May 11, 2012

This week, President Obama made an important statement in support of same-sex marriage. Immediately across the nation and in Montana, opponents of the LGBT community used his statement as an opportunity to try and divide the African American and LGBT communities. We think it's important that this cynical tactic be confronted and called out. The fight for racial justice is the LGBT community's fight. We wanted to pass on the following message from Eran Thompson, a Network board member from Billings.
-Kim Abbott, Program Director, Montana Human Rights Network

Dear MHRN Supporter,

I am an activist for justice in my community, an African American, a father, an ally to the LGBT community, Chairperson of Not In Our Town Billings, and many other things. On Wednesday afternoon, President Obama made a statement that he personally believes that committed same-sex couples should be able to get married. President Obama is the first sitting president to make a statement of support for marriage equality, and I was so happy to hear him support fairness for my friends and neighbors. In Montana, you may have read the Great Falls Tribune story that talked about Obama's statement and local reactions to it. In that article, Jeff Laszloffy of the Montana Family Foundation stated that:

"The President has been forced into a political box in an election year by wealthy gay and lesbian supporters of his campaign. His endorsement of gay marriage will negatively impact the President's support from the African-American community that overwhelmingly opposes that position."

I've heard this kind of statement before, and you probably have too. Laszloffy's comment suggests that the African-American community and the LGBT community are distinct and separate. Of course this isn't true. African-American people are LGBT people, they are allies of the LGBT community, and family members of LGBT people. The African-American community is not homogeneous. Our community is diverse just like the LGBT community. Laszloffy's statement is no accident. Last month, a confidential internal strategy memo from the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) was leaked and picked up by the media. It laid out its plan to fracture the base of progressive support. It read, "The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks - two key Democratic constituencies."

Statements like Laszloffy's are meant to create a false reality. They are meant to divide our communities, and we simply cannot let it pass. The struggle for dignity, security, and justice is a shared struggle across constituencies. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously stated in a 1965 speech at Oberlin College:

"All mankind is tied together; all life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be."

The fight for racial justice is all of our fight. It's our fight, because the insidious mechanics of racism hurt our families, our neighbors and divide our communities. We all have distinct lived experiences of both justice and oppression in Montana and in this country. We need to talk about these experiences, talk about our differences, and struggle together for a just Montana.

We won't be divided by NOM or by the Montana Family Foundation. We'll fight for a just Montana together. Because I can't be what I ought to be until you can be what you ought to be. Your fight is my fight, and we'll win justice together.

Sincerely,
Eran Thompson
Board Member - Montana Human Rights Network
Chairperson - Not In Our Town Billings

Two weeks ago the United Methodist General Conference reaffirmed 40 years of anti-gay prejudice, voting to continue to bar lesbian and gay people from ministry and marriage while faithful gay United Methodists had to endure speeches accusing them of bestiality, calling them drug dealers, and worse. In April, a North Carolina minister used his pulpit to urge parents to beat their young children if they showed any signs they might be gay. In March, the Kansas House approved a bill allowing people to discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people based on their religious beliefs. And last year, Christians in Michigan fought to include an exemption from Michigan’s anti-bullying law for people with “a sincerely held religious belief.” In their view, it is OK to torment kids as long as you believe God wants you to.

Christians, I am very sad to say, are at the forefront of oppressing LGBT people all over the country.

But scapegoating LGBT people in the U.S. is not enough for some Christians. They have begun an export business – peddling homophobia and suggestions on how to further criminalize gay people to legislatures all over the world, from Russia to Africa. “Homophobia is being imported to the [African] continent by neocolonialists with an agenda to spread U.S. culture wars worldwide,” Rev. Dr. Kapya Kaoma recently wrote in an analysis in the American Prospect.

If you’re a Christian reading this, by now you should feel very uncomfortable. How can it be that followers of Jesus Christ – who championed the outcast of his day and castigated religious leaders for not welcoming “the least of these” – are leading the efforts to suppress the rights of minorities? And how can we let this go on in the name of our religion?

There is one case above all that should rock the conscience of every Christian, and that is the case of Rev. Scott Lively, the head of Abiding Truth Ministries in Springfield, MA and the man who has worked for at least a decade to deprive LGBT people in Uganda of their fundamental human rights. His book Redeeming the Rainbow is a how-to guide on demonizing and criminalizing LGBT people.

And he has done all of this in the name of the Prince of Peace, the one who said blessed are the poor, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the merciful.

Since Scott Lively and other U.S. evangelicals showed up in Uganda, repression and violence have been on the rise. Meetings have been raided, activists detained, abused, forced into hiding, and more oppressive laws have been proposed. The media have called for further repression, and one newspaper called for lynching LGBT leaders. “Hang them” the headline said above their photos.

The situation is so bad that Sexual Minorities of Uganda (SMUG), represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), is suing Lively for his efforts to further strip away their rights. The legal basis of the lawsuit (filed under the Alien Tort Statute) is the fact that what Lively is doing in Uganda constitutes persecution as defined under international law.

Persecution.
That word associated with the actions of Christians ought to make every Christian’s blood run cold. It conjures up the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch trials. We do have a bloody and shameful history. In the 21st century, we would like to think that we have evolved beyond that. But there it is in black and white in CCR’s legal complaint: A Christian clergyperson accused of a crime against humanity “for the decade-long campaign he has waged, in coordination with his Uganda counterparts, to persecute persons on the basis of gender and/or sexual orientation and gender identity.”

As Christians who understand that homophobia, and not homosexuality, is a sin, we must respond to the rising intolerance carried out in our name in our own country and the violence and repression in Uganda and elsewhere. If we do not, then we will have blood on our hands as well – the blood of those beaten and killed for their sexuality or gender identity and the blood of children bullied to the point of suicide. Our silence is complicity – we must speak out.

Today is International Day Against Homophobia, so I would like to suggest that we honor this day by each making a commitment to redouble our efforts to end religious bigotry against LGBT people. I ask you to begin by reposting this article and identifying yourself as a CHRISTIAN AGAINST CHRISTIAN HOMOPHOBIA in your Facebook status and elsewhere. Then ask your Christian friends to share that message and do the same.

And on Sunday, will you join me in standing up in your church and asking everyone in your congregation to take up this fight against the scapegoating and persecution of LGBT people in our name?

~Gilbert H. Caldwell is a retired United Methodist minister, a veteran of the Black Civil Rights Movement, a founding member of Black Methodists for Church Renewal, an outspoken advocate for the civil rights of LGBT people and a founding partner of Truth in Progress.

"May you all realise that you really are all members of one family, God's family, the human family: black, white, Hispanic, Native American, Asian, lesbian, transsexual, gay, bisexual, and so-called straight all belong together in the bundle of life."
~ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU