Pastors Continue to Lobby for the Right to Preach Hate

There was a report in Friday's USA Today about another organized attempt by church pastors to block passage of the Matthew Shepard Bill (the hate crime legislation already passed by the House of Representative) by the U. S. Senate, claiming that their rights to preach against homosexuality would be jeopardized.

Today, (Minister Harry)Jackson, pastor of the Hope Christian Church in Lanham, Md., leads a movement against what gay activists say is their civil rights act: the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007.

Jackson and more than 30 ministers say the law could prevent clergy from doing what their civil rights forebears did: preach against immoral acts. "We believe there is an anti-Christian muzzle-the-pastor kind of feeling behind this kind of law," Jackson says. "I need to be able to preach that adultery, fornication, straying from the way of the Lord is wrong."

Proponents of the bill, which would increase penalties for attacks on gays motivated by the person's sexual orientation, say Jackson's position is nonsense.

"They cannot be more protected than they are … to do that because (the bill) reiterates their right to say what they want to say," says Harry Knox, director of the religion and faith program at the Human Rights Campaign, a gay advocacy group in Washington that is pushing for the law. Jackson's argument "is a lie, and it should not be told in the name of the Gospel," he said.

Jackson says the number of incidents involving gays "don't rise to the level of murder and lynchings that happened to black people."

"I'm outraged by the fact that they get to ride on and hijack the civil rights movement," Jackson says. "I believe that much of the gay movement is a matter of choice vs. what my father went through. He couldn't change the color of his skin."

(Mark) Potok (of the Southern Poverty Law Center) says the issue is not an "either/or" choice between blacks and gays.

"Homosexuals in this country have been badly treated for hundreds of years," he says. "Nothing about that fact takes anything away from African-Americans in this country."

Jackson's comments reek of ignorance and, in my opinion, jealousy. He represents a feeling I've heard from other African-Americans that GLBT activists are drawing paralells to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's, upset that "their turf" is being stepped on, as if they were the only minority that could mount a campaign for equal rights. This is defended by the supposed difference that African-Americans were born with dark skin while homosexuals made a "lifestyle choice." Que the ignorance.

It continues to grieve me as a Christian that men of the cloth are aggressively campaigning against legislation that would put GLBT people under the same umbrella that helps protect their churches and, for the African-Americans, doubly because of their skin color. I abhor violent acts committed against people or groups because of their religion (isn't that a choice?) or their skin color, or their sexual orientation.

I also abhor misinformation being preached in God's name and receiving national media attention, which if course the whole idea. Jesus never misrepresented Himself or anything about His Father while on Earth, so I can't imagine He finds this and other initiatives that push hate and bigotry in His name very pleasing.