Fox News and the Growing Ugliness of Evangelical Christianity

Two pieces look at the growing ugliness of Evangelical Christianity. One is a column at NBC News by a Christian author and the other is in the New York Times.  Both in their own way point a finger at one of the causes of the seemingly mushrooming hate and hypocrisy that define evangelical Christianity in America.  Both also note evangelical support of Roy Moore a symptom of the malignancy evangelicals have become in the political area where the gospel's social directives have been thrown on the trash heap despite the feigned piety and religiosity of far too many evangelicals.  The NBC News column states in part as follows:

This is not Christianity. Rather, it is an extreme Republican religionism that stands by party and regressive policy no matter what. It's not the gospel of Christ, but a gospel of greed. It is the religion of racism and lies, not the religion of redemption and love.

[E]ven before these allegations [of Moore's sexual assaults] made national headlines, it was clear that Moore’s policy agenda endangered the children of Alabama and this nation. This man, who wants to be Alabama’s next Senator, wants to repeal Obamacare, making it health care inaccessible for millions, in Alabama and elsewhere. He has said Islam is a "false religion" homosexual conduct "should be illegal." and curtail equal protection under the law for gay and transgender people. Moore supports a tax plan that would hurt the poor and working poor.

In short, Moore’s political agenda presents a credible threat to millions of vulnerable people in America. Yet Moore claims to be the moral and Christian candidate, using religion as U.S. slave masters did before him to justify actions which fly in the face of Christ's teachings. Like segregationists, Moore imagines the struggle for equality in America as a story of loss. At a revival meeting earlier this week, Moore complained that he was being persecuted. He also lamented the fact that the courts took prayer out of schools in 1962 and made a cryptic and confusing reference to “new rights” created in 1965, the year the Voting Rights Act was signed. Some members of the congregation responded, “Amen!”

As well as he knows his Bible, Roy Moore never quotes from the more than 2,000 verses that exhort us to care for the poor, the sick, and the stranger in our midst. He has apparently overlooked the prophet Isaiah, who said to men like Moore in his own day: “Doom to you who legislate evil, who make laws that make victims — laws that make misery for the poor, that rob the destitute of their dignity, exploiting defenseless widows, taking advantage of homeless children” (Is.10:1-4).

So who is preaching this Republican religionism that the author condemns?  Fox News, Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh and a host of other right wing "news" outlets. To watch Fox News is to witness an alternate reality that has no regard for those who do not worship at the Republican/Christofascist altar. The column in the New York Times does so far as to describe Fox News viewing as the new form of worship for many evangelicals.  Here are excerpts:

Kaitlyn Schiess has a sterling evangelical pedigree. She grew up in evangelical churches in Colorado and Virginia and graduated from Liberty University before entering Dallas Theological Seminary last year to prepare for a career in the church. But lately she has been frustrated by evangelicals’ failure to challenge the prejudice and predation in their midst.

To Ms. Schiess, this [evangelicals' defense of Roy Moore] is one more sign that a new ritual has superseded Sunday worship and weeknight Bible studies: a profane devotional practice, with immense power to shape evangelicals’ beliefs. This “liturgy” is the nightly consumption of conservative cable news. Liberals love to complain about conservatives’ steady diet of misinformation through partisan media, but Ms. Schiess’s complaint is more profound: Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson aren’t just purveyors of distorted news, but high priests of a false religion.

“The reason Fox News is so formative is that it’s this repetitive, almost ritualistic thing that people do every night,” Ms. Schiess told me. “It forms in them particular fears and desires, an idea of America. This is convincing on a less than logical level, and the church is not communicating to them in that same way.”

Social scientists have documented our tendency to reject reliable evidence if it challenges our beliefs. Hours of tearful victims’ testimony will not deter evangelicals who see Roy Moore as the latest Christian martyr persecuted by the liberal establishment. “Their loyalties are much more strongly formed by conservative media than their churches,” Ms. Schiess said.
 [T]he church is not doing its job. Humans thrive on ritual and collective acts of devotion. And the way we worship has political consequences. It shapes our response to evil and our reaction to people different from ourselves.
 Some evangelicals have grown so frustrated with their tradition’s captivity to a particular brand of politics — and the idolatries of white supremacy and the free market — that they have proposed a radical withdrawal from both Moral Majority-style activism and modern consumer culture. Worship, after all, is not just something that happens in church.
 When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed that 11 o’clock on a Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America, he was acknowledging the special power that ritual and community have to stoke or weaken both love and hatred. There is no substitute for sharing the bread and wine — the climax of the Christian liturgy — with people unlike yourself, Ms. Schiess said. She called for fighting false idols with right worship: “Fox News forms a fear, a caricature of other people; if communion were done in churches with diverse populations, it would counteract that fear.”
 [W]orship should be an act of humility, not hubris. It should be a discomfiting experience, not a doubling down on what’s easy and familiar. The battle for the soul of evangelicalism, the struggle to disentangle it from white supremacy, from misogyny — and from the instinct to defend politicians like Roy Moore — demands sound arguments grounded in evidence.

I for one think that Christianity is moribund in America and that evangelicals and fundamentalists will be the factions of Christianity that kill it in the eyes of decent, moral people who perhaps unwittingly follow the gospel message more consistently than most Christians, especially evangelicals. 

Would MLK Have Supported Marriage Equality?

Martin Luther King's widow, Coretta Scott King, made it clear before her death that she supported LGBT equality.  Moreover, she stated that her late husband would have supported the movement for LGBT equality.  What King himself thought we will likely never know with definitive certainty.  He was shot down in 1968 and never really expressed his views on LGBT equality, although one of his right hand men,  Bayard Rustin, was a gay man.  I believe that King would support today's movement for LGBT equality.  Today, while driving between the law firm offices today, I heard most of King's truly amazing speech when he came out against the Vietnam War (I love satellite radio). Based on his compassion for and statements about the Vietnamese people, I believe that he would have supported LGBT equality for similar reasons.  My blogger and activist friend, Rev. Irene Monroe, who I met at the 2008 LGBT blogger summit in Washington, D.C., has a piece in The Advocate that looks at this question.  Here are excerpts:

This Martin Luther King Jr. holiday reminds me how Alabama has always been a troubling state when it comes to upholding the civil rights of its denizens.

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s civil rights activism began in the unwelcoming “Heart of Dixie” in 1955 when on a cold December evening, Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat to a white passenger, birthing the Montgomery bus boycott. The boycott was the first of what would be many historic marches and protests that would catapult King onto a national stage. His acts of civil disobedience in the 1950s and 1960s helped elevate the country’s moral consciousness as Alabama struggled with theirs. Sadly, in 2016, Alabama is still struggling.

When, on January 8, the Mobile County Probate Office resumed issuance of marriage licenses, I was asked by an editor, “What would be MLK’s thoughts about the modern LGBTQ movement and the place of people of color in it?” As I comb through numerous books and essays learning more about King’s philandering, his sexist attitude about women at home and in the movement, and his relationship with Bayard Rustin, I too wonder, Would King today be a public advocate for LGBTQ rights?

King’s now-deceased wife would say yes.

In 1998, Coretta Scott King addressed the LGBT group Lambda Legal in Chicago. In her speech, she said LGBTQ equality and civil rights were the same. 

“I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King’s dream to make room at the table of brother and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people,” she said.

Speculations on what King's views would be vary within African-American LGBTQ communities. But an overwhelming number in these communities look more to Bayard Rustin — then and now — than to King as a spokesman for supporting our civil rights.

“I tend not to worry much about what MLK would do. I tend to look at someone such as Bayard Rustin as one prime driving force in civil rights and other activism. Rustin was there before World War II. And he never wavered, always looking for something new. It was Rustin who schooled King in Gandhi’s ideas. Rustin has simply said that the GLBT movement is the inheritor of civil rights activism in the U.S. I’ll stick with Bayard,” a blogger wrote me.

In the civil rights movement, Rustin was always the man behind the scenes, and a large part of that had to due with the fact that he was gay. Because of their own homophobia, many African-American ministers involved in the civil rights movement would have nothing to do with Rustin, and they intentionally spread rumors that King was gay because of his close friendship with Rustin.

We must understand King within the historical context of the homophobic black church; because of his association with it, I cannot envision him endorsing marriage equality. But I, like so many within the African-American community — straight or gay — cannot fathom King marching against same-sex marriage as his youngest daughter, Rev. Bernice King, did.

King was assassinated over a year before the Stonewall riots. Gay rights had not reached the level of being a bona fide national issue yet, and for King to have made a major public pronouncement regarding LGBTQ rights would have been historically premature. Note the flak he took even for speaking out against the Vietnam War — it was charged that he was overstepping his role and the war was not his issue.

“Had [King] lived long enough, he would have taken some form of enlightened viewpoint regarding gay/lesbian rights,” a friend told me emphatically. “Personally, I speculate that probably he and his wife had private conversations regarding this issue, and I believe that Coretta’s unwavering support of GLBT rights throughout the rest of her life reflects the direction of those discussions.”

Why the Civil Rights Act Could Not be Enacted Today

A piece in Politico looks at the political toxicity that envelops Washington and why the Civil Rights Act of 1965 could not secure passage today.  There are details in the piece but the reason why the Act could not be passed nowadays boils down to one word: Republicans.  Today's GOP bears no resemblance to the political party in which I grew up or in which I was an activist for the better part of a decade.  Today, the embrace of ignorance, hypocrisy filled religious extremism, and thinly veiled racism are the pillars of the party's current agenda.  Here are excerpts from the article:

It was a painful tableau: The bipartisan leaders of Congress linking hands in the Capitol Rotunda and swaying to the strains of “We Shall Overcome” as they commemorated the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi sang along with the crowd, but Mitch McConnell and John Boehner’s lips were frozen in silent, self-conscious smiles.

The climate in today’s Washington is so different from the one that produced what many scholars view as the most important law of the 20th century that celebrating the law’s legacy is awkward for Republicans and Democrats alike. Neither party bears much resemblance to its past counterpart, and the bipartisanship that carried the day then is now all but dead.

“The Republican Party today doesn’t really honor its past,” said Geoffrey Kabaservice, author of “Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party from Eisenhower to the Tea Party.” “The Republican Party that had been ceased to be sometime in the 1980s, and the modern party — the radical conservative party — not only has little or no interest in honoring its history, it is actively hostile to it.”

Part of the problem is this: Although the Civil Rights Act passed the Senate by 73-27, with 27 out of 33 Republican votes, one of the six Republicans who voted against it was Barry Goldwater of Arizona, who weeks later became the GOP’s presidential standard-bearer and started the long process by which the Party of Lincoln became the party of white backlash, especially in the South. Today, Republicans hold complete legislative control in all 11 states of the Old Confederacy for only the second time since Reconstruction.

The position of the GOP’s congressional wing on issues from immigration, to voting rights, to the minimum wage (while helping to rack up Republican victories in individual districts) is broadly alienating to most African-American voters. So are efforts at the state level to impose new voter identification laws or other limits on access to the ballot box that disproportionately affect black voters. All that makes it hard for today’s GOP to lay plausible claim to its undisputed legacy on civil rights.

[R]estoration of a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court struck down last year — is given no chance of passing the House, despite co-sponsorship from Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) for creating new criteria for determining which states must obtain approval from the Justice Department before changing their voting laws.

“There are no real Republican leaders on civil rights or voting rights, aside from Sensenbrenner,” said Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and author of the Election Law Blog. “And it’s only going to get more awkward, because we’re coming up on the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The anniversaries of all these just serve to show how different things are today.”

 

Martin Luther King’s Still Unfulfilled Dream Is Still

It has been nearly almost 46 years since Martin Luther King was murdered.   Yet significant aspects of his dream remain unfulfilled.  Some of the unfulfilled aspects tie directly to the decades long program of sabotage implemented by the Republican Party both at the state and federal level.  And if anything, the GOP sabotage effort has accelerated in recent years. Meanwhile, the GOP gives lip service to supposedly wanting more minority participation in the GOP's fictional "big tent."  For one who is a member of a minority demographic to be a supporter of today's GOP is akin to a Jew supporting Hitler's Nazi Party in the 1930's.  Think Progress highlights four initiative that King supported which are subject to consistent GOP sabotage.  Here are excerpts:

While the civil rights leader changed the conversation around race and justice in the U.S., many of his goals never came to fruition.   Here’s a look at four of the things King demanded but never saw completed:

1. A living wage. One of the demands protesters listed for the March on Washington was a minimum wage. “Anything less than $2.00 an hour,” King and his compatriots argued, fails to “give all Americans a decent standard of living.” In 2014 dollars, a $2 an hour wage would work out to about $15.27. But minimum wage is actually much, much lower — less than half of that — today. Forty-two percent of those earning minimum wage are people of color.

2. Desegregation. King hoped to see the end not just of legal segregation in the South, but also of the de facto segregation that existed in Northern businesses, housing, and schools. He even toured Chicago advocating for the end of this kind of segregation, saying civil rights leaders needed to “eradicate a vicious system which seeks to further colonize thousands of Negroes within a slum environment.’’ But today, public schools are more segregated than they were 40 years ago. The unemployment rate for black Americans has remained above 10 percent for most of the last half a century, and black workers earn on average $22,000 less a year than their white counterparts. Black homebuyers are shown significantly fewer homes than their white counterparts when shopping for a house. Ethnic identity is still the key factor in where people reside.

3. Fair voting. King campaigned extensively for legislation like the Voting Rights Act. And he lived to see it passed. But legislators, largely Republicans, have been working to roll back the rights protected under the VRA since its inception. Those efforts have become even more acute recently. More than half the states introduced restrictive voting legislation in 2013 alone, according to a review by the Brennan Center, at a total of 92 separate bills in 33 states. The Supreme Court also struck down a major portion of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, allowing states previously subject to the VRA to put voting laws on the books without federal oversight. Now a group of members of congress — including Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), who incidentally established the first official Martin Luther King Day — is working to undo the damage of that decision.

4. Unfettered unionization. King spoke out specifically about anti-union “Right to Work” laws. “[W]e must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work,’” he said in 1961. “Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone…Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights. We do not intend to let them do this to us.” Over 50 years later, right to work laws are still on the books. In fact, Michigan passed its own right to work law in 2012. But King’s assessment was right: No matter their unionized status, workers in “right to work” states today earn $1,500 less a year than their counterparts, and are less likely to receive other benefits like health care and pensions.

When I accuse today's GOP of being a de facto white supremacist party, I catch a lot of flack.   But, actions speak louder that words and a review of GOP actions and positions make it painfully clear that today's GOP is working incessantly to undermine Martin Luther Kings dream.

Bayard Rustin – Openly Gay Activist who Mentored Martin Luther King, Jr. and Planned the March on Washignton

Martin Luther King, Jr., left, walks with Bayard Rustin in this 1956 photo. Rustin was King’s mentor and was the architect of King’s 1963 March on Washington.

On this 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a Dream Speech" on the Washington, D.C. mall, there has been all kinds of coverage and descriptions of reminiscences in the so-called main stream media.  Sadly, throughout most of it contains no mention of Bayard Rustin who not only planned much of the march on Washington in 1963, but who also mentored Martin Luther King, Jr.  Unfortunately, this omission is typical of the effort to "de-gay" history and deny prominent out gays their places in history.   A piece in the Press Telegram looks at this overlooked history.  Here are excerpts:

Bayard Rustin, a leader of the civil rights movement, mentor to Martin Luther King Jr. and chief organizer of the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, struggled much of his life against racism and homophobia..

Openly gay, he remained in the background for the sake of the movement, only to be sacrificed by its leaders as a political liability. Nevertheless, Rustin made crucial contributions to the civil rights movement and emerged as a gay rights activist.

BAYARD RUSTIN had a dream.

As a tireless and pioneering crusader for civil rights, social justice and economic equality, his life rested on the bedrock conviction that ordinary people could change the world.

Rustin also practiced what he preached – He helped create the civil rights movement, mentored Martin Luther King, Jr. on the practice of nonviolent protest and was the architect of the historic 1963 March on Washington
However, Rustin was openly gay and deemed a political liability. Many advisers in the civil rights movement told him to sit at the back of the bus.

“Rustin hardly appears in all the voluminous literature produced about the 1960s,” says John D’Emilio, author of the book “Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin.”  “He’s a man without a home in history.”

Rustin has been lost in the shadows of history at least in part because he was a gay man in an era when the stigma attached to this was unrelieved.”

Adds Angela Bowen, assistant professor of women’s studies at Cal State Long Beach, “He was ostracized particularly by black leaders because they were homophobic. They said he would bring disgrace on them because he was gay.

“Bayard knew they were little minded, and he was ahead of his time,” she says.
Long before King, Jr. became a national figure, Rustin routinely put his life on the line as a crusader for racial justice.

Rustin spent three years (1943-46) in a federal penitentiary as a conscientious objector to World War II (He was a Quaker).

A year later, Rustin organized the first “freedom ride” through the South. The riders were beaten, arrested and fined. Rustin served 22 days on a North Carolina chain gang.

In 1956, during the initial stages of the Montgomery bus boycott, Rustin met the 26-year-old King, Jr. Rustin schooled the young leader in the mechanics of running a nonviolent protest.
 
[I]n 1963, A. Philip Randolph, president of the powerful Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, tapped Rustin to organize the March on Washington.  Rustin and Randolph saw the event as far grander than ending the ruler for sitting at the back of the bus.

They envisioned is as a “catalyst which mobilizes all workers behind demands for a broad and fundamental program of economic justice.”

Rustin was attacked by segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond as a “homosexual, a draft-dodger and a member of the Communist Party,” but this time the civil rights leadership stood by Rustin. After the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Rustin advocated a shift in strategy from protest to electoral politics – precisely at the moment when a more militant generation was taking to the streets in protest. Rustin was attacked as an “Uncle Tom” and viciously gay-baited by younger black nationalists.

The Insane Attempt By the GOP to Claim Martin Luther King, Jr.

Being a black Republican makes even less sense than being a gay Republican, particularly in this era when the GOP across the country is working diligently to disenfranchise blacks through voter ID laws and challenges to the Voting Rights Act (at least with gays, the GOP isn't trying to deprive us of our right to vote, although I am sure some in the Christofascist base of the GOP would relish that concept).  Yet, despite this blatant attack on blacks, in the fantasy world of today's GOP, some Republicans - including blacks who ought to know better - are trying to claim the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this batshitery.  Here are excerpts:

Republicans, who got just 6 percent of the African American vote in 2012, saw this week’s 50th anniversary celebration of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr’s March on Washington passing them by. So they held their own commemoration. They sent an invitation “far and wide,” as one party official put it, asking black conservatives to lunch at party headquarters. About 150 accepted the invitation for chicken, cheesecake and cheeky suggestions that the late civil rights leader would have supported the causes of today’s conservatives.

Unfortunately, the Party of Lincoln discovered that its technical capability was still rather 19th century. The wireless sound system failed, and the microphone picked up only every few words. . . . . . After a pause, the audio troubles were fixed for the rest of the event. But there remained a good deal of static in the message that came out over the next two hours. Those speaking to the group agreed on the desirability of appropriating King and the anniversary, but they proposed different and contradictory ways. 

Bob Woodson, a conservative activist, got a standing ovation after he said “We should not wait for evil to wear a white face before we get outraged” and urged his listeners to condemn “corrupt” black politicians. “I think if Dr. King were alive today, he would step on some of these sacred issues.”

It’s anybody’s guess what King would do, but it seems a bit of a stretch to think he would do what T.W. Shannon, speaker of the Oklahoma House, told the audience. 

“The key to fulfilling the dream” of King’s, he said, included “quality education for all our children whether in public or private schools,” a “limited government” and curbing a “ferocious appetite for bigger government.” The dream, he went on, must be protected from “contaminants of government dependence, class warfare, socialism and any other pollutant that would muzzle the ring of freedom.”

RNC officials who spoke  . . . . were less creative in attempting to turn King into a conservative Republican. Sharon Day, RNC co-chairman, noted that it was a Republican Congress that passed the women’s suffrage amendment — in 1919. Reince Priebus, RNC chairman, made the requisite references to the party’s birth and the Great Emancipator.

 Actions speak louder than words and the GOP effort to recreate a modern version of the Jim Crow laws makes a mockery of King's legacy.

Bayard Rustin to Receive Presidential Medal of Freedom

Speaking of learning from history, President Obama is taking a step that one can only hope will open the eyes of some of the cretin like black pastors who continue to be the willing water carriers - dare we say trained circus dogs? - for white supremacist leaning anti-gay organizations.  He has announced that Bayard Rustin - Martin Luther King's gay right hand man who organized the 1963 march on Washington - will receive a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom.   Sadly, Rustin has been largely hidden from the history of the Civil Rights movement because of his sexual orientation.  A piece in Bilerico Project looks at the news.  Here are excerpts:

The White House announced today that the venerable Bayard Rustin -- a pioneer in the African-American and LGBT civil rights movements, confidante and advisor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington -- will be posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our nation's highest civilian honor.

A press release from the White House notes that the award, which will be presented in a ceremony later this year, is given to individuals who have "made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."

The press release gives the following biography for Rustin:

Bayard Rustin was an unyielding activist for civil rights, dignity, and equality for all. An advisor to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he promoted nonviolent resistance, participated in one of the first Freedom Rides, organized the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and fought tirelessly for marginalized communities at home and abroad. As an openly gay African American, Mr. Rustin stood at the intersection of several of the fights for equal rights.

LGBT organizations reacted with praise. HRC:

"Bayard Rustin's contributions to the American civil rights movement remain paramount to its successes to this day," said HRC President Chad Griffin. "His role in the fight for civil rights of African-Americans is all the more admirable because he made it as a gay man, experiencing prejudice not just because of his race, but because of his sexual orientation as well."

Rustin was active in the struggle for civil rights for sixty years, from organizing early freedom rides in the 1940s, to serving as key advisor to Dr. King, to helping found the A. Philip Randolph Institute. But his advocacy was far from limited to the rights of African Americans. He worked to end apartheid in South Africa, fought for the freedom of Soviet Jews, worked to protect the property of Japanese Americans interned during World War II, and helped highlight the plight of Vietnamese "boat people." And in the 1980s, he also spoke up for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, testifying in support of anti-discrimination legislation in New York. "Bayard Rustin dedicated his life to advocating for fairness and equality and overcame prejudice to help move our nation forward," added Griffin.

It is sad that Rustin did not receive the recognition he deserved while he was living.

Gary Bauer: Blacks Should Be Grateful "Every Major Goal of Dr. Martin Luther King Has Been Reached"

Gary Bauer

The batshitery and outright lies of the far rights seemingly knows no bounds.  We've just seen a man who deems himself "white" literally get away with murdering a black youth, black males suffer from sky high arrest rates and incarceration rates totally disproportionate with their percentage of society, blacks suffer far higher unemployment and poverty rates that whites, etc., yet former GOP presidential candidate Gary Bauer - who looks like Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels in my view - just had the audacity or insanity (take your pick) to say that African Americans should be happier than every that "Every major Goal of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., has been reached."  Is the man delusional or does he simply not give a damn about black Americans?

Goebbels

Right Wing Watch looks at at Bauer's disingenuous batshitery.  Here are highlights:

In an email to supporters of his Campaign for Working Families today, Gary Bauer wondered why African Americans are still so upset about racism and continue “falling through the cracks” when “every major goal of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has been reached.”
In the email — “Will Holder Persecute George Zimmerman?” — Bauer laments that discussions on race can’t happen in America because “it inevitably degenerates into another round of bashing non-minorities and an indictment of America’s past sins.” Social services, “‘gangsta’ culture” and a lack of patriotic education, Bauer claims, are the real culprits for problems in the black community.
- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/bauer-african-americans-should-be-more-grateful-every-major-goal-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-ha#sthash.1obuXRx0.dpuf

In an email to supporters of his Campaign for Working Families today, Gary Bauer wondered why African Americans are still so upset about racism and continue “falling through the cracks” when “every major goal of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has been reached.”
In the email — “Will Holder Persecute George Zimmerman?” — Bauer laments that discussions on race can’t happen in America because “it inevitably degenerates into another round of bashing non-minorities and an indictment of America’s past sins.” Social services, “‘gangsta’ culture” and a lack of patriotic education, Bauer claims, are the real culprits for problems in the black community.
- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/bauer-african-americans-should-be-more-grateful-every-major-goal-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-ha#sthash.1obuXRx0.dpuf

In an email to supporters of his Campaign for Working Families today, Gary Bauer wondered why African Americans are still so upset about racism and continue “falling through the cracks” when “every major goal of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has been reached.”

In the email — “Will Holder Persecute George Zimmerman?” — Bauer laments that discussions on race can’t happen in America because “it inevitably degenerates into another round of bashing non-minorities and an indictment of America’s past sins.” Social services, “‘gangsta’ culture” and a lack of patriotic education, Bauer claims, are the real culprits for problems in the black community.

Bauer has the gall to then go on blathering about how God teaches us that all of us  are "created equal with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."  But Bauer leaves out any reference to his opposition to equal rights for gays, blacks, immigrants and basically every minority group.  The man is a nasty and disgusting weasel.

Bayard Rustin - Civil Rights Hero, Balck and Gay

While black pastors continue to allow themselves to be played like violins by the white Christianist descendants of the very people who supported slavery, then segregation and then bans on interracial marriage, most in the black community still close their eyes to the reality that Bayard Rustin, one of Martin Luther King's most important lieutenants, was a gay man. Sadly, the homophobia so rampant in the 1960's forced Rustin to often remain in the shadows. And one result is that due to their own ignorance of accurate history, many black pastors continue to serve as water carriers for groups that in actuality despise them and their communities. One sees it here in Hampton Roads time and time again as black pastors rally on orders from the stealth racists and Christofascists at The Family Foundation based in Richmond. My friend and fellow LGBT Blogger Summit alumni, Irene Monroe, has a piece at Huffington Post that looks at Rustin's role in the battle for civil equality. Here are some highlights:

This month around the country, LGBTQ communities are celebrating Bayard Rustin's 100th birthday anniversary. Next month, AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts will have their annual Bayard Rustin Breakfast, and last month, the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association awarded State of the Re:Union, a nationally aired radio show distributed by NPR and PRX, first place in the Excellence in Radio category for the Black History Month special they did on Bayard Rustin, titled "Bayard Rustin: Who Is This Man?"

To date, he's still largely unknown because of the heterosexism that has canonized the history of last century's black civil rights movement.

Rustin was born March 17, 1912 in the Quaker-settled area of West Chester, Penn., one of the stops on the Underground Railroad. A handsome 6-footer who possessed both athletic and academic prowess, he is most noted as the strategist and chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington that catapulted the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King onto the world stage. Rustin also played a key role in helping King develop the strategy of nonviolence in the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956), which successfully dismantled the longstanding Jim Crow ordinance of segregated seating on public conveyances in Alabama.

During the civil rights movement Bayard Rustin was always the man behind the scene, and a large part of that had to do with the fact that he was gay. As Albert Shanker, then president of the American Federation of Teachers and friend of Rustin's, stated in a review on Jervis Anderson's biography Bayard Rustin: The Troubles I've Seen, Rustin "was the quintessential outsider -- a black man, a Quaker, a one-time pacifist, a political, social dissident, and a homosexual."

African-American ministers involved in the civil rights movement would have nothing to do with Rustin, and they intentionally spread rumors throughout the movement that King was gay because of his close friendship with Rustin.

In a spring 1987 interview with Rustin in Open Hands, a resource for ministries affirming the diversity of human sexuality, Rustin recalls that difficult period quite vividly:

Martin Luther King, with whom I worked very closely, became very distressed when a number of the ministers working for him wanted him to dismiss me from his staff because of my homosexuality. Martin set up a committee to discover what he should do. They said that, despite the fact that I had contributed tremendously to the organization ... they thought I should separate myself from Dr. King . . .

As a March on Washington volunteer in 1963, Bayard Rustin was Eleanor Holmes Norton's boss. The renowned Congresswoman of D.C. recalls the kerfuffle concerning Rustin's sexuality. "I was sure the attacks would come because I knew what they could attack Bayard for," Norton stated to Steve Hendrix in a 2011 interview. "It flared up and then flared right back down," Norton stated. "Thank God, because there was no substitute for Bayard."

"When the anniversary comes around, frankly I think of Bayard as much as I think of King," stated Norton. "King could hardly have given the speech if the march had not been so well attended and so well organized. If there had been any kind of disturbance, that would have been the story."

To many conservative African Americans Rustin wasn't only "queer" in the literal sense but was perceived also as one who didn't have any of the approved and appropriate black sensibilities.

It is very sad that to this day, many in the black community know little or nothing about Rustin and the debt that they owe him. Hopefully, some day anti-gay black pastors will stop allowing themselves to be cynically manipulated by those who hate them.

Why do African-American Homophobes Ignore Bayard Rustin?

Recently, I have vented somewhat about the sad manner in which - at least in my opinion - the black community and black pastors continue to allow themselves to be cynically used and manipulated by white Christianist organizations that, truth be told, have contempt for blacks. Over the years I have followed many of the leading anti-gay "Christian" and "family values" organizations and perused their websites. It quickly becomes clear that many in these organizations hold views not too distant from those of the KKK when it comes to issues of racial equality. Yet time and again - most recently in Maryland - these anti-gay, anti-black, anti-Hispanic, and anti-immigrant organizations orchestrate black pastors like trained dogs to do their bidding to preserve a culture of discrimination and intolerance. Here in Virginia, it is nauseating to watch The Family Foundation (a toxic affiliate of Daddy Dobson's Focus on the Family) pull the puppet strings of black churches - some right in Norfolk within not too many blocks of my office.

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In this situation, blogger friend Alvin McEwen ask the pertinent question of why black pastors and other homophobes in the black community refuse to recognize that it was a gay man, Bayard Rustin, who played a major role in Martin Luther King's successful efforts to end segregation and bring civil equality? (A link to an account of Rustin's crucial role in the March on Washington is here) It's a question that needs asking over and over again and a subject on which those who allow their ignorance and prejudice to make them willing tools of those who despise them need to be educated. Here are highlights from Alvin's recent post (For those who may not know, Alvin is black himself - not that skin color should matter):
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Another day goes by and another ignorant black preacher sets himself up as the arbiter of just what the civil rights movement was all about. This time, it was in Iowa: Speaking before a conservative-minded crowd of around 400 on the west steps of the Capitol, Rev. Keith Ratliff criticized gay rights activists for equating their struggle with the civil rights movement of 50 years ago.
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Every time I hear an African-American leader make such statement, I always wish I could ask that leader about this man, Bayard Rustin: Bayard Rustin was an African-American openly gay aide of Martin Luther King, Jr. He organized the 1963 March on Washington. If it weren’t for him, that march would NOT have been a success.
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Yet throughout all of this, Rustin was never given an acknowledgment or credit BECAUSE he was openly gay. In a history of a movement fighting for basic dignity and humanity, you have a key fighter who was “buked, scorned, and overlooked” simply because of his sexual orientation.
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Common sense would propel one to say that this proves the kindred spirit held by both the lgbt and African-American movements for equality and dignity. How many African-Americans were overlooked because of their color? How many were kicked aside and treated badly because of the color of their skin?
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Someone please tell me the difference between disrespecting someone based on racial prejudice and doing the same thing based on homophobia. Is the feeling of being treated less than a man or a woman any different when it’s done to you based on sexual orientation rather than race?
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It just goes to show how clueless folks like Mr. Ratliff are and how they have transformed the greatness of the civil rights movement into a mockery by placing themselves as the spokespeople and the arbiters of just what it was all about.
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The civil rights movement was not solely about African-American civil rights. It was about rights in general, most specifically the right to be treated like a decent human being in spite of differences. In the grand scheme of things, it’s no different than the Solidarity Movement in Poland, the Women’s Right Movement worldwide, or yes, the LGBT Rights Movement worldwide.
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The desire for dignity and self-determination is universal. It crosses all genders, ethnicities and sexual orientations. No amount of fancy speeches will change that. And no amount of individuals gaining their reputations from exploiting the blood, sweat, and toil of those who sacrificed themselves long ago will ever change that either.
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It drives me crazy that those who don't have a full and complete history willingly allow themselves to be co=opted by those who are actually their enemies.