The words that
the Reverend James A. Forbes chose to share with the
roomful of black gay and lesbian faithful on Sunday in New
York might have come straight from the civil rights
struggles of the 1960s. Forbes reminded his listeners
that discrimination has no place in this world and
urged them to lay down the notion put forward by some black
ministers that they are less favored by God. "Your job
is to get up every day and be grateful to God for your
DNA," Forbes said. "It took an artist divine to make
this design!"
Forbes, senior minister at the Riverside Church,
was among several religious leaders and politicians
who attended a revival meeting Sunday aimed at
countering what organizers said is a surge in antigay
rhetoric coming from pulpits in conservative parishes.
The program for the event bore the pictures of
10 black men and women who were murdered or severely
injured in recent years in attacks believed to have
been motivated by their sexual orientation.
Manhattan borough president C. Virginia Fields
likened the treatment of gays today to the
discrimination she faced growing up black in the old
South, and Arun Gandhi, a grandson of Mohandas Gandhi, drew
parallels to the repression once experienced by
nonwhite citizens in South Africa. Religious
conservatives have often chafed at comparisons drawn between
the gay rights movement and civil rights struggles of the past.
The issue has been an especially sensitive one
in some predominantly black congregations, where
pastors have maintained that homosexuality is a sin or
a social disorder that should not be compared with race or ethnicity.
Last winter hundreds of black clergy attended
summits in cities across the country aimed at opposing
same-sex marriage. The Reverend Martin Luther King
Jr.'s youngest daughter even led a march through Atlanta to
advocate a ban on same-sex marriage.
Speaking at the Riverside Church, the Reverend
Cari Jackson of the Center of Spiritual Light said
some conservative black clergy had, perhaps
unintentionally, incited hate against lesbians and gays by
repeatedly condemning them as sinners. "Like our slave
ancestors," Jackson said, "we are being spiritually,
psychologically, and physically abused." (AP)
