On the observance of Martin Luther King Day, African-American leaders
noted the slain civil rights figure’s Christian position on cultural
issues like abortion and sexual ethics.
Illinois religious and political
leaders also organized to challenge the “hijacking” of the civil rights
movement by homosexual political activists.
Dr. Alveda King, full-time director of African-American Outreach for
Priests for Life and King’s niece, cited her uncle’s advice columns
written for Ebony magazine in 1957 and 1958.
“In advising men and women on questions of personal behavior 50 years
ago, Uncle Martin sounded no different than a conservative Christian
preacher does now," she commented. “He was pro-life, pro-abstinence
before marriage, and based his views on the unchanging Word of the
Bible. Today, Planned Parenthood would condemn Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. as part of the 'religious right’.”
King reported that one of her uncle’s columns concerned a young man
who had impregnated his girlfriend and refused to marry her, resulting
in a “crime,” a euphemism for abortion. Martin Luther King, Jr. advised
the man that he had made a “mistake.”
He also urged another reader to abstain from premarital sex, saying
that such activity was contributing to “the present breakdown of the
family.”
"Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a man of peace, justice, and most of
all a man of God," Alveda King continued, suggesting that he would be
working today to secure justice for those in the womb endangered by
abortion.
In Hillside, Illinois more than 40 African-American religious and
political leaders gathered on Jan. 17 at Freedom Baptist Church to
lament the misrepresentation of King’s legacy.
During the Illinois House
debate on the issue of civil unions for homosexuals, two backers of the
proposal compared same-sex “marriage” to interracial marriage.
Comparisons between homosexual rights and civil rights have become
increasingly common in recent decades.
In its own Martin Luther King Day
message, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s executive director
Rea Carey also invoked the leader.
“We believe that were he alive today, Dr. King would be standing with
the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community as we too reach
for equality,” she said.
However, the press conference of African-American leaders in Illinois
challenged this view.
Its announcement denied that opposition to
discrimination based on “immutable, non-behavioral, morally neutral
condition like race” was equivalent to an effort to “normalize and
institutionalize deviant sexual relations.”
David Smith, executive director of the Illinois Family Institute, was of a similar view.
“Skin color is not analogous to behavior,” he said.
“Homosexual activists and their allies are advancing their subversive
moral and political goals by hijacking the rhetoric of the Civil Rights
Movement and Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy,” the Institute said in a
press release.
It said attempts to associate “philosophical
conservatives” with racism and bigotry constituted intimidation.
“We shouldn't allow the exploitation of the legacy of Dr. King to be
exploited for the destructive purposes of the movement to normalize
homosexuality and demonize traditional moral beliefs.”
A similar press conference was scheduled to take place in East St. Louis.
SIC: CNA/USA