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.”

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