Friday, April 4, 2008

On This Day

Since today marks 40 years since the death of Martin Luther King Jr. I thought I would republish an old post that is about him. I'm cutting out some parts, but I think the questions are still valid.

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According to your sermon, you believe that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have been for marriage equality. I couldn't disagree with you more. From everything that I've read and heard about him, Dr. King was a typical black preacher of his time. He would have had a hard time with the women's movement (just look at how he interacted with the women in his life). And if you look at his complex relationship with Bayard Rustin, you can see that Dr. King had more ambivalent feelings about homosexuality than most black preachers. (I know part of the complexity with Rustin was due to Rustin's association with communism, but that's another subject)

So I guess my question is this: is your belief that Dr. King would have been for marriage equality a matter of faith(using Paul's definition of it as being the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen)? Or is there something out there about Dr. King that I haven't seen?

My concern is that we liberal religious folk are trying to co-opt people that we admire and use them for causes that we are involved in even though those we admire may not or wouldn't have been.

1 comment:

Robin Edgar said...

I have made similar observations in the past. I sometimes like to waggishly point out that all those "famous UUs" who are currently spinning in their graves as a result of what has become of Unitarianism and Universalism would make a great alternative energy source if they were hooked up to generators. ;-)