Black church leaders who oppose moves to legalise same-sex marriage in New York have attacked gay campaigners for comparing the struggle for equality to the civil rights movement.
In April, New York Governor David A. Paterson, who is black, compared the fight to eliminate slavery in the 1800s to the current fight for gay marriage.
The Advocate magazine recently covered the matter in their recent issue (pictured).
Most black religious leaders in New York and across America, according to a report this week in the local Buffalo News, remain overwhelmingly opposed to gay marriage on religious grounds.
Reverend William Gillison of Mount Olive Baptist Church in Buffalo, the state’s second largest city, said he is insulted by the Governor’s comparison.
“We know what we have gone through as an ethnic group. We feel the terminology, the definition itself, has really been hijacked,” he said. “Unfortunately, it’s just another ploy to garner more support from people who may not understand what the civil rights struggle was all about.”
Bishop Michael A. Badger of nearby Bethesda World Harvest International Church said that he doesn’t doubt there is discrimination against gay people but that it is less than what black Americans have encountered and still face.
“As an African-American, I don’t have a choice in the colour of my skin. I have a choice in whether I’m abstinent or not,” Badger said. “I don’t think you can compare the two.”
Support for the Governor’s moves towards equality among the state’s black clergy is almost non-existent. An almost lone voice belongs to Reverend Gerard Williams of the Unity Fellowship of Christ, who backs the campaign for gay marriage saying, “Oppression is oppression.”
“If Dr. [Martin Luther] King had to weigh in on it, he’d come down on the side of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community,” said Williams.
Clergy who oppose gay marriage don’t want to hear that argument, he added, because they have “become the very thing that oppressed them.”
The most recent poll found New Yorkers split 46% to 46% on whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry. African-Americans were the only ethnic group to say they did not approve of gay marriage, by a margin of 57% to 35%.