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crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters
Harry Jackson is probably the most prominent black pastor in religious right circles. He is a favorite due to not only his futile struggle to get a vote going against same-sex marriage in D.C. but also his insistence that the gay community is attempting to unfairly piggyback on the struggles of the African-American civil rights movement.
So imagine the irony of the fact that he chooses to support a “hard rock ministry” who have been very supportive of the persecution of African gays and lesbians
According to the Minnesota Independent:
The leaders of You Can Run But You Cannot Hide Intl., Inc., a hard rock ministry that holds Christian assemblies in public schools around the Midwest, said that locking up gays and lesbians in prison is the “right” and “moral” thing to do.
. . . On the group’s radio show, broadcast live from the Heritage Foundation on May 22, co-leader Jake McMillian praised the actions of the African nation of Malawi which has recently arrested a gay couple for getting engaged.
“They are very conservative,” he said. “They sentence people for crimes against nature.”
Frontman Bradlee Dean added, “They are very moral; they uphold the laws.”
McMillian continued, “We have got countries all over the world that are standing for what’s right and what’s wrong. In Rwanda, there’s legislation right now that repeat offenders of homosexuality will spend their life in prison.”
“Yes!” interjected Dean.
“Because they love and value life and they love and value that which God gave,” said McMillian. “And so they enforce laws against that which destroys life which again is crimes against nature”
People for the American Way recorded this program where supposedly Jackson not only came on to say that he has been reaching out to the group, but also compared them to the late Martin Luther King, Jr.My guess is that Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and the head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference – an organization which King once led – will most likely be silent about this bizarre usage of her father's name.
Just like she was silent when World Net Daily writer Molotov Mitchell invoked her father's name in support of that awful “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda.
Bear in mind that King was very quick to declare that she was sure in her “sanctified soul” that her father “didn't take a bullet for same-sex marriage.”
I wonder if she feels that King was assassinated to support genocide?
King's silence and Jackson's hypocrisy merely highlights the unfortunate fact that during the controversy regarding the Ugandan bill and the Malawi couple, the African-American community – particularly the leadership – have been shamefully silent.
Where are these same righteously indignant people who were so quick to voice their anger at “rich white gays” exploiting the struggles of black people for their own selfish purposes when people like Scott Lively were leading Africans to pass laws against their own people for simply being gay?
When I was a teenager, I heard so much about apartheid in South Africa and how black colleges should divest from the country. The movement was featured in countless African-American articles, television shows, and speeches by black leaders.
Certainly African gays and lesbians deserve the same amount of support. But they haven't gotten it yet from the African-American community and I don't think they will.
The silence of the Black American community during the persecution of their African brothers and sisters (and Jackson's embracing of those who would support this persecution) serves to remind me that no one person or group owns the patent to struggling for the right to live free and in dignity unencumbered by someone else's ignorance.
But it also reminds me that even though no one owns this right, there are so many people ready to squander it.
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How does she explain this? “Coretta Scott King gives her support to gay marriage”“The widow of Martin Luther King Jr. called gay marriage a civil rights issue, denouncing a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban it.
Constitutional amendments should be used to expand freedom, not restrict it, Coretta Scott King said Tuesday.
“Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union,” she said. “A constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay bashing and it would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriages.”
http://www.usatoday.com/news/n…
Or this:
“Irene Monroe on Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr’s Dream”
http://rodonline.typepad.com/r…
The best thing to do is to point blank look them in the eye and tell them the ought to be ashamed of themselves for messing with a legacy of hope by turning it into a think of evil.
please try….I have, not to Harry Jackson but others, you should hear the crazy answers. The problem is that you expect these fundamentalist to follow logic, they don’t.
This pisses me offThe minute someone gay (of any race) compares the gay civil rights struggle to the black American struggle, no matter how obscure, these religious leaders clutch their pearls faster than an old white woman from Wilmette.
But then the most odious comparisons to King, the Mormon person who compared “bigotry” against Mormons to bigotry against black Americans and you don’t hear a peep from them.
Oh, I know logic is not their strong suitBut how do they explain King’s statement or that MLK worked with an open gay man? I mean – this isn’t a matter of logic so much as willful denial of facts. Its like you are waving your hand in front of them and are looking around the hand claiming not to see it. On some level, I think while its hard to get at the crazy one’s enough crazy people in larger enough numbers need to start to hear this to realize “wait a minute, that dude is waving it hand in front of you, and you are claiming not to see it, so what’s wrong with you for not seeing the hand that I can see as well?”
It’s just plain sad, isn’t it?
Let me answer a part of this…
They answer that when he worked for King, Riustin work for black civil rights and not gay rights.
Waitng for Pam’s comment.
Meanwhile, from someone who was there…a comment from a fb friend .
So there you have it. NOM Paying them to toot the NOM whistle!!
No one minority group can be blamedToo easy and convenient to make any minority group the escape goat.I had the honor of sharing emails with Rev, Irene Monroe on this same subject. The King legacy and Civil Rights in this country must be protected including from bigot or bigots in the King family, whom want to profit and pervert the legacy of MLK. Corretta Scott King was the real deal GLBT advocate, always on behalf of glbt people whomever says otherwise does not know the facts including her daughter ( is she not married or poking Jackson the preacher of hate?)…I always thought it prudent and expected minorities to stand with one another, as we have marched,battled and suffered with one due to the majority at various times in our Nations history . Division among us is polarizing.The equality struggle is not over,anyone feel equal they are being treated equal? My brothers and sisters of color certainly don’t.Suppression is not over, hate is alive and well.Ironic the bible they beat us down with as if they have read it! Either laugh at or cry because of the failures of gay inc. and the success of faith based programs in spite of disparities in income between the races and gender.Preachers telling anyone how to vote on anything is a sheep in wolf clothing.Nothing to do with race but rather everything to do with Character, Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Citizenship. Nope, not the preachers of HATE….ruled by greed in the name of JE$U$.
It’s about time Bradlee Dean’s name showed up in the Blend.I heard about him through Mike Tidmus. Dean is very extreme, more extreme than Hartline, Barber, LaBarbera, and as extreme as Hutcherson and Phelps. The “You Can’t Hide” ministry promotes Christofascism at its finest.
Other things about Dean:
1. Is jealous of Muslims. He said that American law should treat the LGBT community the same way as it’s prescribed in the sharia.
2. Ally to Michelle Bachmann.
3. Anti-Catholic. I would like to put Bradlee Dean and Bill Donohue in an octogon cage so that they could duke it out (and the LGBT community will win no matter what).
Type in ‘Bradlee Dean’ on YouTube and check out some of the results.
This is so sad to meConsidering that gays and lesbians have ALWAYS been at the forefront of the civil rights struggle from the start, I naively thought we had their support as well. Where also is the Hispanic community, considering we are fighting against that atrocious immigration law in Arizona? Where were they when Arizona passed its anti gay marriage amendment? Honestly, why don’t we continue to fight and care for others when we don’t get it back in return?
Yet his own wife supported marriage equalityI know- they will simply decouple the two events, but if one were building a case for a position- where the man worked with an open gay person, and the man’s wife supported gay equality, 2+2 equals imaginary number doesn’t make much sense. And its all imaginary if they can claim that. At the very least, he wasn’t hostile towards us like they are. How do they explain that?
Yes, don’t you loveHow right wing bigots suddenly care so much for the rights of blacks when they can use it to diminish the rights of gays? I’ve always loved that particular right wing tactic.
But Donicayou do have SOME black support. You can go back in Pam’s archives and find that as well.
But why is that when (straight) blacks do support gays, it’s an individual thing but all of a sudden the likes of Harry Jackson et. al. are reflective of the entire black community (granted there is too much homophobia in the black community) but you really do diminish the support that you do have.
Oh Pulease, this is just issues for tissuesCalling Harry Jackson “the most prominent black pastor in religious right circles” is the equivalent to claiming Uncle Ruckus as one of the most vocal speakers on black equality on the hit show Boondocks! There a great deal of prominent Black pastors who easily outshine this Whitewashed sepulcher full of death. The only difference being that while many other Pastors may no support the LGBT community, they know better than to throw their support behind the heinous and bigoted white Christian conservative movement of today leading the charge against the LGBT community as fervently as their fathers lead the fight against African-American civil rights.
They understand that compassion and understanding are still the hallmarks of the faith they espouse and unlike their white counterparts don’t believe that civil rights for one people group will bring down God’s wrath or ignite societal destruction. There is still a great deal of homophobia in the black church and I am not condoning that. But to paint Jackson as somehow indicative of the Christian Black conservatives is just misleading and myopic and unlikely to help the LGBT community to engage that community because it just stereotypes them worse than they white community they already don’t choose to worship with for that very reason.
Judaisim-Christianity-Islam……”Kill the fags!” Why?
“Because our invisible sky buddy said so!”
And it’s the ATHEISTS (such as myself) who are ‘deluded’.
A questionDo we have other organizations support, however? If a LGBT organization marches with another minority organization under their name, are these fellow organizations following suit? For example, I think HRC marched in Arizona. Are the pro immigration organizations–not individuals but organizations–marching with us officially?
“… a hard rock ministry that holds Christian assemblies in public schools”Isn’t this illegal? A direct violation of the First Amendment separation of church and state?
This, I think, sums up the real problem: For some people, religious doctrine trumps everything. The silence of the Black community is disappointing, but the actual bigotry seems to be coming from the wanna-be theocrats in the Black community, much as it comes from many other wanna-be theocrats from other communities.
manufactured homophobia in the black churchesbrought to you and paid for by faith based federal dollars and supported by 24 hours news media, talk radio, American media for the last ten plus years telling everyone of the homophobia in the black churches..umm really? More so than in ‘White Churches’ or brown churches, yellow churches…..
u misreadI said nothing about the christian black conservative community. You made that distinction. And my link about jackson bears me out.
Self-loathingJackson is a self-loathing African-American. Why do you think he runs around with the likes of Tony Perkins? Does he really think the Christian White – I mean Christian RIGHT – respects him? I’m betting behind closed doors (without Jackson around) they refer to him in not so flattering terms.
Oh of course, Kevin!I suppose I was generalizing a bit. I just find the blatant homophobia very sad.
If you think that the black communitylikes Bishop Harry Jackson you may want to weed through some of the comments on this Huffington Post thread.
One of fave huff post threads of all time.
BSLGBT folks have NOT always been at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement. The LGBT “community” cannot even be bothered to address the blatant and rampant racism in its own ranks.
Besides…who is this “care of other when we don’t get it back in return” addressed to? Last I checked black and hispanic LGBTs were involved with these things because it involved them as well.
And the other “BLack Pastors in the Conservative movement???Those that are somehow less prominent than Jackson? Jackson is a big fish in a little pond looking to leverage his homophobia into more support from fellow bigots. All you do here is lend him yours albeit in a backhanded way. He is a token for the bigoted homophobic extremist Christian right community, but distinction matter. You might consider that. It just seems said that we have to raise someone like Jackson to a higher level of prominence than he really holds just so we can knock him down. He is a straw man for the FRC and anti-gay organizations like it and little more.
Jackson shills for Big Oilso perhaps it is time to remind people of that.
When he is not lying about where he lives, he is chairing High-Impact Leadership Coalition, a petroleum industry advocate