From Proposition 8 to Amendment One: Black Baptists, Same-Sex Marriage and Visions of the Beloved Community
By Aaron Douglas Weaver
On November 4, 2008, history was made as Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. More than 69 million voters cast their ballots for the junior senator from Illinois. The same day that witnessed the election of the nation’s first African-American President, voters in California passed the “California Marriage Protection Act,” popularly known as “Proposition 8,” which added a section to the California Constitution eliminating the legal right of same-sex couples to marry. Pollsters and pundits immediately interpreted exit polls to conclude that African-American opposition to same-sex marriage combined with high African-American voter turnout sealed the passage of the controversial Proposition 8.1 The General Election Exit Poll showed that 70 percent of African-American voters backed Proposition 8 while candidate Obama, an opponent of Proposition 8, received the support of 94 percent of African-American voters in the Golden State.2
The media backlash against African-Americans was immediate and forceful. Newspaper headlines placed blame for the passage of Proposition 8 squarely on the shoulders of black voters. The front-page headline of the Washington Times read: “Blacks, Hispanics nixed gay marriage; Loyalists defied Obama” and the Los Angeles Times reported that black voters “played a crucial role in the outcome [of Proposition 8].”3 Even political satirist and comedian Jon Stewart of The Daily Show weighed in with a segment on his television show declaring that African-American celebrations of Barack Obama’s victory amounted to, “Free at last, free at last — whoa,
whoa [referring to an image of two men holding hands] — where are you two going?”4
The passage of Proposition 8 in California put a bright national spotlight on the conservative attitudes of African-Americans toward homosexuality and gay rights. An examination of the attitudes of African-American Baptists toward gay rights and same-sex marriage, reveals that while most Black Baptist leaders (traditionalists) have been steadfastly opposed to same-sex marriage, a small but growing minority of dissenters have publicly challenged the anti-gay rights orthodoxy in Black Baptist life. Additionally, these traditionalists and dissenters have referenced the Civil Rights Movement and invoked the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in their sermons and other arguments dealing with gay rights. In doing so, these two groups in Black Baptist life have adopted different understandings of Dr. King’s vision of a beloved community, a vision described by theologian Charles Marshall as “the realization of divine love in lived social relation.”5 Concepts central to Black Baptist identity and the identity of the larger Black Church such as biblical authority and liberty of conscience help explain the existence of these differing understandings.
With foundational values like freedom, justice and equality — rooted in an incarnational theology — the Black Church has often, according to African-American scholars Kelly Brown Douglas and Ronald Hopson, served as the “vanguard for social change.” However, as Douglas and Hopson note, the Black Church can also be a “stubborn antagonist” social change.6 Perhaps no issue reveals the Black Church’s complex relationship with these foundational values than gay rights. Sociologist Elijah Ward explains that the responses of the majority of African-American congregations and denominations toward homosexuality and gay rights generally range from “verbalized hostility toward homosexuals to, at best, silence on the issue.”7 Black theologian Horace Griffin echoes this sentiment, pointing out that black congregations have “entered the dialogue on homosexuality in grudgingly or in reactionary ways.”8
Opposition to gay rights has been expressed in Black Baptist life at both the institutional and individual levels with Black Baptist denominations generally employing a strategy of silence. While not reluctant to speak out on the subject of many moral issues in American society, no major African-American Baptist group has taken an official position on gay rights. During the presidency of George W. Bush, conservative activists attempted to woo African-Americans to the Republican Party by appealing to their high level of opposition to same-sex marriage. Responding to this intentional targeting of black voters, Rev. Jesse
Jackson, speaking before a 2005 joint gathering of Black Baptists, asked the audience how many ministers had fielded requests to perform same-sex weddings. After a moment of silence,
Jackson declared, “Then how did that get in the middle of our agenda!”9
This institutional strategy of silence has not been adopted at the individual level. Many visible and influential Black Baptist pastors have not hesitated to speak out against homosexuality and oppose gay rights and the “love the sinner, hate the sin” theological perspective has been reflected in the rhetoric of some pastors. This perspective can be seen in a 2007 statement issued by the Memphis Baptist Ministerial Association, an organization of African-American Baptist pastors, denouncing legislation to expand the definition of a “hate crime” to include crimes targeting persons on the basis of sexual orientation. The association called on Christians to distinguish between homosexuals and homosexuality because “God loves the homosexual but hates homosexuality.”10
Two years earlier, a group of mostly Black Baptist pastors issued a 10-point “Christian Family Manifesto” which offered “love, mercy, grace and truth to those involved in a homosexual lifestyle” and urged gays and lesbians to “receive God’s forgiveness and seek fellowship, restoration and counseling in a Bible believing local church.”11 Unfortunately, the shrill rhetoric and condemnation of some Black Baptist traditionalists has drowned out these more civil expressions of love and mercy toward gays and lesbians.
Many Black Baptist leaders have made clear through countless public remarks that their struggle for civil rights should not be compared with the fight for gay rights. In the midst of the effort to legalize same-sex marriage in the District of Columbia, Rev. Anthony Evans, a D.C. Baptist pastor and president of the National Black Church Initiative, said, “We did not march, die, struggle and donate so that two men or two women could have raw sex with one another.”12 Writing a column in the aftermath of Proposition 8, Rev. Rolen Womack of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, reaffirmed that same-sex
marriage is not a civil rights issue. Womack asserted that African-Americans “look at the faces of the same-sex marriage demonstrators… and cannot connect this to the Civil Rights Movement.”13
Black pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention have also expressed outrage at the characterization of gay rights activism as an extension of the Civil Rights movement. Advocating for the passage of a federal constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage at a gathering in 2004 of Southern Baptist pastors, Rev. E.W. McCall exclaimed, “To place homosexuality’s sin rights movement on the same platform as the struggle of African-Americans for civil rights is appalling.”14 Rev. Fred Luter — the current SBC president and the first African-American to hold that position — told the same gathering of pastors: “Gays have all the rights in the world to live as free citizens. We didn’t. I think it’s being insensitive to what we have gone through as African-Americans to compare what they’re going through to the civil rights struggle.”15
No black Southern Baptist pastor has received more media attention for his opposition to gay rights than Rev. Dwight McKissic, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas. In 2004, McKissic put together a coalition of black pastors to oppose same-sex marriage. Preaching at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary just days prior to the 2004 presidential election, McKissic told the mostly white crowd: “When homosexuals have spent over 200 years in slavery, when homosexuals have been legally
defined as three-fifths human, when homosexuals have been denied the right to vote and own property because they are homosexuals, then we can begin a discussion of the parallels between the civil rights and gay rights movements.16
McKissic described equating gay rights and civil rights as “insulting, offensive and racist.” He elaborated, “Civil rights are rooted in moral authority. Gay rights are rooted in a lack of moral restraint. Civil rights are rooted in constitutional authority. Gay rights are rooted in civil anarchy.” McKissic concluded his fiery sermon by emphasizing that the Civil Rights Movement was birthed in the Black Church while the gay rights movement was “birthed in the closet and it should stay there.”17
While this heated rhetoric and catchy, but hostile one-liners has characterized the responses of some Black Baptist pastors, others have advanced more civil arguments against gay rights. For example, Rev. Gerald Durley, then pastor of Providence Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, argued shortly after the passage of Proposition 8 that voting rights, housing rights and transportation rights are “sanctioned by God.” According to Durley, African-Americans have struggled for those particular rights solely because they are “ordained” by God. Therefore, Durley contended that Christians should not spend energy advocating for a legal right such as same-sex marriage not ordained or sanctioned by God.18
Rev. Clenard H. Childress, pastor of New Calvary Baptist Church in Montclair, New Jersey, made a similar Bible-based argument against gay rights in the aftermath of the Proposition 8 vote. Childress strongly disputed the claim that homophobia is widespread among African-Americans. Black opposition to gay rights does not indicate the presence of homophobia, according to Childress. Rather, in his view, this opposition is merely proof that African-Americans are generally
“Christ-centric” and desire to faithfully follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. Like many Black Baptists, Durley and Childress believe that following the teachings of Christ must involve opposing same-sex mar-riage.19
Durley’s appeal to the teachings of Christ as revealed in the Bible demonstrates the important and central role of biblical authority among Black Baptists and in the Black Church. Black theologian Kelly Brown Douglas argues that the Bible serves as the “cornerstone” for opposition to homosexuality and gay rights in the African-American community. “By invoking biblical authority [African-Americans] place a sacred canopy, a divine sanction, over their views toward gay and lesbian people,” according to Douglas.20
Despite strong opposition to gay rights among many Black Baptist leaders, there exists a small but growing minority of Black Baptist dissenters who have loudly championed equal legal rights for gays and lesbians, including the right to marry. This group of Black Baptist dissenters is comprised primarily of elite, well-known and well-respected leaders including civil rights icons and megachurch pastors. Most notable among these dissenters is the widow of Dr. King.
Throughout the decade prior to her death in 2006, Coretta Scott King established herself as a committed advocate for gays and lesbians. In 1998, King identified homophobia as a vicious form of bigotry and compared it with racism and anti-Semitism.21 In another speech, King reminded her audience that gays and lesbians were involved in many of the campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement.22 Just days before the 30th anniversary of her husband’s assassination, King issued an appeal “to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brother and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.” According to her, Dr. King’s popular refrain, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” was certainly applicable to the struggles of sexual minorities.23 King explained that she had always felt that “homophobic attitudes and policies were unjust and unworthy of a free society and must be opposed by all Americans who believe in a democracy.”24
Like Coretta Scott King, United States Congressman John Lewis — a veteran civil rights leader, former Baptist seminarian and member of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church — has been a faithful proponent of gay rights for many years. In a 2009 interview, Lewis provided his rationale for supporting gay rights and same-sex marriage: “It doesn’t matter if someone is gay or straight or whether someone believes in a different philosophy or different religion. We’re one people, we’re one family, and we’re one house. There is not any room in American society for discrimination based on sexual orientation…discrimination is discrimination and we have to speak up and speak out against discrimination.”25
In his support of gay rights, Lewis has frequently cited the words of Dr. King. When speaking specifically about same-sex marriage, Lewis has recalled Dr. King’s famous dictum that individuals, not races, fall in love and get married. Lewis has used this quote to draw an explicit comparison between current legal bans on same-sex marriage and legal bans which
existed for most of the twentieth century on interracial marriage. Not surprisingly then, Lewis has sharply disagreed with those who believe it is outrageous and offensive to make a connection between the gay rights movement and the Civil Rights Movement. Instead, Lewis sees a real and clear connection between the two anti-discrimination movements.26
Julian Bond, the former chairman of the NAACP, is another prominent Black Baptist dissenter on gay rights. While still chairman, Bond testified in late 2009 before the New Jersey Senate Judiciary Committee in support of legislation to allow same-sex marriage. He told the committee that like race, sexual orientation is not a preference: It’s immutable, unchangeable and the Constitution protects us all from discrimination.”27 Citing Coretta Scott King’s comparison of homophobia with racism, Bond emphasized that “Black people, of all people, should not oppose equality.”
In his testimony, Bond specifically addressed religious opposition to same-sex marriage. Like those who opposed interracial marriage in earlier decades, opponents of same-sex marriage also “invoke God’s plan,” Bond noted. Reflecting on the fact that faith communities in the United States now believe interracial marriage to be compatible with “God’s plan,” Bond observed: “Well, God seems to have made room in his plan for interracial marriage. He will no doubt do the same for same-sex marriage. …Black Christians have always discarded scriptures that damned us in the name of religion, like the curse of Ham in Genesis or support for slavery in Ephesians. We should just as easily and just as eagerly discard those which marginalize others.28
While Black Baptist dissenters like John Lewis have been elected time and time again to serve predominantly African-American congressional districts, very few Black Baptist pastors have come out in favor of gay rights. Perhaps the most noteworthy dissenting-preacher is the Rev. Dr. Frederick Haynes, who has served as the senior pastor of Dallas’ 12,000-member Friendship-West Baptist Church since 1983.
At a 2009 summit on homophobia, Haynes offered his public support for gay rights. In a stirring sermon, Hayes spoke of a “dream come true” in the election of Barack Obama. Haynes noted that the inauguration of Obama as president came on January 20, just one day after the annual national commemoration of the “Drum-Major for Justice,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “You can’t have January 20 unless you appreciate the 19th,” said Haynes. He recalled that the joy he experienced in witnessing “the great victory of Barack Obama” began to disappear with the passage of Proposition 8 in Haynes’ home-state of California. He explained that it “blew [his] mind” that “the same persons who voted for Barack Obama in the name of faith and ethnic pride also voted in a real sense as cohorts, as allies of injustice in the state of California.” Haynes continued, “How can you stand up in church on Sunday, praising God, celebrating the goodness of God, who gave birth to an Amos, and yet your love ethic, your sense of justice does not embrace all of humanity.” The Dallas pastor concluded the sermon, rebuking his fellow African-Americans for failing to carry “the love ethic of Jesus Christ to the polls.”29
Following the passage of Proposition 8, Rev. Brad Braxton, an ordained Baptist minister and then-senior pastor of the historic Riverside Church in New York City, issued a call to action on behalf of gay rights. Braxton stated: “I call upon all people of good will to work together to craft public policies and foster communal practices that will usher in the Beloved Community of which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., spoke, in which all God’s children can have their life-giving, loving covenant affirmed.”30
Braxton also lobbied on behalf of the legalization of same-sex marriage in New York state. Noting that his Christian convictions were the driving force behind his support for same-sex marriage, Braxton wrote in The Huffington Post: “Our support for marriage equality is motivated by our religious commitments, not in spite of them. Our Christian faith teaches us the uncompromising, unconditional love of God for all people. Bound together by that love we are all deserving of dignity, equality and justice.”31
Braxton believes that there exists no real conflict between same-sex marriage and religious freedom. In fact, he contends that religious freedom is endangered in states where same-sex marriage is prohibited and stresses that the denial of marriage to same-sex couples infringes upon their religious freedom since “no one Christian position about marriage”I know in my sanctified soul that he did not take a bullet for same-sex marriage.”
Bernice King exists due to the theologically diverse nature of the Christian tradition.32
During the 2008 presidential campaign, then-Senator Barack Obama made a campaign stop at Dr. King’s former church, Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Speaking before a packed sanctuary, Obama reminded the crowd that historically African-Americans had been at the “receiving end of man’s inhumanity to man.” However, Obama noted, “If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a Beloved Community.” In an introspective moment, Obama added, “We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them.”33
Is Obama correct? Have African-Americans failed to live up to Dr. King’s vision of a Beloved
Community? Or have African-Americans been operating from different understandings of Dr. King’s vision of a Beloved Community — a vision grounded in a Christian theology affirming that “God is on the side of truth and love and justice” and where the nonviolent quest for freedom, justice and equality always ends with the formation of “a new relation-ship…between the oppressed and the oppressor.”34 I argue the latter.
These disparate understandings of what Dr. King means by a “Beloved Community” are best represented in the view of Dr. King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, and his youngest daughter, Bernice King. While Mrs. King understood her husband’s dream of a Beloved Community to include justice and equal rights for gays and lesbians, Bernice King, formerly an elder at Atlanta’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, has been an outspoken opponent of gay rights. On December 11, 2004, Bernice King led an estimated 25,000 people in a march in downtown Atlanta in support of the Federal Marriage Amendment to ban same-sex mar-riage.35 King once remarked about her father’s assassination: “I know in my sanctified soul that he did not take a bullet for same-sex marriage.”36
Clearly, Bernice King has embraced a different understanding of her father’s vision that her late mother. She and other Black Baptist traditionalists cling to a vision of the Beloved Community that sees no connection between gay rights and civil rights. It is a vision in which same-sex marriage is, without a doubt, not a civil right. Why? Because the Bible tells them so.
According to pastors such as Rev. Durley, a civil right is that which God explicitly ordains. The Black Baptist gay rights opponents or traditionalists cited here believe strongly that when it comes to gay rights issues there is indeed a direct route from the Bible to the ballot box. Scripture and specifically the teachings of Jesus about marriage compel these Black Baptists to stand firm against same-sex marriage in the political arena.
Meanwhile, Black Baptist dissenters embrace a vision of the Beloved Community that sees the movement for gay rights and “marriage equality” to be one of many extensions of the Civil Rights Movement. As John Lewis suggested, a connection must be drawn between the Civil Rights Movement and others movements fighting legal discrimination. Emphasizing community and conscience, these dissenters reject arguments based on specific Bible verses used to justify opposition to equal legal rights for gays and lesbians.
For dissenters, the Beloved Community is a vision in which rights are expanded not restricted. Consequently, legal prohibitions on same-sex marriage are viewed as a major impediment to the realization of the Beloved Community. In this vision of the Beloved Community, dissenters contend that the free
dom found in Christ or liberty of conscience — informed by the love ethic of Jesus — necessitates dogged, unwavering support for gay rights.
The contentious debate over gay rights and same-sex marriage will inevitably continue in the foreseeable future. Recent developments such as the passage of Amendment One in North Carolina banning legal recognition of any same-sex union and President Obama’s endorsement of the legal right of same-sex couples to marry prove that the debates will not cease. These developments, especially the coalitions of African-American clergy who campaigned against Amendment One, have revealed that Black Baptist dissenters remain a minority but a quickly growing minority. With the NAACP’s recent vote to support “marriage equality” and a national poll showing that a record-high 59 percent of African-Americans support giving same-sex couples the right to marry, up from 41 percent, Black Baptists and the larger Black Church will continue to consider and perhaps reconsider their particular vision of the Beloved Community and whether it can transcend differences in sexual orientation alongside racial differences.37
Aaron Weaver’s Ph.D. in Religion and Politics was eanred at Baylor. He is currently communications manager for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and is a scholar, writer, and editor.
