The Rev. William Owens, who is president and founder of the Coalition of African-Americans Pastors, is responding to President Barack Obama’s support of same-sex marriage with what he says will be a national campaign aimed at rallying black Americans to rethink their overwhelming support of the President.
The Coalition obviously forgot about the phrase, “May he who is without sin cast the first stone.” This is one of the most profound verses of the Bible, yet so often the followers of the book fail to adhere to it. It’s ironic that the leaders of the religion that tells you to love thy brother as you love thy self, and to do unto others as is done unto you, would attack a man based on his views on gay marriage.
I’m not saying people are not entitled to have a negative opinion about our Commander-in-Chief, I even have a few of my own, but I am saying that your opinions should never contradict each other and the basis for the opinion should never be founded on a misinterpretation.
Yes, in the Bible, there is mention of condemnation of homosexual marriage, but look at that from a historical perspective. During biblical times, marriage was a means to amass assets from other families. I’ll marry your son to my daughter and in exchange, I’ll give you two cows and you give me x amount of farmland.
It was a business transaction in which the parties involved had little to no choice in the marriage. Modern marriage is based off the idea of love. Since there has been a complete paradigm shift, any laws that applied to the old system are no longer relevant – religious or otherwise.
In a country that is based off the precedent of a separation of church and state, the religious leaders who are starting an anti-Obama campaign surrounding his position on gay marriage don’t have the right to attack him because his political views are not congruous with their religious views.
Well, technically they do because the First Amendment states that we all have freedom of speech, but it also says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
So the same law that gives right you the right to attack Obama for supporting gays, gives gays the right to get married. If you don’t like it, then imagine a world where America relinquished their First Amendment rights.
Imagine we did that and elected a leader who decided to put America under strict Christian law, in the same way most Arabs are under Islamic law. Imagine the Bible was used as an avenue to subjugate blacks again in the same way it has been used to subjugate the gays. Imagine people used the Bible to say that blacks can’t get married. Actually, just look back in history.
The same arguments that are being used to say gay marriage should be illegal were used to say interracial marriage should be outlawed.
There’s the “slippery slope” idea, which says that if we allow gay marriage, we have to allow all kinds of stuff. Rick Santorum used this idea to make his infamous “man on dog” case against gay marriage. But the argument was made by former Virginia assistant attorney general, R. D. McIlwaine III, in Loving v. the State of Virginia, the 1967 Supreme Court case that overturned miscegenation laws:
It is clear from the most recent available evidence on the psycho-sociological aspect of this question that intermarried families are subjected to much greater pressures and problems then those of the intermarried and that the state’s prohibition of interracial marriage for this reason stands on the same footing as the prohibition of polygamous marriage, or incestuous marriage or the prescription of minimum ages at which people may marry and the prevention of the marriage of people who are mentally incompetent.
The idea is utterly preposterous. Over the past century, the progression in race relations would make Martin Luther King Jr. proud. We still have a lot to do. In order to accomplish this, we have to embrace each other regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation.
As a Christian, you have the obligation to love God, love thy self, and love thy neighbor. Telling another person they don’t have the right to love in the same way that you do goes against everything you stand for as a Christian.
Let them live in the way that they want to, as they do you. Enlighten without condemning. For none of us are Jesus, therefore we are all imperfect creatures. If they commit sin ask yourself, are you truly without sin? Unless you are truly pure, then you have no right to condemn thy brother.
Ironically, if you are pure, you wouldn’t want to.
Garvey Ashhurst is a young up and coming poet, songwriter, and blogger. He is the reason that the system is afraid of a black man in a library. His aim is not to be Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, or Ghandi, but he hopes to make them proud by keeping their ideals alive through his lifestyle. He hopes that one day young brothers will one day say I want to be the next him.
