"Civil rights group threatens to fire local (LA) leader for gay marriage endorsement"

LA Times, July 11, 2009:

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a civil rights group partly founded by Martin Luther King Jr., has threatened to fire the president of its Los Angeles chapter because he supports same-sex marriage.

The Rev. Eric P. Lee, president of the local SCLC chapter for two years, became an outspoken advocate of same-sex marriage during the recent campaign against Proposition 8, an amendment to the state Constitution that banned such unions.

The SCLC national board notified Lee on May 27 that he would have to attend a hearing at its Atlanta headquarters on June 4 to explain his stance on same-sex marriage. If he did not show up, they said, they would suspend and fire him.

Lee did not attend the hearing. He told the board he could not afford the last-minute trip but could participate via conference call. He said he never heard back from the board.

When Lee failed to appear for the hearing, he received an e-mail warning him to set a date to appear or face removal.

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For the rest, go here: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-sclc11-2009jul11,0,1372647.story

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Astounding.

Pity those who claim to follow him are not so gifted.

Sounds a lot like being summoned to explain yourself before the Inquisition, doesn't it? More bad religion. They are taking the same Bible that was selectively quoted to justify their own oppression and using it to justify their oppression of others.

is pretty astonishing.

It *would* be funny (It's THAT ridiculous.) if it weren't so sad.

that the greater black community has turned it's back on the GLBT struggle for civil rights and tells us that our issues are not the same as theirs. Interesting because a substantial part of the white people fighting for black civil rights were our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters or yesterday. I was watching Before Stonewall last week and one of the lesbians said that that was a fact, I had always suspected that it was the case but there is was spoken buy those in the know. If we could turn back time, knowing what we do today, and not helped their fight for civil rights what would to world look like today? They could be still fighting for their rights and we may have already gained ours. :shrug:

the persecuted persecuting the persecuted. Oh the sad, sad, sad irony. So what exactly is the SCLC's motto: "Civil rights and freedom for some; little miniature American flags for others." Somebody needs to remind these oh so "righteous" people that you can't pick and choose who has civil rights. They of all should know that.

And Dr. King would be sickened by this.

this is appalling.

Been thinking about this whole weird issue. I doubt that I’ve come up with anything original here, but see if this makes any sense. And please no flaming. I’m kind of thinking out loud here, trying to analyze but certainly not defend.

As gays we are not a minority that is based on race or ethnicity. The problem is that for most people race and ethnicity are exactly the things that do identify and define a minority. But we are different. What defines us as a minority is not the color of our skin or the shape of our eyes, but how we feel inside and how those feelings are made manifest by our actions. The only real external evidence that we are different lies not in our innate physical characteristics but in how we behave. In the eyes of the straight world it is our actions that define us.

Blacks and Asians and Latinos can be as immoral in their actions as White people can. But anyone who went around asserting that simply being Asian or Black or Latino was in and of itself immoral would be seen as a total nut job. However, substitute “gay” for Asian or Black or Latino and this is exactly what people assert all the time.

You end up with an argument that goes something like this: gays are defined as people who have sex with other members of their own sex. Same-sex sex is immoral. Therefore gays are immoral or at least the things that define them as gays are immoral. Obviously you do not offer minority status and protections or a allow access to social institutions such as marriage to a class of citizens based on nothing more than their having a shared immorality.

So if large numbers of people, especially religious people, see homosexuality as a moral failing in a way that race is not I guess it’s not surprising that a Christian-based group such as the SCLC takes a stand against us that is really no different from that of most other Christian-oriented organizations, not to mention churches. It’s also not surprising that they reject the idea that our struggle can be equated with their own. I don’t know how we fix this.