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The Michigan Messenger going forward

By Staff Report | 11.16.11

I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]

Colorado-based abstinence program provided false and misleading information to Michigan students

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By Todd A. Heywood | 11.16.11

An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.

Class action lawsuit filed against MERS over unpaid taxes

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By Todd A. Heywood | 11.15.11

Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.

Schuette fights important mercury regulations

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By Eartha Jane Melzer | 11.14.11

Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.

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Glenn: MLK Jr. would be anti-gay too

By Ed Brayton | 02.03.11 | 8:13 am

Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan, did an interview with Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality in which he claimed that because Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Christian, he would be on the anti-gay side in today’s politics:

I mean, Dr. King having been a conservative, southern, with a small ‘s,’ southern Baptist pastor in the 50’s and 60’s, whose view from a biblical standpoint on the question of homosexual behavior would’ve been unquestionable that he would have opposed it. And yet homosexual activists today use the legacy of Dr. King and the civil rights movement to suggest that someone’s sexual behavior, two men engaging in sex with each other, is somehow comparable to the color of skin, which someone happens to be born.

First of all, the notion that MLK’s anti-gay views would be “unquestionable” because he was a Christian pastor is absurd on its face. There are lots and lots of Christian churches and leaders who favor full equality for gays and lesbians — no matter what Leviticus says about the matter.

Second, I imagine that Coretta Scott King, MLK’s widow, had a far better idea what Martin’s views were on the subject. It wasn’t really much of a public issue in his day so he had little reason to address it publicly, but his widow has said that he was in favor of equality, writing in 1994:

For too long, our nation has tolerated the insidious form of discrimination against this group of Americans, who have worked as hard as any other group, paid their taxes like everyone else, and yet have been denied equal protection under the law…I believe that freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. My husband, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” On another occasion he said, “I have worked too long and hard against segregated public accommodations to end up segregating my moral concern. Justice is indivisible.” Like Martin, I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.

Calling Martin Luther King a “conservative” Southern Baptist minister is rather absurd. King was an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam war and an equally outspoken advocate in favor of the poor and downtrodden, in addition to being perhaps our greatest civil rights leader ever. To hear him invoked by the right today in support of their views can only make one cringe.

Comments

  • Anonymous

    Must especially make you cringe when MLK’s niece Alveda visits Michigan to campaign in favor of our state Marriage Protection Amendment and against city “gay rights” ordinances.

    Or when MLK’s daughter Bernice leads a march on the Georgia state capitol in support of that state’s Marriage Protection Amendment, saying, “I know deep down in my sanctified soul that he did not take a bullet for same-sex unions.”

    Or when former Congressional Del. Walter Fauntroy, D-District of Columbia — who organized Dr. King’s 1963 March on Washington — chairs the National Organization for Marriage’s campaign for a federal Marriage Protection Amendment.

    Or when the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, co-founder with MLK of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, appears in TV ads opposing a so-called “gay rights” ordinance on the ballot in Cincinnati.

    Notably, the quote you cite from Coretta does not in fact say MLK supported so-called “gay rights.” It merely says that she (not he) supports so-called “gay rights,” which she (not he) equates with MLK’s stand regarding race.

    If you read MLK’s advice column in Jet magazine in the late 50′s, early 60′s, you’ll find it impossible to characterize him as anything other than a social conservative, regardless of his stand on the Vietnam War or the plight of the poor and downtrodden. For example, he told one young woman who wrote in that any sex outside of marriage is wrong, and surely you’re not delusional enough to assert that if asked, he would have said that marriage was anything other than between one man and one woman.

    Speaking of the “poor and downtrodden,” who you apparently are delusional enough to claim are something other than social conservatives, please note that Michigan’s Marriage Protection Amendment was approved by voters in all cities in which there’s a predominantly African-American population…Detroit, Flint, Saginaw, Benton Harbor…

    Wanna try again?

  • Anonymous

    And by the way, believing that marriage is only between one man and own woman would not make Dr. King “anti-gay,” any more than it makes anyone else.

    MLK preached the authentically Christian viewpoint on sin. As he said in his speech at Western Michigan University in 1963, defining “agape” love:

    “This is the love of God operating in the human heart. When one rises to love on this level, he loves every man. He rises to the point of loving the person who does the evil deed while hating the deed that the person does.”

    Perhaps on the basis of this comment, you will tell us Dr. King was a “hater” too. He was, in fact, a theologically and socially conservative Christian.

  • http://www.TheGayManifesto.com BigBearCO

    Please remember that the two groups cited in the article, the American Family Association and Americans For Truth About Homosexuals are both hate groups registered with the Southern Poverty Law Center along with the Klu Klux Klan and many white supremacist groups.

    These hate groups work to destroy the message of equality and the very memory of Dr. King. Please don’t allow white supremacist groups destroy what this great civil rights leader stood for.

    These hate groups are using the same tactics against Gay and Lesbian Americans that they used against African Americans 50 years ago.

    http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/winter/the-hard-liners

  • Anonymous

    Hmmm…are you saying that the National Organization for Marriage — which supports a federal Marriage Protection Amendment and is chaired by MLK lieutenant Walter Fauntroy — is comparable to a “white supremacist group” because it opposes so-called homosexual “marriage”? Earth to Big Bear…earth to Big Bear…come in please.

    The American Family Association of Michigan spokesperson in the Detroit media market is an African-American lawyer. These pro-family groups detest the race-based bigotry of the Klan et al. That the SPLC hatefully labels groups “hateful” because they oppose homosexual “marriage” — opposition shared by most African-Americans including members of Dr. King’s family — says more about SPLC’s extremism than it does the pro-family groups they attempt to smear by association.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_27MJBPRJ7A6NSEU65J7U45P3EY Kev

      You are incorrect.
      A person’s orientation is way more complex than which gender of adults you have sex with.

      Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter (well she passed away RIP) was a strong supporter of gay rights. Also the late Bayard Rustin, openly gay, worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. during the Civil Rights Movement.

      The American Family Association has pushed for ex-gay therapy cited as harmful to clients according to highly credible, respected, and reputable medical and mental health organizations (American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, American ACADEMY of Pediatrics, etc).

      Gary Glenn from the American Family Association of MIchigan has implied gay people should go to jail because of sex between consenting adults.

      Religion has been used to disapprove of same-sex marriage AND interracial marriage. For example a Carolina Court reviewed Loving v. Virginia (before the US Supreme Court) and cites religion to deny interracial couples legal recognition to marry.

  • http://www.facebook.com/ndostal Norman Dostal

    richg-MLK’s wife knew him better than ayone-sorry if that doesnt jibe with your bigoted view that gay couples are less than straight couples, but that is reality
    It is sad that religion warps so many african american minds-they seem easily misled. Truth is, their religion was the same one that denied them rights 50 years ago-blacks were denied interracial marriage from a strict conservative reading of the tower of babel-The Bible was written by men and no God would demand some be treated as less than others

    But God is giving us equal rights through the courts-there is nothing black bigots or white bigots can do about it

  • http://www.facebook.com/ndostal Norman Dostal

    and NOM is clearly a hate group-as I said, any group that looks at millions of people-in this case, gays, as less than others and less deserving of equal rights as others, that is hate
    Furthermore, NOM is a religious group that condemns gays to hell if they express physical love toward the same sex-they believe gays will burn in hellfire for all eternity for expressing love-what is more hateful than that?

    We are a secular nation-religious views in law are irrelevant and, harmful to millions

    But as I said, its just a matter of time…sorry bigots

  • Anonymous

    I would take this view more seriously if it came from a neutral source. I’ve seen that most organizations with “Family” in their name have a very narrow view of what constitutes a family.

  • Irish_Wake

    Ladies and gentlemen, can we please come to our senses?

    This is an interview of one white middle-class male with an anti-gay political agenda by a second white middle-class male with with an anti-gay political agenda.

    Although neither has the necessary background experience to understand the late Reverend, both find it politically expedient to use his image for their own gain. Both are quite comfortable putting words in the mouth of the dead for their own ends. Indeed, I have recently seen the late Reverend King hailed as a ‘Republican Icon.’ He would appear to be one of the few that were not corporate, anti-tax, or single issue supporters.

    This casual, offhand twisting of history for one’s own political gain may be one reason of many the Southern Poverty Law Center views these fine, upstanding citizens as worth their notice.

  • Anonymous

    “And yet homosexual activists today use the legacy of Dr. King and the civil rights movement to suggest that someone’s sexual behavior, two men engaging in sex with each other, is somehow comparable to the color of skin, [in] which someone happens to be born.”

    The implication here when comparing the issues of civil rights between the African-American population and the gay population is that, according to some, homosexuality is a lifestyle choice (i.e., not something “born into”) and therefore the gay population qualifies neither for equal treatment under the Constitution, nor for protection against discrimination.

    Unfortunately for both gay Americans and African Americans, this issue has been used mostly by the Christian Right to divide their respective causes: Proposition 8 seems to have passed in California solely because of this divide, i.e., the black population has expressed its resentment – at the polls – of the gay population’s attempt to make the civil union issue a civil rights issue akin to what African Americans faced during the Jim Crow era.

    This comparison was rightly thrown off by Californian African Americans, who said essentially that “gays can always pass for straight, but blacks cannot always pass for white.” But this of course does not mean that gays have no civil rights issue.

    Besides, the posthumous presumptions by one side or the other of “WWMLKD?” fail to account for allegations that Dr. King himself behaved privately not in accordance with his own teachings. Furthermore, the convictions of members of his family or former staff are not necessarily reflective of those of Dr. King himself (indeed, everyone knows of conservative-minded civic and political leaders whose rebellious or contrary family members have caused them angst and embarrassment in the public eye).

    The issue of gay protections under the law does not need either Dr. King’s blessing or criticism from the grave: He has earned his eternal peace. The gay rights movement might, however, benefit in the present by having a leader of his conviction and insight.

  • http://twitter.com/SeanRConner Sean Conner

    I think people are confusing Christian freedom of opinion and our legal obligation to equal protection.

    Heterosexual people are free to form certain contracts and enjoy certain benefits under the law, and so must homosexual people. And (using same-sex marriage/opposite-sex marriage as an example) if we say “No, it’s equal because everyone equally has a right to marry the opposite sex,” then you must ask yourself how happy your son or daughter would be marrying a gay man or lesbian woman who was forced into a compromised relationship. Because if we argue that gays and lesbians should not feel they are being denied access, we must assume that they assert their right to these benefits another way (i.e. by marrying into ultimately disastrous relationships with others–which would truly be an affront to anyone’s concept of family value).

    Those who support same-sex marriage and those who oppose it may argue all they want about a deceased civil rights leader’s opinions on the matter, but what truly matters is the here and now. Some close to him think he would be for allowing LGBT people to enter into loving marital relations, others think he wouldn’t–but let’s not let that argument eclipse the necessary discussion of how true Christian ethics (as great as they are, I can honestly say) are meaningless in the eyes of the law–only equal protection and equal access are relevant here.

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