NAACP Endorses LGBT Equality Act

Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP’s D.C. bureau.

While in theory they should have been allies for decades given their common enemies, particularly white Christofacsists who by a seeming large majority are also white supremacists, the LGBT and African-American communities have nor always been allies.  One of the main stumbling blocks has been "conservative" black pastors who have allowed themselves year after year to be rallied against LGBT rights by the very same Christofascist who in prior generations advocated for segregation and retention of the Jim Crow laws. Indeed, here in Virginia, The Family Foundation, the state's leading hate group, has played black pastors as fools  for many years.  Now, with the very transparent effort by the Legislative Black Caucus to throw Governor Ralph Northam - the most LGBT governor in Virginia history - under the bus in order to elevate Justin Fairfax to the position of governor,  relations between the some elements of the two communities are very strained (e.g., I will not be voting for my state senator and delegate in November who are members of the Legislative Black Caucus).  A piece in Metro Weekly looks at the NAACP's endorsement of the Equality Act which hopefully may help mend fences.  Here are excerpts:

The Equality Act got a big boost on Friday night after the NAACP, the nation’s oldest African-American civil rights organization, publicly endorsed the LGBTQ rights bill currently making its way through Congress.

“We support what it does — and we support it now,” Hilary Shelton, the director of the NAACP’s D.C. bureau, told NBC News. “It’s important that it gets through.”

Shelton added that the group had previously endorsed the bill in meetings with its two main sponsors, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.).

The organization’s support for the bill, which would add protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of characteristics protected under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, is considered a significant victory for LGBTQ rights groups, who had been criticized for failing to obtain the support of prominent African-American organizations before introducing the act earlier this month.

By endorsing the act, the NAACP effectively shuts down one of the arguments — albeit specious — used to justify opposition to the legislation.

“We believe the same protections that we have worked for so hard over the 110 years of the NAACP should be extended to all Americans, particularly members of the LGBTQ community,” Shelton told NBC.

He also noted that the NAACP previously supported other pieces of legislation granting the LGBTQ community expanded protections, including the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, insurance nondiscrimination protections contained in the Affordable Care Act, and the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

The organization also expressed support for marriage equality in the run-up to 2012, and prior to the 2013 and 2015 Supreme Court decisions that, respectively, overturned Section 3 of DOMA and legalized same-sex marriages nationwide.