What I am afraid of is the backlash.

What I'm afraid of is conservatives using wedge issues, like gay marriage, to divide the black vote, and the minority vote in general.  The conservatives have been digging away at the grass roots level through religious organizations, and while they've generally fallen on thier face with blacks (so far), there's no guarantee that will continue.  

If issues important to the GLBT community are going to be advanced, it's going to have to be because of ground-up work like Sharpton is doing here, not because the national Democratic Party shoves them down the throat of the country, as, ahem, some people have suggested in the past.  

I agree. Katrina blew Mehlman's little plan for increasing black Republican membership out of the water.

I think one of the biggest mistakes GLBT can make is trying to make a religious issue out of their pursuit for rights, especially since they are on the wrong side of the megahorn.

There is absolutely no way that conservative, fundamentalist, evangelical Christians are going to support their cause, because there is no way to seperate the condemnation of those behaviors from the Bible. As far as social issues go, this one has reached the point of quantum weirdness, and so a new way of approaching the subject has to be developed to remove it as a wedge issue.

It is just a bonifide fact that GLBT behavior is no more sinful than any other sexual behavior that misses the mark of Scriptural injunctions, which are widely accepted and practiced by a rather large proportion of the American population, including most Presidents and quite a few Congressmen, Preachers and Priests, who are adulterers, fornicators and Onanists, and who are not denied basic property and parental rights by the state.

So the problem isn't one of religion, but of perceptions. The left, especially, has a problem dealing with religious issues, and in fact borders on bigotry by some more fundamentalist atheists, and so these voices exacerbate the problem of opening a dialog with religious individuals. Open minds are not so ubiquitous on the left as they like to pretend, and so self delusion adds more to the religionists perception of the left being out of touch with its' espoused values, freedom of conscience and human rights.

But that is the issue, human rights. Does the state have the right to deny property, parental and other civil rights because of race, religion, color, national origin or sexual orientation? Does the state have the right to deny adulterers, fornicators and other citizens indulging in consensual adult sexual behavior these basic civil rights? At what point does the sexual behavior of any individual cross the line of acceptance? Majority rule? I don't think that is a criterion that anyone in their right mind can argue, if one can be so fortunate as to live in a dispassionate America. Unfortunately that is not the case.

Atheist and Orthodox lay Christians share a very common trait, they either have not read the Bible, or have done so once. So they are fair game for theologians and Ministers who have read it many times, and having been schooled in Neoplatonic and Phythagorian/ Stoic philosophics, to impose their views on the uneducated and ignorant. The Vatican doesn't oppose the multiverse theories of quantum mechanics because it limits God, but because it rejects Phythagorian philosophy.

Fortunately God does not work that way, and opens the Scriptures up to any who read it with an open mind seeking to find truth.

Eze 16:48-50  As I live, declares the Lord Jehovah, your sister Sodom, she and her daughters, have not done as you and your daughters have done. Behold, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and her daughters. Also, she did not strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. Also, they were haughty and did abomination before My face, so I turned them away as I saw fit.

Gen 6:4  The giants were in the earth in those days, and even afterwards when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore to them; they were heroes which existed from ancient time, the men of name.

Gen 19:1  And the two angels came into Sodom at evening. And Lot was sitting at the gate of Sodom. And Lot saw, and he rose up to meet them and bowed his face to the earth.

Gen 19:5  And they called to Lot and said to him, Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.

The commonly held view and conventional wisdom of Sodom and Gommarah is flat out wrong. That does not mean it negates the injunction against homosexuality, it merely means that homosexuality was not the primary cause of Sodom and Gomorrah's destruction, if it figured into it at all.

In the end then, the Church is under obligation to keep itself clean and free of sin, but it is not obligated to keep the state or nations free from it, anymore than the state cannot interfere in that obligation, or  one congregation can interfere in anothers obligations beyond what is counseled in the Scripture. The state then is not obligated to follow religious precepts that are detrimental to the state, especially when those precepts can be disproven as not in accordance with the Scriptures anyway.

As a Christian I am obligated to one and all to admonish them to seek out purity in heart, not just towards one another, but to yourselves as well. To my fellow Christians I urge you not to work evil towards your fellow man, as you do not know God's judgement of either they or yourself.

BKL writes
The left, especially, has a problem dealing with religious issues, and in fact borders on bigotry by some more fundamentalist atheists, and so these voices exacerbate the problem of opening a dialog with religious individuals.
Open minds are not so ubiquitous on the left as they like to pretend, and so self delusion adds more to the religionists perception of the left being out of touch with its' espoused values, freedom of conscience and human rights.

Very insightful and well put,  

Thank you.

I was pleased to read of this in the paper and happy that they are working at it, but I don't believe talking it up like the homophobia can be easily erased in the black religious community is the right way to go about this, not the least of which is the AIDS problem. There's lots of sophisticated cultural problems involved here, think of the struggle for blacks to overcome the tearing apart of the traditional family during slavey, and all the problems of "black maleness," and you can see why homophobia may be deep and that black gays and bi's will continue to closet themselves; grandma wouldn't approve.

January 21, 2006

Black Churches' Attitudes Toward Gay Parishioners Is Discussed at Conference

By NEELA BANERJEE

ATLANTA, Jan. 20 - About 150 African-American ministers and gay activists from around the country gathered here Friday to begin a two-day conference to combat what they assert is widespread prejudice against gay men and lesbians within black churches.

Though most black Christians are liberal on pocketbook issues, they are social conservatives, speakers at the conference said. Yet getting black churches to accept gay men and lesbians has gained particular urgency over the last two years, participants noted.

The high rate of H.I.V. infection among blacks stems in part, they said, from the unwillingness of black ministers to discuss sexuality. They contended that the Republican Party and white evangelical Christians attracted a small but significant number of black votes in the 2004 presidential election by arguing for a nationwide ban on same-sex marriage and appealing to their conservative mores.

"In 2004, the religious right was concerned about re-electing George W. Bush," said the Rev. Al Sharpton, who spoke at the conference held here at First Iconium Baptist Church. "They couldn't come to black churches to talk about the war, about health care, about poverty. So they did what they always do and reached for the bigotry against gay and lesbian people."

Ministers at the conference and some of their critics at other black churches agreed that getting black churches to embrace openly gay individuals would be a tough fight.

Conservative black ministers in Atlanta have so far not taken up invitations to discuss attitudes toward gay men and lesbians, said the Rev. Kenneth L. Samuel, pastor of Victory Church in nearby Stone Mountain. Moreover, ministers who are willing to preach acceptance of gay men and lesbians stand to lose many parishioners, Dr. Samuel and others said.

"This is a learning experience, and it has not been without costs," the Rev. Timothy McDonald, pastor of First Iconium, said of his decision to be host of the conference, organized by the National Black Justice Coalition, an advocacy group for gay men and lesbians based in Washington. "Have we gotten nasty phone calls? Yes. Do I have the marks to show for it? Yes. But I think Jesus took some unpopular stances, too."....

continued at link, which is a permanent archival one.

A minor quibble but when “Orthodox” is used with capitals (and applied to Christians) it designates members of one of the Eastern Orthodox churches, which is not what I think you mean here. But moreover I do not think that even small “o” orthodox works here. The problem is not abstract theology (one can find plenty of theologically orthodox folks who are not anti-gay) but rather the misuse of religion to justify a pre-conceived, learned-in-childhood bigotry.