William Douglas with the Herald's Washington Bureau:
They love President Barack Obama. But when it comes to his support for same-sex marriage, some of the nation’s leading African-American clergy are divided, sometimes passionately.
... But most of the ministers, pastors and theological scholars expressed firm positions on marrying same-sex couples.
"I love all homosexual brothers and sisters, but my discipline says I can’t marry them," said Bishop John Adams, an African Methodist Episcopal minister and former conference chairman. "Same-sex marriages are not being approved by the Christian community because it is a contradiction of creation. . . . The species continues by the procreation of male and female."
Michael Eric Dyson, a Georgetown University sociology professor, scolded African-American clergy members who rail against gay marriage and homosexuals yet take donations from them and allow them to be church ushers and to sing in or direct church choirs.
"Some of the most homophobic preachers there are probably gay themselves," Dyson told the group. "I’m not saying you must be secretly gay. My point is that the gay self has been so constructed and demonized that even the gay person, as a rite of passage, hate(s) the gay self . . . in order to gain legitimacy in black church circles."
5 Comments
Theodore Kaczynski was a college professor...
Just saying.
That's fine; they aren't required to bless same-sex marriages and they're forbidden from preaching against SSM. Same-sex couples can still get married. As it should be.
'they're forbidden from preaching against SSM. '
Exactly why SSM needs to be defeated. It goes way beyond marriage into denying religious freedom and free speech. Not tolerance, but dominance.
@ argue: sorry, my typo. They're NOT prohibited from preaching against SSM. In the past 8 yrs, thousands of sermons in hundreds of churches have been preached against SSM. # of pastors arrested for preaching against SSM: 0
@scrounger - Thanks for clearing that up. There have been some arrests for preaching against homosexuality, but the charges so far are usually dropped. In the UK and Canda, arrests do happen, and I'm afraid that is what is going to happen in this country as well if things continue on their present course.