Gay Marriage: WWKD (What Would King Do)?

The president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference has been speaking out in support of gay marriage. If you expect one of the country’s oldest equal rights organizations to stand behind one of its chapter presidentsm though, you’d be wrong.

The SCLC wants the Rev. Eric P. Lee fired.

National leaders recently summoned Lee to appear at the group’s Atlanta headquarters to explain his stance. If he failed to show, they said, he would be suspended and removed from his position, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Lee, an African American pastor who has headed the Los Angeles SCLC for the past two years, was an outspoken critic of Proposition 8, an amendment that banned same-sex marriage in California. Voters approved it in last November’s election, but the issue isn’t going away in California or any other place, as states are confronted with court cases and ballot initiatives.

Iowa’s state Supreme Court recently legalized same-sex marriage, while lawmakers in West Virginia are considering whether to ban it. This week, former President Bill Clinton — who signed the law that prohibits the federal government from recognizing gay marriage — said that he now supports gay marriage. And on Wednesday, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, indirectly raised the issue during Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearing.

Back in California, Lee continues to advocate in support of such unions.

It’s this kind of advocacy that is raising the ire of fellow clergy at the SCLC. Founded in 1957 in the wake of the Montgomery bus boycott, the organization took a neutral stance on Proposition 8.

Lee now finds himself fighting for more than just marriage equality: He’s also taking on what he views as the hypocrisy of the church (especially black churches) and discrimination, as well as a continued blurring of the line between church and state, he said.

“Any time you deny one group of people the rights and privileges that other groups enjoy, it is fundamentally and unequivocally a denial of their civil rights. That makes it a justice issue,” Lee said in a telephone interview from California. “Because of black people’s history of being oppressed and discriminated against in this country, and because of our legacy of fighting against those things, we have earned the right to be the moral authority on justice issues. In fact, we are obligated to speak out.”

To read the rest, click here.

Considering Coons and the GOP's Future

Following the election for a new Young Republican leader gave me flashbacks.

Fresh out of college and a tad naive on my first reporting job, a small-town politician invited me to go “coon hunting.”

I had NO idea what he was talking about.

Though I attended majority white schools in the South, my parents kept me pretty protected from a lot of that stuff, and I mainly traveled in a circle of academic achievers, friends from orchestra and band class, and those who attended church with me. My upbringing didn’t prepare me to talk about hunting of any kind with the Milledgeville, Ga., city attorney.

The official's invitation struck me as a little off — he was chuckling as we talked — but I was eager to develop sources so I agreed to join him on his next outing. Back at the office, I asked my white, male editor about killing raccoons, something I wasn’t keen on witnessing. Exactly what would it involve?

The editor, Don Schanche, turned red.

He banged his fist on the desk.

He let loose with ungentlemanly expletives, cursing loud enough to startle everyone in the newsroom. Then he stalked out.

Later, still angry but in a much-lowered voice, he explained that “coon hunting” had nothing to do with raccoons. He apologized, asked whether I was comfortable enough to continue working my city government beat, and cautioned me to keep my distance from City Attorney J.W. Morgan. (Of course I still remember the guy’s name,)

Morgan died three years ago, according to an obituary I found online. But he was vividly brought back to mind by the election of Audra Shays to head the Young Republican National Federation — an election in which the word “coon” played a part.

This being 2009, Shays has a Facebook page. On it, one of her online friends labeled President Obama a “terrorist” and expressed a need to take back the country from “all these mad coons.” To see her reply, zoom in on this screen shot. “You tell ‘em,” she wrote. Where she typed “lol,” that’s shorthand for “laugh out loud.”

Laugh out loud? She found that entertaining?

And now she is one of the elected faces of the party of Lincoln, the party with a national chairman, Michael Steele, who is black.

To continue reading, click here.