Alveda C. King is among the growing number of African-American leaders speaking out about President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage.
Specifically, the niece of Martin Luther King Jr. is joining black spiritual leaders in decrying the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP’s, move to give a nod to gay marriage in the United States.
The NAACP released a resolution on May 19 supporting marriage equality. At a meeting of the 103-year old civil rights group’s board of directors, the organization voted to support marriage equality as a continuation of its historic commitment to equal protection under the law.
In recent years the NAACP has taken public positions against state and federal efforts to ban the rights and privileges for LGBT citizens, including strong opposition to Proposition 8 in California, the Defense of Marriage Act and, most recently, North Carolina’s Amendment 1, which changed the state constitution’s to prohibit same sex marriage.
“Civil marriage is a civil right and a matter of civil law. The NAACP’s support for marriage equality is deeply rooted in the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and equal protection of all people,” said Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP.
“Neither my great-grandfather, an NAACP founder, my grandfather Dr. Martin Luther King Sr., an NAACP leader, my father Rev. A. D. Williams King, nor my uncle Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. embraced the homosexual agenda that the current NAACP is attempting to label as a civil rights agenda,” says King, founder of King for America and Pastoral Associate for Priests for Life.
“In the 21st century, the anti-traditional marriage community is in league with the anti-life community, and together with the NAACP and other sympathizers, they are seeking a world where homosexual marriage and abortion will supposedly set the captives free.”
Day Gardner, founder of the National Black Prolife Union, agrees. As she sees it, many black people are realizing just how far off the mark the NAACP is with regard to the real issues and the most important problems facing the black community. The NAACP organization, he says, was founded by blacks who had an understanding and strong faith in God. They were people—pastors and congregations who knew that the Bible—which is God’s final word—was indeed very clear on the immorality and wages of homosexuality and abortion.
“It is appalling that this one time super hero ‘civil rights’ organization supports the breakdown of traditional marriage and the ruthless killing of our unborn children—as a civil right,” Gardner says. “In its decision to please the world, the NAACP has turned its back on the things of God, therefore, we must encourage those who know the truth to speak out—to stand firmly on the solid rock—to not look to the right or to the left. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said: ‘Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.’”
Stephen Broden, pastor of Fair Park Bible Fellowship in Dallas, notes that the black community is suffering from soaring unemployment, an extraordinarily high rate of abortions, a high-school drop-out rate among black teenagers that is breathtaking, an exploding rate of single parent households and the decimation of black families.
Yet, Broden says, the NAACP is making statements about same-sex marriage. “The NAACP has proven again to be an irrelevant organization as it relates to issues of survival for the black community,” says Broden who co-authored Life at All Costs with King and Gardner. The book addresses issues such as abortion and homosexuality.
Clenard Childress, founder of Blackgenocide.org, points out that the homosexual community is demanding that their lifestyle be legitimized and viewed by society as a lifestyle that is right. “We are subjected to the distasteful alignment of homosexuality with the ‘Civil Rights Movement and with the argument that gay rights should be guaranteed under the Constitution,” he argues. “These two issues are incompatible.”
And Levon Yuille, pastor of The Bible Church in Ypsilanti, Mich., and founder of The National Black Prolife Congress, says his community seems to have more churches than any other community in America, described as ‘most religious,’ “but by their vote support the most anti-Christian agenda in the history of this nation, including the abortion and homosexual agenda.”
The issue of gay or homosexual marriage has divided the black community, with many religious leaders opposing it. In California, exit polls showed about 70 percent of blacks opposed same-sex marriage in 2008.
“As a person who values human life, I feel very troubled that the youngest of our communities are not guaranteed the opportunity to have their day in the sun,” Johnny Hunter, national director of Learn. “As I speak to churches over half the states in America and abroad, I have seen people weep as they are confronted with the horrors of this holocaust. Still, the destruction continues.”
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