Refrocked Republicans on same-sex marriage

A coalition of Black pentecostal & evangelical Republican ministers held a press conference today in Washington, DC, to announce a national campaign opposing Obama’s reelection because of his opportunist support for same-sex marriage. One could hardly believe one’s ears at the vitriol spewing from the mouth of Rev. Williams Owens, the head of this ungodly alliance; I had to wash my own mouth out with soap at the imprecations I sputtered in response. One of these reverends (Dean Nelson, who undoubtedly got the honorific from a correspondence course) is the director of the deceitfully named Frederick Douglass Foundation whose banner is “Devoted Christians - Proud Americans - Active Republicans". Douglass was an escaped slave & an uncompromising advocate of equality for all, including Blacks, women, Native Americans, immigrants who would turn over in his grave if he knew his name was now being used to deny civil rights to homosexuals. Rev. Owens who heads this new Coalition of African American Pastors, said they based their campaign on the biblical view of marriage, equated homosexuality to pedophilia, & called it outrageous to equate civil rights for gays with those of Blacks. A Black woman reporter asked the Rev his views on the polygamy of Abraham in the Bible. Our man sputtered, refused to answer her persistent queries, & likely would have called for the stoning of this insubordinate woman if he thought he could get away it. What this unseemly lot of reverends (so-called) willfully ignore is that the very arguments used against same-sex marriage mirror those used over five decades ago against marriage between whites & any non-whites. The trial judge in the civil rights case upholding felony charges of miscegenation against Mildred & Richard Loving said in his 1959 ruling, “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay & red, & he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” This cynical campaign is nothing but a divide & conquer scheme to separate the Black community, long under siege economically & politically, from their natural allies--not to mention homosexual members of their own community. Every time this disreputable lot of refrocked Republicans show up in your town, show up with your own banners declaring your support for civil rights for LGBTs--in the spirit of Frederick Douglass. (Photo of the Rev Owens)