On Friday, Jan. 20, about 150 pastors and theologians from around the country came together for a summit in Atlanta on homophobia in black churches. The event, which was sponsored by the National Black Justice Coalition, drew national attention back to the question that many find themselves asking during Black History Month: Would Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., if alive today, support gay rights as a matter of the broader civil rights struggle?

In the 1960s, the gay rights issue was not on the national forefront in the way it is today. In fact, there is not one direct reference to gay and lesbian issues in King’s writings or speeches.

Even the King family is split on the answer. In December 2004, King’s youngest daughter, the Rev. Bernice King, stood at her father’s gravesite with thousands of like-minded demonstrators and denounced same-sex marriage. It wasn’t the first time she’d done it, either.

Rev. Bernice King is most noted for saying, “I know deep down in my sanctified soul that he [Martin Luther King, Jr.] did not take a bullet for same-sex unions.”

King’s widow, civil rights activist Coretta Scott King, who passed away on Tuesday, said in 1998: “I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people, and I should stick to the issue of racial prejudice. But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King, Jr. said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”

It is unlikely that the issue of whether Dr. King would have marched on Washington alongside gays and lesbians in support of gay rights or same-sex marriage will ever be settled to either side’s satisfaction. But for some, that is merely an exercise in intellectual futility.

“The problem isn’t whether you can compare civil right for blacks and civil rights for gays,” says Evan Walker, a graduate student in African-American studies and an openly gay African-American. “The problem is when you try to make the struggles seem equal. That simply isn’t going to work with most African-Americans.”

Walker explains that you simply cannot separate the intellectual and political issues of gay rights from the spiritual side of the African-American community, namely the evangelical religious beliefs that many African-Americans frame their world in. And when you throw the issue of sexuality into the equation – that is, the actual sexual acts between members of the same gender – things really get messy.

“I mean, seriously,” says Walker, only half-joking, “isn’t there the cardinal rule about the three things you’re never supposed to talk about when you’re at the dinner table? Religion, politics and sex, right? And how on earth does one ‘come to the table’ to talk about gay rights and civil rights without talking about all three?”

In May, 2000, Dr. King’s daughter, civil rights activist Yolanda King, joined Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas Gandhi, in Cleveland, Ohio, in a peaceful protest outside the Cleveland Convention Center, where the United Methodist Church was holding its general conference. On the docket was a motion to consider eliminating prohibitive language against gays and lesbians from its Book of Discipline, which contains the denomination’s rules and policies.

“Much of the discrimination against gays and lesbians is generated by the church,” said Gandhi, who is the head of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence in Memphis. “Religion is about reuniting people and bringing people together. Religion should be concerned about taking humanity toward salvation and God, but the church is very divisive on the issue [of homosexuality].”

Ultimately, the United Methodist Church’s general conference voted 705-210 to reject a proposal that would require all pastors to sign a statement professing that homosexuality is not of God’s will. The conference also declined to add language to the Book of Discipline that would have made conducting same-sex union ceremonies a chargeable offense.

Though most African-American Christians are fiscally liberal, says Eli Faulkner, an openly gay African-American and devout member of a Methodist Church here in San Diego, most are socially conservative.

“It’s so much easier for blacks to stand behind their religion,” says Faulkner, 32, of North Park. “But what people are forgetting is that Jesus was no white man. He didn’t walk among saints. He didn’t spend his life excluding people from salvation. He spent his life bringing people together.”

So much of the beliefs in the African-American community are those instilled from the pulpit, Faulkner says.

“Let’s face it: We look to our black leaders and they are all ministers or church folks,” Faulkner says. “Reverend [Al] Sharpton, Bishop [Desmond] Tutu, Dr. King. If there is to be any change for the African-American community on this issue of gay rights, it’s going to have to come from our churches.”

And that is going to make it extra hard, he adds.

“People who object to equating the struggle of Rosa Parks and Dr. King with the struggle of the [GLBT] community today have a problem with the fact that the people who are seeking that same equality are engaged in acts that are deemed unholy by the majority of Christians,” Faulkner says. “I can’t think of another group that African-Americans so vehemently oppose the comparison [to] – not Jews, not Latinos, not anyone, really.”

But African-American leaders like the Rev. Sharpton will not shy away from the church’s role. At the Atlanta summit, Sharpton said: “You cannot talk about civil rights and limit who’s included…. The church should have a front seat in the car leading toward dialogue, leading toward tolerance.”

Faulkner points to an essay in Ebony magazine from July 2004 in which Julian Bond, a civil rights leader and board chair of the NAACP, writes: “Some who believe in Biblical literalism find sanction in their anti-homosexuality there, but selectively ignore Biblical injunctions to execute people who work on the Sabbath (Exodus 35:2) and to crack down on those who get haircuts (Leviticus 19:27) or who wear clothes with more than one kind of thread (Leviticus 19:19). There’s no Biblical mention of lesbianism – are we to think that male homosexuality is wrong but female homosexuality is not?

“Many gays and lesbians worked side by side with me in the ’60s Civil Rights Movement. Am I now to tell them ‘thanks’ for risking life and limb helping me win my rights – but they are excluded because of a condition of their birth? They cannot share now in the victories they helped to win?”

At a rally in San Diego memorializing Dr. King’s legacy last month, John Warren, an ordained minister and editor of Voice & Viewpoint, made several remarks expressing his belief that the struggle for gay rights and the civil rights movement as it was embodied in Dr. King are not the same.

“I stand by my comments,” said Warren in a brief conversation with the Gay & Lesbian Times on Jan. 25. “Beyond that, I would prefer not to discuss it. I do, however, stand by my belief that they are not equal.”

Warren’s opposition stems from his religious beliefs, he says.

At the Atlanta summit this past month, Rev. Al Sharpton said: “In 2004, the religious right was concerned about re-electing George W. Bush. They couldn’t come to black churches to talk about the war, about health care, about poverty. So they did what they always do and reached for the bigotry against gay and lesbian people.”

President Bush raised his share of the black vote from 8 percent in 2000 to 11 percent in 2004. And that, says William Surrey, 39, of University Heights, is no coincidence. Surrey is an openly gay African-American.

“Rove this and Rove that,” says Surrey, referring to Bush’s political strategist Karl Rove, largely credited with Bush’s re-election. “People keep blaming everyone but themselves. Shame on us for letting the white man whip us into line again by talking about the evils of sodomy and clouding our political agenda with fire and brimstone religion.”

Jeffrey Mason, an openly gay African-American, seemingly agrees with Warren – sort of.

“OK, so gays don’t have to sit in the back of the bus, don’t have separate drinking fountains, and get to vote along with everyone else,” Mason explains. “But we’re forgetting something. There were African-American gays who did have to sit in the back of the bus, drink from separate fountains, and were denied voting rights.”

Mason’s point, he says, is that the current debate surrounding gay and lesbian rights, and specifically same-sex marriage, has “a very white face.” And it ignores the fact that some blacks are gays and some gays are black.

Keith Boykin, author of the groundbreaking book Beyond the Down Low and president of the National Black Justice Coalition’s board of directors, says: “Why does it matter if gays had to sit in the back of the bus? We don’t tell Latinos or Native Americans or people with disabilities or women –or any other oppressed group – that they have to prove [that] their suffering is identical to black suffering in order to be legitimate. Nor are we concerned with which group is worse off in the artificially constructed hierarchy of oppression when we talk about other minorities. The point is, it doesn’t matter which group is most oppressed or which was first oppressed or whether they are identically oppressed. What matters is that no group of people should be oppressed. But the more we focus on the hierarchy of difference, the less we focus on the actual oppression.”

One of the most frustrating elements for Mason is that he believes the large majority of gays and lesbians have every desire to integrate into society in a peaceful, meaningful and participatory way.

“Why are people so opposed to granting [GLBT individuals] the same protections as straight people when all we want to do is go about our daily lives in the same way that everyone else does?” Mason asks. “That’s where I think the comparison of the black civil rights, of women’s civil rights, of all the civil rights movements before us is legitimate. That’s where they converge. Rosa Parks wasn’t asking for a special bus to take her somewhere. She was just asking to be able to sit down like any white person. She was asking to participate in a simple process in society – public transportation – in the same way that others were allowed.”

Audrey Hampton, an openly lesbian African-American business owner in San Diego, agrees with Mason, Sharpton and Surrey. Hampton says it is time for the African-American community to stand up and be held accountable for their political actions.

“Talking about gay and lesbian issues isn’t politically popular with most black people,” Hampton says. “But at some point we have to come to the realization that while it may not be politically expedient to talk about homosexuality in the black community, we must begin to. And anyone who’s gone home to their mama’s house and tried to talk about being a lesbian knows it’s not pleasant. But we don’t have the luxury anymore of worrying about what’s pleasant.”

It is hard, says Mason, to look at the media’s portrayal of gays and lesbians and feel that the GLBT community is oppressed. “When I see ‘Queer Eye’ or ‘Will & Grace,’ I worry that what other people see are members of the establishment – middle- to upper-class white people – who are crying ‘oppression,’” he says. “This is not a compelling scenario. I worry that we don’t put the right faces forward to communicate the breadth of the problem. Whether this is a function of the gay African-American community being unwilling to step forward, or a muscling of the gay white community shutting us out, I don’t know. Either way, I worry we are creating a disconnect.”

Concerned Women for America’s president, Sandy Rios, said, “To compare rich, privileged homosexual lobby groups allied with transsexuals and sadomasochists to brave civil rights crusaders – who risked their lives to advance freedom – insults every black American who overcame real injustice and poverty.”

Faulkner again counters with Bond’s unwavering assurance that gay rights are civil rights – regardless of whose face is on the poster.

Bond wrote: “Are gay rights civil rights? Of course they are…. Gay and lesbian rights are not ‘special rights’ in any way. It isn’t ‘special’ to be free from discrimination – it is an ordinary, universal entitlement of citizenship. The right not to be discriminated against is a commonplace claim we all expect to enjoy under our laws and our founding document, the Constitution. That many had to struggle to gain these rights makes them precious – it does not make them special, and it does not reserve them only for me or restrict them from others.

“When others gain these rights, my rights are not reduced in any way. Luckily, ‘civil rights’ are a win/win game; the more civil rights are won by others, the stronger the army defending my rights becomes. …

“Objections to ‘gay rights’ take many forms. For some, comparisons between the African-American civil rights movement and the movement for gay and lesbian rights seem to diminish our long historical struggle with all its suffering, sacrifices and endless toil. However, we ought to be flattered that our movement has provided so much inspiration for others, that it has been so widely imitated, and that our tactics, methods, heroines and heroes, even our songs, have been appropriated by or served as models for others.”

Dr. Dwight McBride is a professor of African-American studies at Northwestern University in Chicago. McBride sees his identity as a black man and his identity as a gay man as a forced dual existence.

“As a black gay man, I recognize that I cannot trust my freedom to be fully achieved through what is the current black civil rights movement or the current gay rights movement,” he says. “For now, I work and struggle at the margins of both, hoping to make each movement more inclusive, more responsible, more effective.”

When Senator John Kerry, while running for president, made the comparison between the struggle for same-sex marriage and the civil rights movement of the 1960s, members of the Congressional Black Caucus said they were uncomfortable with the comparison. Most opposition to the comparison, though, was based on the recent trend to use same-sex marriage as the litmus for gay and lesbian rights.

Rep. Artur Davis, D-Alabama, said: “The civil rights movement was more of a movement for the equal rights of all Americans – education, voting rights, jobs – whereas gay rights in terms of gay marriage is a movement for a special group of Americans. So I would not compare civil rights with gay rights.”

The problem, says Dr. Bridget Bowers, is when same-sex marriage becomes the litmus test for gay and lesbian civil rights. She is a lecturer on and author of various articles on African-American issues of inequality. Bowers points to some trends and data that led up to the last general election, which may illuminate some issues surrounding the politics of gay rights in the African-American community.

In fact, as the last general election cycle was underway, a Gallup poll, commissioned by CNN and USA Today, showed for the first time in nearly a decade that support for key items on the gay rights agenda had declined – and particularly within the African-American community. Much of the decline, says Bowers, can be attributed to the shift away from housing and health issues toward issues surrounding same-sex marriage.

“About the same time that Massachusetts was legalizing gay unions, Canada was legalizing marriage, the Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws, the first all-gay high school was opening in New York City, and Episcopalians elected [the Rev. Gene] Robinson to be a bishop,” Bowers explains. “Suddenly you have this massive wave of gay and lesbian issues being covered in the media. It didn’t take the Bush administration long to figure out that everyone looked white in the photos. So their plan was simple: Let’s put a black face on the marriage amendment campaign.”

Enter the Rev. Walter Fauntroy. In 1961, Fauntroy was appointed by Dr. King as director of the Washington Bureau of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He then worked as the Washington, D.C., coordinator of the historic 1963 March on Washington, and directed the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March, the 1966 Meredith Mississippi Freedom March and the 20th anniversary March on Washington in 1983.

Fauntroy, no stranger to civil rights battles, became the public face of the amendment, Bowers says.

“It was extremely shrewd of Bush to choose someone so closely associated with Dr. King,” Bowers explains. “And the strategy worked.”

In May 2003, 60 percent of Gallup respondents thought gay sex should be legal. In August, that number had dropped to 48 percent. Since the Gallup poll posed the question for the first time in 2000, the trend toward acceptance of civil unions had hit an all-time low. Fifty-seven percent indicated that same-sex couples should not have the same rights as heterosexual couples.

One of the biggest shifts in the polls that year, and a trend that continues today, according to recent Gallup polls, is a rise in the African-American community in the belief that sodomy should be a crime. In May 2003, 58 percent thought gay sex should be legal. That number had dropped to 36 percent in August.

Much of that shift, Faulkner says, stems from the discussion of whether homosexuality is a choice.

“Race is unchangeable,” Faulkner says. “And if you believe that sexual orientation is inherent, that it is not a choice – as almost every leading scientist and geneticist does – then you must concur that sexual orientation is unchangeable. And in that way, race and sexual orientation are immutable, and our country’s Constitution, as envisioned by Thomas Jefferson and clarified by those in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, has an obligation to protect us against discriminatory laws and prejudicial policies.”

In January, eight friend-of-the-court briefs were filed with the California Court of Appeal urging the court to put an end to California state laws that deny same-sex couples the protections afforded to heterosexual married couples. More than 250 religious and civil rights organizations signed on in support. The court is set to hear the state’s appeal of a San Francisco Superior Court judge’s March 2005 ruling that California’s statutory ban on same-sex marriage violates the state constitution.

Alice Huffman, president of the California Conference of the NAAPC, issued the following statement: “I am proud to join with other civil rights leaders in standing up for fairness and dignity for all. Never before has such a diverse array of groups stepped forward to call for an end to the unfair treatment faced by same-sex couples and their families when they are denied the ability to marry.”

Huffman based her friend-of-the-court brief on the 1948 Perez v. Sharp decision in which the California Supreme Court struck down laws banning interracial marriage. Huffman and the California Conference of the NAACP believe the current debate over same-sex marriage in California falls within the same framework of the 1948 case.

Rick Schossler, executive director of the California Council of Churches and California Church IMPACT, which together represent 50 Protestant and orthodox judicatories – including many black churches – with more than 1.5 million members throughout California, also filed a friend-of-the-court brief, which read: “There is a great diversity among people of faith throughout California on the issue of marriage for same-sex couples. It is a matter of religious freedom to allow faith communities to practice their faith by performing and blessing marriages between same-sex couples who wish to make a commitment to each other, while allowing denominations that oppose such marriages to refrain from so doing.”

Hampton likes Huffman and Schossler’s thinking.

“Until 1961, blacks couldn’t marry whites in a whole slew of states,” Hampton says. “Why? Tradition, social norms, fears that the biracial children would somehow be disadvantaged. The military for a long time believed that troop morale would be jeopardized by having blacks serve alongside whites – I think it was the 1940s before it was integrated. Today, I can’t marry my partner because of tradition, social norms and fears that our children would somehow be disadvantaged. And my friends serve silently in the military in fear because of policies that rely on an argument of troop morale.”

Even those who are vehemently opposed to comparing the 1960s civil rights movement to the current gay rights movement make a distinction between gay rights and same-sex marriage.

In 2004, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, pastor of Greater New Light Baptist Church in Cincinnati, released the following statement in response to the discussion of gay rights: “The big question being asked today is whether or not gay rights and civil rights are one and the same. I’m not getting caught up in arguing over ‘this’ versus ‘that.’ I will simply state that I believe all human beings should have their basic rights protected under the law. As for the question of whether or not same-sex marriage should be banned in this country, neither law nor politics provides a readily accessible and acceptable answer. However, the Bible does; and unlike the Constitution, there are no loopholes in the interpretation of its guiding principles.”

The 1960s civil rights movement, Bowers says, focused on jobs, housing, transportation and access to education. And these are the same protections that gays and lesbians seek.

“Where it gets dicey,” Bowers explains, “is when people start to equate the politics of equal protection, such as ENDA [the Employment Non-Discrimination Act] and same-sex marriage. The recent confluence of the two may have set back the GLBT rights movement.”

San Diego native Mason agrees. “The reality is that whenever we start to incorporate sex into the politics of gay rights, blacks are going to flinch,” he says.

Just as politics cannot be separated from religious influence, Hampton says, neither can sex be truly removed from the discussion.

“When we [African-Americans] sing about our struggles to gain freedoms and rights,” Hampton explains, “we sing religious spirituals. When we wage political campaigns, we invoke our religious upbringings and often our very words – the language we use – are couched in spiritual terms. As a culture, we cannot separate religion and politics. And we accept that as a given. What we need to come to accept is that, likewise, we cannot separate the physical component from this discussion.”

Hampton says she is tired of watching HIV and AIDS rates “skyrocket among my brothers and sisters for sheer sake of ignorance.”

“The longer we refuse to talk about homosexuality, the longer we preach it from the pulpits and the stumps as a path to hell, the longer we will suffer the consequences of shame,” she says.

And that shame, Hampton says, is the number of African-Americans engaging in unsafe sex and the resulting rates of HIV infection.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta reports that African-Americans, who make up 12.3 percent of the U.S. population, account for 40 percent of the estimated AIDS cases since the epidemic began, and account for 50 percent of all new infections. Of persons given a diagnosis of AIDS since 1995, a smaller proportion of African-Americans (60 percent) were alive after nine years compared with American-Indians and Alaskan Natives (64 percent), Hispanics (68 percent), whites (70 percent) and Asians and Pacific Islanders (77 percent).

In 2001, HIV/AIDS was among the top three causes of death for African-American men aged 25-54 years and among the top four causes of death for African-American women aged 20-54 years. It was the number-one cause of death for African-American women aged 25-34.

“Anyone who thinks that the shame and denial of homosexuality among our black brothers and sisters [and] anyone who thinks that our systematic refusal to talk about gay rights and homosexuality isn’t causing these numbers is just fooling themselves,” Mason says.

There may be some very serious realities surrounding sex in the African-American population that change hearts and minds, Aaron Dervin of North Park says. Dervin, a social worker with high-risk HIV populations, says the rise in HIV infection and AIDS rates may tip the scale of the discussion.

From 2000 to 2003, the CDC estimates that the rates for African-American male seroconversions were seven times those for white males, and three times those for Hispanic males. In 2003, the leading cause of HIV infection among African-American men was sexual contact with other men. The CDC reports conclude that denial – that a significant amount of African-American men having sex with other men identify themselves as heterosexual – is preventing these individuals from relating to prevention education crafted for men who identify themselves as gay.

“Sex on the DL [down low] is a losing proposition,” Dervin avers. “When you have an entire community engaging in sexual activities that are unsafe because no one is willing to talk about it, it’s simply a recipe for disaster. And disaster would be an understatement for our current situation.”

At the Atlanta summit of black theologians and activists last month, many of the speakers used infection rates of HIV and AIDS as a rallying point.

Sylvia Rhue, religious affairs and constituency development director for the National Black Justice Coalition, said, “HIV and AIDS is a major concern in the black community, and churches can’t deal with it if they can’t deal with human sexuality.”

The high rate of HIV infection among blacks stems in part, Rhue argued, from the unwillingness of black ministers to discuss sexuality.

Dervin maintains that bringing gay rights – and all the discussions of sexuality that surround the issue – out of the shadows in the African-American community is imperative. “The cost for maintaining an indignant approach when someone compares gay and civil rights is epidemic. Is our pride worth that many lives?”

If Faulkner is right that so much of the African-American experience is influenced from the pulpit, then the pulpit may be a starting point for changing the politics of fellow African-Americans and reducing the epidemic that Dervin argues is upon us. The question, then, becomes: Where to start?

Northwestern’s McBride also has clear words for his black brothers and sisters: “Black folk need to be responsible for our homophobia. This homophobia is, in part, what feeds the resistance of the black community to have its struggle compared to that of the gay rights movement. Some black folk believe that such a comparison sullies the history of African-American struggle, so we forget all our black gay brothers and sisters – the teachers and preachers, choir directors and musicians, activists and community organizers, parents and co-workers and friends – who populate our daily lives and help make them possible.

“Black gays and lesbians are part of the black community,” he continues. “What, we might ask, do we gain from excising gays and lesbians from the community? And for whom and toward what purpose would we be doing that work? As long as the government is in the business of recognizing civil marriage, to deny that right to some citizens while conferring it on others rises to the very height of historic civil- rights breaches. This is the modern three-fifths compromise – our very own version of Jim Crowe segregation.”