It is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as I write this, which means that people on the Interwebs are debating about whether or not King would've supported the fight for LGBT civil rights.
We can only go on King's teachings, combing though his speeches and writings to find support for the "he'd love gays/he'd love gays not" arguments.
But the Episcopal Missionary Church's Bishop Council Nedd II has got it all figured out. During an interview with Radio America host Greg Corombos he says King would definitely be a conservative and he'd no likey the gays.
"A lot of [gay rights] activists say that this is the natural extension of the civil rights movement," Corombos says. "Where do you come down on that and what do you think Dr. King would think about that?"
"Well, I'll start by saying gay is not the new black," Nedd replies. "Any individual who happens to be homosexual, they're already covered under, um, the law because of their color, because of their sexuality, because of various other things. It's not a separate classification, um, and personally I'm offended by it."
I, too, am offended - though my offense stems from the fact that sexual orientation isn't a category automatically covered under civil rights law. Nedd, on the other hand, seems pretty confused. I don't know what "law" he's talking about that covers people "because of their sexuality" and yet also does not consider sexual orientation a classification. Thankfully his ignorance isn't stopping him from speaking out against the gays.
He continues, "And I'm offended by pastors who sold out on the issue and decided, 'You know what, I don't really care what the Bible says. Um, you know, the black president wants me to support this so I'm going to support this.' It's absurd."
Damn that black president with his powers to rival Jesus! Seriously, though, as far as Nedd's concerned, if a pastor supports LGBT people, then that pastor's clearly being used as a puppet by Obama and has no convictions of his or her own. Meanwhile, fine upstanding folks like Nedd are making the right-wing media rounds to make white people feel better about their continued oppression of people of color.
When Corombos asks how King "would see America today in terms of racial equality," Nedd claims that King "would say that a major victory had been accomplished."
"The world he knew was a very segregated America," Nedd continues. "At the end of his life, there were, you know, riots in the street. Again, they were turning water hoses and dogs on children in parts of this country and because of the advent of television, people were able to see it in the country and were rightly appalled by what they saw."
But today? "There's equality in the eyes of the law. Segregation is, I guess, you know, legally banished from the land…"
Indeed, segregation is "legally banished." That's not the same as actually banished. But de facto segregation is largely invisible to folks who don't have a vested interest in seeing it. Therefore many people are, wrongly, not appalled.
Later Corombos asks, citing Jesse Jackson as one example, "Why do you think so many leaders of that era ended up being more liberal?"
Nedd responds, "I'm not exactly sure why."
Oooh, oooh, can I guess? Can I guess? Maybe it had something to do with those fire hoses Nedd mentioned? Or Freedom Riders being murdered? Or King getting thrown in jail? Or the government monitoring him like he was a terrorist? Or, I don't know, seeing King gunned down right before their eyes? Or all of the above?
Or, I don't know, since folks like Jackson and Al Sharpton and John Lewis are still alive Nedd and Corombos could just ask them. But I suspect their answers wouldn't go over well with the World Net Daily crowd.
