, perhaps
unintentionally, incited hate against lesbians and gays by repeatedly condemning
them as sinners.
''Like our slave ancestors,'' Jackson said, ''we are being spiritually,
psychologically and physically abused.''
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