Gay-rights advocates have challenged African Americans to see the homosexual-marriage struggle as a modern-day civil-rights cause. And the timing for an open discussion or vote by the nation's premier civil-rights organization seems perfect: The U.S. Senate is debating the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would define marriage as solely a heterosexual institution.
But no one pushed to have the issue aired at the convention, said NAACP board chairman Julian Bond. And he, for one, is just as happy.
"It would be a healthy discussion to have," Bond said in a telephone interview. "But I would be fearful of what might happen" because "it very well could" cause moments of rancor - and a vote he would regret.
In his case, that would be a vote against same-sex rights.
Bond is a staunch supporter of gay civil rights, yet he knows that antipathy to same-sex marriage is widespread among African Americans, and may be roiling beneath the NAACP's official silence.
A national poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in November found that 60 percent of black respondents opposed gay marriage. A December New York Times poll put the figure at 75 percent. The Pew poll found blacks less inclined than whites or Hispanics to support gay marriage, with just 28 percent in favor.
Bond is in the front rank of African American leaders who affirm gay marriage as a civil right and defy what he calls "the biblical literalists" who find homosexuality sinful. Standing with him are civil-rights icons Coretta Scott King and U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D., Ga.), the Rev. Al Sharpton and former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, former surgeon general Joycelyn Elders, actress Whoopi Goldberg, and the Rev. William Sinkford, head of the Unitarian Universalist Association.
In February, when President Bush threw his support behind the federal amendment, Bond declared that opposition to gay marriage "is couched in much of the same language as opposition to interracial marriage once was. 'This will destroy the moral fiber of the country, and it will undermine existing, established institutions and organizations.'... It was bogus then, and it's bogus now."
Without a formal board or membership position on gay-rights issues, Bond and the NAACP national staff have discretion to speak out as they see fit. With that authority, he and Washington bureau director Hilary Shelton have lobbied against federal and state marriage amendments, which they see as "writing bigotry into the Constitution" by "singling out a class of citizens and denigrating them."
Still, they have made their case carefully. As Bond wrote to black legislators in three Southern states considering marriage amendments: "We [NAACP leaders] do not take a position for or against same-sex marriage. People of good will can and do have heartfelt differences on this question. But we believe there are right and wrong ways to address policy questions - a constitutional amendment is the wrong way."
Claiming too broad a mandate for gay rights, Bond realizes, could blow up in his face.
"So far, there is no pressure from our grassroots or board members saying 'Let's vote on this,' " he said. "I generally can predict how my board feels about most civil-rights issues, but I'm not sure they think this is a civil-rights issue, so frankly I'm not sure how an up-and-down vote would fare."
He said he had seen legislators who initially fought state marriage amendments "cave in" when conservative clergy members "came out in force" for the proposals.
In the same way, he said, he worries that moderate clergy in the NAACP "are frightened into silence" by religious conservatives.
Since the gay-marriage furor came to a head last year in Massachusetts, much of the black clergy has been at the forefront of the opposition. To them, gay unions undermine a divinely inspired institution.
"We believe that we are faced with a challenge: God versus same-sex marriage," Bishop Paul Morton of the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship declared May 17, as he stood on Capitol Hill with other black clergy. "We represent God. We will not compromise in that area."
On Wednesday, delegates at the national convention of the 2.5 million-member African Methodist Episcopal denomination voted unanimously to forbid its ministers from performing same-sex unions.
Across the country, interdenominational coalitions of black clergy have held rallies, issued statements, and lobbied legislators. At a May rally in Texas, the Rev. Dwight McKissic, president of a Baptist pastors conference, declared that "the church of the living God cannot allow the gay-rights movement to hitch itself to the civil-rights movement without first putting up a fight."
Comparing the two movements, McKissic said, "is to compare my skin with their sin" and is "offensive and racist."
One group resisting that thinking is the National Black Justice Coalition, a new gay caucus that is setting up an information booth at the NAACP convention.
Alexander Robinson, strategic director of the New York-based group, said about a dozen members would attend workshops to "provide visibility" and discuss strategies for stopping state marriage amendments.
"We understand an educational process needs to happen," Robinson said. The amendments, he said, grow out of a "misguided fear" that gays want to force congregations "to change their beliefs and sanction same-sex marriage... . We are only seeking civil marriage, not religious marriage."
Bond said he encouraged the group to set up shop at the convention, and he continues to speak out on the subject. In an essay in the current issue of Ebony magazine, he writes, "Like race, our sexuality isn't a preference - it is immutable, unchangeable, and the Constitution protects us all against prejudices and discrimination based on immutable differences."
Bond, 64, was educated at the Quakers' George School in Bucks County, but he said he had been "unchurched" as an adult. His ardent support of gay rights, he said, was shaped by "many friends over the years who have been gay and/or lesbian, including many who were active in the '60s civil-rights movement with me... . How could anyone deny those who suffered and sacrificed the rights we won together?"
The Rev. Julius Caesar Hope, a Detroit pastor who heads the NAACP's religious-affairs department, issued a caution. Bond "has a right to speak out," Hope said, but traditionalists in the organization are "staunchly opposed" to gay marriage and regard homosexuality, as Hope does, "as a disease."
The NAACP "will have to take a position sooner or later," Hope said, because "a lot of people are guided by what we do and say." But a resolution to back gay marriage "would make some serious problems. I would think the membership would be overwhelmingly against, based on our tradition in the black community."
Bond doesn't want to test that sentiment, saying, "I'm just as happy for the moment not to upset the status quo."
Posted by on July 13, 2004 at 07:07 PM
