Black clergy: Same-sex “marriage” not a civil right

Last week just as I was going away, this article was published by the Washington Post (hat tip: Doug).  Since I missed it, I thought maybe some of you might have as well.   The WaPo gives us an unusually fair article about why black pastors in Maryland have opposed gay marriage and how they will now help promote the petition drive to place the issue before the voters in November.

Here is the Washington Post (emphasis mine):

All of a sudden, they are bigots and haters — they who stood tall against discrimination, who marched and sat in, who knew better than most the pain of being told they were less than others.

They are black men, successful ministers, leaders of their community. But with Maryland poised to become the eighth state in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage, they hear people — politicians, activists, even members of their own congregations — telling them they are on the wrong side of history, and that’s not where they usually live.

Nathaniel Thomas spent decades as an administrator in Howard University’s student affairs office, counseling young people not only about their course work but also about their personal quests for justice. He came to the ministry at the dawn of middle age, eager to help people, and especially fellow black men, discover in the word of God a path out of despair.

Over the past couple of years, as Thomas and dozens of other black clergymen in Prince George’s County have stood on the front line of the campaign against same-sex marriage, he has come to see the revolution at hand — in his view, a rebellion against religion and tradition — as an assault on the sustainability of the black family.

Which is why Thomas and his friend Reynold Carr, director of the Prince George’s Baptist Association, are gearing up for the next battle, a statewide ballot referendum in November to challenge the legalization of same-sex marriage, which the state House of Delegates approved last Friday. The state Senate passed a measure Thursday evening; Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) said he will sign the bill. The pastors are not predicting victory in a referendum, but they think they stand a better chance among voters than politicians.

Opinion polls show blacks largely oppose same-sex marriage:

But Thomas and the 77 other Baptist ministers in the association do not see same-sex marriage as a civil rights matter. Rather, they say, it is a question of Scripture, of whether a country based on Judeo-Christian principles will honor what’s written in Romans or decide to make secular decisions about what’s right. In Maryland, as in California and New York, opinion polls have shown that although a majority of white voters support recognition of same-sex marriage, a majority of blacks oppose it, often on religious grounds.

[….]

The battle over same-sex marriage, for Thomas and Carr, is not so much about homosexuality as about a growing belief that biblical principles should not be the basis for governing.

Will Democrats be able to continue to take the black vote for granted?

The next battle, the marker the pastors intend to throw down in a statewide vote on same-sex marriage, will be over whether Democratic politicians can still take for granted the votes of black churchgoers and others in the community who stand in opposition.

Read the whole article, it is fascinating in its freedom from the usual snarky-tone one comes to expect from the mainstream media when a group goes against the Lefts’ orthodoxy.  And, perhaps most interesting to me was the sense I have of the reporter tip-toeing.  Was he (his editor?) afraid of pushing black social conservatives over into the welcoming arms of the political right by dissing their Biblically-centered opposition to same-sex marriage?

Readers might also wish to return to the three guest column articles by Doug Mainwaring about who is really pushing the gay marriage agenda and why (and it’s not mostly gays and lesbians, but the hard left driving the country toward socialism).  The Leftists understand that they must break the family bonds in order for people to turn to government for their means of support (remember Lind’s ‘Cultural Marxism’).   Mainwaring’s  Part I is here (follow links) to Parts II and III.

If you would like to donate to a PAC working against the legalization of gay marriage, contact Protect Marriage Maryland, here.

To sign up to be involved in the Petition drive, visit MDPetitions.com here.

To learn more about issues affecting the Urban Community in Maryland and DC, consider attending the “Choosing the Future” conference on April 20 and 21 which is being co-sponsored by the Maryland Conservative Action Network and other groups.  Here are the confirmed speakers so far.