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Commonwealth Award. In his address to the gathering in Richmond, Mr. Bond
reaffirmed that “gay rights” are indeed “civil rights.” From his speech:
African Americans. . . were the only Americans who were
enslaved for two centuries, but we were far from the only
Americans suffering discrimination then and now .. . . Sexual
disposition parallels race. I was bom this way. I have no
choice. I wouldn’t change it if I could. Sexuality is
unchangeable---Many gays, many lesbians, worked side by side with me in the
civil rights movement. Am I supposed to tell them now thanks
for risking their lives and their limbs to help me win my rights
but that they are excluded because of the circumstances of
their birth? Not a chance, (www.naacp.org)
Nevertheless, following their September 2004 “Summit to Protect
Marriage”—co-sponsored by the Louis Sheldon’s Traditional Values
Coalition—^the African-American clerics held a press conference and demanded
to meet with the Congressional Black Caucus. They were denied, but their
inflammatory, stereotyped rhetoric caused consternation within the Caucus, two
members of which did eventually confront the group. One of them was
Congresswoman Carolyn Kilpatrick from Michigan. She was blunt: “I am
opposed to a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage clearly because I
do not support opening up the Constitution for such an amendment at this time
or for any other thing at this time.”
Later in the month the same group of African-American “bishops,
pastors, ministers, evangelists and leaders” sent a letter to the Black Caucus. A
photo of the group and the text of their letter are currently available and
downloadable from TVC’s web site. In their letter, the black clerics seemed to
blame homosexuals for all the ills in the African American community. From
the breakdown of black families to the high rate of HTV infection, stereotyped
homosexuals seemed to be responsible. It’s difficult to understand why some in
a minority community that has had to fight so hard and so long for equal civil
rights are so willing to use stereotypes and myths, selective biblical readings and
ad hoc religious dogma—all of vriiich were used against them in the early days
of their own civil rights struggle—^to advocate denying another minority equal
civil rights.
Although the breakdown of the black family and the “disproportionate
number of HIV-AIDS cases” in the African-American community cannot be
disputed—a report from the Twelfth Annual Retrovirus Conference held in
Boston, March 2005, documented HTV infection has doubled among blacks in
the United States over a decade while holding steady among whites—^the