The Rev. Nelson B. Rivers III, the COO of the NAACP, spoke out over the weekend opposing a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in South Carolina.
Rev. Rivers, speaking at a political event in Columbia, South Carolina, said "This is not about sexual orientation or about a lifestyle, this is about fairness and equality.....Equality is what we must stand on. We cannot be afraid and surrender the higher ground for moral principal."
While not exactly an unconditional statement of support for the state's GLBT population, it is still an important step, especially in a state with one of the largest proportions of African-American residents in the United States.
With this statment, Rev. Rivers stopped well short of saying "gay is okay," but he may also have demonstrated a route than African-American fundamentalists can take to support same-sex marriage and other GLBT issues of equal treatment under the law. It appears Rivers took his church's views on homosexuality out of the equation and viewed the same-sex marriage issue strictly on its civil rights merits. Based on that, he developed a clear vision of the injustice of the constitutional amendment.
So it takes a preacher to show how to take the church out of the political process and view issues on their legal and constitutional merits.
Imagine that.
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Here's my take on that:
ReplyDeletehttp://christopher-king.blogspot.com/2006/03/king-julian-bond-and-richard-c-van.html
But Van Nostrand is a dirty little prick, IMHO, and Blogger agrees with me, reversed his ex parte-lovin' ass:
http://christopher-king.blogspot.com/2006/04/naacp-trial-american-towers-lawyer.html
http://christopher-king.blogspot.com/2006/03/american-tower-corp-got-away-with.html
Wow, I respect this fellow, even if he may not think that,"gay is OK." He actually has the cajones to stand up for the ideal of justice and equality, regardless of potential conflicts with his perception of theology.
ReplyDelete"So it takes a preacher to show how to take the church out of the political process and view issues on their legal and constitutional merits." Why not? This isn't strange at all. I'm a Christian and I believe that we have no business forcing our values on other people in any way, especially via the political system. Any religion that forces themselves on anyone is cultivating animosity towards itself.