Tag Archives: MLK

Gay History: The Incredible Life of Black and Gay Civil Rights Icon Bayard Rustin (March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987)

BLACK HISTORY MONTH: The Incredible Life of Black Gay Civil Rights Icon Bayard Rustin

Bayard Taylor Rustin was born in West Chester, Pa., March 17, 1912. He had no relationship with his father, and his 16-year-old mother, Florence, was so young he thought she was his sister. From his grandparents, Janifer and Julia Rustin, he took his Quaker “values,” which, in his words, “were based on the concept of a single human family and the belief that all members of that family are equal,”

As a teenager, Rustin wrote poems, played left tackle on the high school football team and, according to lore, staged an impromptu sit-in at a restaurant that would serve his white teammates but not him. When Rustin told his grandmother he preferred the company of young men to girls, she simply said, “I suppose that’s what you need to do.”

In 1937, Rustin moved to New York City after bouncing between Wilberforce University and Cheney State Teachers College. Enrolling at City College, he devoted himself to singing, performing with the Josh White Quartet and in the musical John Henry with Paul Robeson. He also joined the Young Communist League. Though he soon quit the party after it ordered him to cease protesting racial segregation in the U.S. armed forces. By this time he was already on the radar of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.

Disappointed when the 1941 March on Washington was called off, Rustin joined the pacifist Rev. A.J. Muste’s Fellowship of Reconciliation, and when FOR members in Chicago launched the Congress of Racial Equality in 1942, Rustin traveled around the country speaking out. Two years later, he was arrested for failing to appear before his draft board and refusing alternative service as a conscientious objector. Sentenced to three years in prison, he ended up serving 26 months, angering authorities with his desegregation protests and open homosexuality to the point they transferred him to a higher-security prison.

Continue reading BLACK HISTORY MONTH: The Incredible Life of Black Gay Civil Rights Icon Bayard Rustin

Martin Luther King Jr. Day – Coretta Scott King: “Make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”

“My husband, Martin Luther King Jr., once said, “We are all tied together in a single garment of destiny… an inescapable network of mutuality,… I can never be what I ought to be until you are allowed to be what you ought to be.” Therefore, I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.

Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Ga. and St. Augustine, Fla., and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions.”  – Coretta Scott King, -November 9, 2000.

trump Rushes

Trump Rushes Out Of MLK Ceremony After Reporters Shout “Are You A Racist?” – Video

 

Via CNN:

Moments after he signed a proclamation for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, President Trump got up from the table, shook and few hands and made his way to the exit.

Reporters, meanwhile, shouted questions about his “shithole countries” comment yesterday. (This is the first time we’ve seen him publicly since those remarks.)

Journalist April Ryan asked if he would apologize. He didn’t answer. Then she pressed again, “Mr. President, are you a racist?”

FOX News Hires MLK’s Rabidly Anti-Gay Right Wing Extremist Niece Alveda King As Contributor

Alveeda King

 

Fox News president Roger Ailes announced yesterday the hiring of viciously anti-gay activist Alveda King.

Alveda King has besmirched her uncles great name for decades by using it for right-wing extremist causes and she herself is viciously anti-gay.

HuffPo reports:

“Alveda has brilliantly carried the legacy of the King family to the next generation and has been a source of inspiration for many Americans,” Ailes said in making the announcement. “Her passion and mission for social change will be a valuable contribution to our network.” King is a prominent anti-abortion activist and serves as director of African-American outreach at Priests for Life. She has also courted controversy by speaking out against LGBT rights, proclaiming in 1998 that “God hates homosexuality” and comparing gay marriage to genocide in a 2010 speech.

Alveda who has been cashing in for years on her uncles last name is severely homophobic and bigoted “christian” who has cast her lot with the extreme right GOP and use her uncles name to earn money to push their her anti-gay agenda.

In May of 2012 Alveda “denounced” the NAACP for deciding to support same sex marriage and at the same time attacked Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s right hand man and friend who helped to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to strengthen King’s leadership by lying about their professional relationship

Said Alveda:

The 21st century homosexual lobby likes to point to the professional relationship between my uncle Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bayard Rustin, his openly homosexual staffer who left the movement at the height of the campaign. Rustin attempted to convince Uncle M. L. that homosexual rights were equal with civil rights. Uncle M. L. did not agree, and would not attach the homosexual agenda to the 20th century civil rights struggles. So Mr. Rustin resigned. He was a brilliant strategist and was hired by Uncle M. L. not because he was gay, but because he was a capable strategist. He also was not fired, he chose to resign. My uncle was not a bigot, and he didn’t judge people for the color of their skin nor their sexual orientation. Neither do I. As compassionate Christians who won’t be forced to sit on the back of the bus as far as our spiritual commitments are concerned, we can be compassionate without endorsing sin.” – Alveda King

Leave it to FOX News to hire another disgusting pig for their God awful poke.

Anti-Gay Liberty Counsel: Businesses That Refuse To Serve Gays Honor MLK’s Legacy

Mat Staver

 

“As we remember today the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we are inspired by his courage to combat injustice that had become imbedded in our culture and our law. Marriage as the union of one man and one woman was not created by government or religion. It is rooted in natural law. Today, the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is being lived out by bakers, photographers, florists, ministers, county clerks, and owners of wedding venues who have lost their businesses, been forced to pay exorbitant fines, been threatened with jail, and made to choose between the natural created order of marriage between one man and one woman and judges who side with same-sex couples.” – Liberty Counsel head hater Mat Staver, in a press release issued from their “One Flew Over The Cuckoo Nest” offices at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University.

I think the NAACP might just disagree with this.

Ironic and moronic at the same time.  How “special” Mat Staver is.

 

 

Liberty Council’s Matt Barber: Martin Luther King Was A Conservative Homophobe Like Me

Fat Matt Barber Liberty Counsel

Failed insurance agent, washed up boxer and current Liberty Council hate group leader Matt “Bam-Bam” Barber has written yet another poison pen article today trying to disparage the LGBT community.

And to what deep dark level has Barber sunk to this time with his lies? Low enough to try and turn the late great civil rights leader Martin Luther King in to a homophobic conservative that’s how far..

This past week America honored both the life and noble work of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a Bible-believing Christian minister who did more to advance the cause of race-based civil rights than perhaps any other person in recent history.

Regrettably–and as they do each year–the same flock of opportunist “LGBT”-activist vultures quickly swooped in, picking the live flesh from MLK’s character-based “dream,” to advance their own behavior-based nightmare.

In what amounts to a sort of soft racism, this mostly white left-wing faction has, over the years, disingenuously and ignobly hitched its little pink wagon to a civil rights movement that, by contrast, is built upon the genuine and noble precepts of racial equality and humanitarian justice.

What was MLK’s position on the homosexual lifestyle and so-called “gay rights”? While he said little in public on the issue, what he did say made his viewpoint abundantly clear. Unlike the “LGBT” lobby, I’ll let Dr. King speak for himself.

In 1958, while writing an advice column for Ebony Magazine, Dr. King responded to a young “gay” man looking for guidance. To avoid being accused of “cherry-picking,” here is the exchange in its entirety:

Question: My problem is different from the ones most people have. I am a boy, but I feel about boys the way I ought to feel about girls. I don’t want my parents to know about me. What can I do? Is there any place where I can go for help?

Answer: Your problem is not at all an uncommon one. However, it does require careful attention. The type of feeling that you have toward boys is probably not an innate tendency, but something that has been culturally acquired. Your reasons for adopting this habit have now been consciously suppressed or unconsciously repressed. Therefore, it is necessary to deal with this problem by getting back to some of the experiences and circumstances that led to the habit. In order to do this I would suggest that you see a good psychiatrist who can assist you in bringing to the forefront of conscience all of those experiences and circumstances that led to the habit. You are already on the right road toward a solution, since you honestly recognize the problem and have a desire to solve it.

No amount of leftist spin can muddy Dr. King’s lucid position on the homosexual lifestyle. He recognized it as a “culturally acquired” “problem” in need of a “solution” – a “habit” stemming from a series of negative “experiences and circumstances.”

Although homosexual activists desperately cling to the fact that, after his death, Dr. King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, did voice some level of support for the homosexualist political agenda, the undeniable reality remains that, based upon his own words, Dr. King supported neither homosexual conduct nor “LGBT” political activism.

Indeed, it strains credulity to suggest that MLK would have thrown his weight behind a political movement hell-bent on justifying sexual appetites and behaviors that he properly identified as “a problem” demanding a “a solution”–a “type of feeling” that requires “careful attention”–up to and including “see[ing] a good psychiatrist.”

No, MLK was a Christian minister who both embraced and articulated the biblical “love the sinner, hate the sin” model on homosexuality. Every Christian should follow his lead. After all, it is the lead set by Christ Himself.

Gary Glenn is a candidate for the Michigan State House. He is also president of the pro-family group AFA Michigan. Of Dr. King’s public position on homosexuality, Glenn recently noted a glaring–if not utterly twisted–irony: “If homosexual activists had been holding awards ceremonies back in 1958,” wrote Glenn, “they would have labeled Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a bigot for his published views on homosexual attraction.

“And under today’s Orwellian ‘hate crimes’ laws in Britain and other countries of Europe,” he concluded, “Dr. King would have faced criminal investigation, or worse, for publicly expressing those views.”

Indeed, were he still alive today, and when judged against today’s empty, politically correct standards, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.–quite literally the “King” of civil rights– would be perpetually smeared as a “bigot,” “hater” and “homophobe” by the ever-”tolerant” left.

The polls are unequivocal. The vast majority of African-Americans resent the left’s comparison of sexual sin to the color of their skin. They understandably find such dishonest parallels both repugnant and highly offensive.

And well they should.

The left has hijacked MLK’s dream. For decades now, this pleasure-based, sex-centric political movement–delineated by deviant sexual appetites and behaviors – has ridden his coattails. They’ve dared to equate demands for celebration of bad behavior to Christian notions of racial equality. They’ve perverted the genuine civil rights movement to fit their own disingenuous designs.

It’s disgusting and it needs to stop.

Dr. Alveda King is the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She agrees. Alveda has picked up her like-minded uncle’s civil rights mantle, dedicating her life, primarily, to achieving equality for pre-born children.

Still, in the years since his death, Alveda has poignantly articulated how, arguably, based upon his published position on homosexuality, Dr. King might feel about “LGBT” activists’ misappropriation of his Christian legacy for their counter-Christian purposes.

“To equate homosexuality with race is to give a death sentence to civil rights,” said Alveda in 1997. “No one is enslaving homosexuals … or making them sit in the back of the bus.”

In 1998 at the University of North Carolina, she said, “Homosexuality cannot be elevated to the civil rights issue. The civil rights movement was born from the Bible. God hates homosexuality.”

And in 2012, Alveda publicly chastised the NAACP for abandoning its founders and constituents, saying, “Neither my great-grandfather, an NAACP founder, my grandfather Dr. Martin Luther King Sr., an NAACP leader, my father, Rev. A. D. Williams King, nor my uncle Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. embraced the homosexual agenda that the current NAACP is attempting to label as a civil rights agenda. …”

Indeed, it is high time that all supporters, from all races, of the historical civil rights movement stand together and demand that “progressive” propagandists stop misusing and abusing the language of genuine civil rights to propagate self-interested moral wrongs.

It’s time for the left to begin honoring the true beliefs, work, life and legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Barber in his usual hateful way does indeed cherry pick and worse tries to use a dated comment by the great MLK to defend his warped hate against the LGBT community.  In 1958 when MLK answered the above question homosexuality was not accepted and still classified as a physiological problem by the AMA.  King advising to seek a psychiatrist at that time was the usual advice. And in some cases the kindest since at that time gay men were routinely committed to hardcore institutions with some having to undergo electro-shock therapy and even lobotomies.  Kings advice of seeking someone to talk to is a very soft and compassionate way to deal with the question at a time when very little was known about being gay.  Barber also conveniently leaves out that 5 years later one of his closest confidants, friends and his right hand man Bayard Rustin was a gay man. If King was not accepting of gay individuals how could that be? I’m sure Matt Barber would never willing work with a gay man.

As for Barber using Alveda King as a model for MLK’s legacy that alone should prove how warped Barber really is. Alveda has been milking the MLK name for years and has been ostracized by all of MLK’s living relatives because of her involking her uncles name to justify her hateful crusades.

The beliefs and legacy of King cannot be reduced to politically conservative causes.  King’s message must be taken in toto rather than cherry picked for selective morsels. Indeed, King’s pronouncements on homosexuality, barely make a blip on the radar of his broader concerns. The attempt to reduce King to politically conservative causes is like asking the Tea Party to embrace the Poor People’s Campaign.

At the center of King’s protest were, in his own words, the three demons of “ racism, materialism, and militarism”, which he saw as the source of our social turmoil. Barber’s attempt at reductionism and usurpation of King for partisan purposes,is the same fallacy of which he accuses liberals and “LGBT-activist vultures”

Like it or not there are parallels between the black civil rights movement and the gay civil rights movement. Both groups have been discriminated against both privately and by the government. Both groups have had to deal with hatred against them based on ignorance. Both groups have been viewed as “lesser” people persecuted, beaten and even killed for who they are.

It is a slap in the face to all who believe in freedom and civil rights for Barber to twist the legacy and the man Martin Luther King.

KKK Recruitment Literature Distributed In Virginia Neighborhood On Eve of MLK Day

More than just the Sunday paper was waiting for residents of in a Richmond-area neighborhood of Chester and the  Eastern Virginia Medical Campus Hospital where they were greeted with recruitment literature for a white supremacist group the KKK.

“I picked it up, and I looked at it, and my heart started beating faster. I said, ‘Now, what in the world?’, said Kathy Thomas.

She said the flyer, in a plastic bag, claims to be from the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.  The message of hate was delivered on the day before the Dr. Martin Luther King Holiday.

“Very disrespectful to his memory.” “This man stood up for equality for everybody … but I do understand that folks have their voice and their opinion. They can say what they’d like to say, but don’t force it on folks,” said Tony Hobbs.

This is bullshit” said one person who was at Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters to see her nephew. She asked not to be identified after finding the paper in a plastic baggie on her windshield.

“We’re trying to give peace, not stir it up. It’s just crazy. They need to stop doing it, or pick somewhere else, but preferably just stop doing it because this is crazy. I mean, we’re trying to make amends in this world.”

KKK Literature 2

 

Every Invited Republican Politican Skipped The Martin Luther King Commemoration Event In Washington

BUSTED

Well this just speaks volumes doesn’t it.

Its been confirmed that every top Republican politician in Washington D.C. declined to attend the Martin Luther King commemorative celebration yesterday.  After being found out they are using the excuse that the reason behind the snub is that “the only sitting black (GOP) US Senator,” Republican Tim Scott was not asked to speak at the event.  But Tim Scott WAS asked and declined stating that he would be out of town.

“Thank you for extending to Senator Tim Scott the invitation to the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington on August 28th. Unfortunately, the Senator will be in South Carolina during this time, so he will be unable to attend the event. Please do, however, keep him in mind for future events you may be hosting.

Not only does that show another very ugly side of the GOP it cuts dead in it’s tracks the outrageous propaganda that right-wing sites like Breitbart and other are putting forth the GOP meme that yesterday was just another “Democratic dog-and-pony show of race hustlers,”

Martin Luther King was a great man and yesterday was a day to remember  He helped usher in the greatest change in American history and changed millions of lives for the better and he was ultimately was killed for standing up for those rights.

Instead of celebrating and remembering the greatness of Dr. King, the GOP uses it as a petty partisan bitch fest.

Disgusting.  Simply disgusting.

GOP Allen West: You Can’t Compare LGBT Rights To Civil Rights “It’s apples and vegetables”

GOP March on Washington Lunch

Black Republicans came out in force at the Republican National Committee’s Monday Luncheon event to mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington with many speaking out that you can’t compare LGBT Rights to Civil Rights:

Former Congressman Allen West

“It’s apples and vegetables,.  You’re talking about a race of people, I don’t think you can make that comparison between a race of people and the gay rights movement, if that’s what you want to call it. I think about what my parents had to endure in South Georgia in the ’40s and ’50s… You know, we made some strides when you look at the fact that I was able to run a congressional district that was 92% white and when I was born my parents could not have gone there. Now there are still some things we have to do. When you read that speech, you really understand what we have to do better in the black community.”

North Carolina GOP committeewoman Ada Fisher:

“I think it’s unfortunate that people have diluted the purpose of the march on Washington. I think it’s an unfair comparison. Whenever anybody wants something in this country they compare it the civil rights movement. The fight is giving equal rights and equal opportunity to Americans. The immigration movement is disingenuous, we don’t talk about the impact of illegal immigration coming and displacing minority groups for jobs, nor do we talk about an unfair immigration policy where those people from Haiti are sent home and those people who walk across the border are allowed to stay.”

Bob Woodson, former president of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise and  non staff member at The Heritage Foundation:

“I didn’t hear poor people mentioned at all very much [on Saturday]. It was the environmentalists, women, gays, and immigrants. Everybody except poor people. The next frontier for me in the civil rights movement, is what are we doing for the least of gods children? Everybody has come in front of them on the bus: gays, immigrants, women, environmentalists. We never hear about the conditions confronting poor blacks and poor people in general.

Yes, Woodson, a Republican actually had the nerve to “go there” at a  high end catered GOP Luncheon where most if not all in the room are responsible for making conditions worse for low income black Americans and suppressing their voting rights just to be a bigot.

GOP – Supporting LGBT and poor folks since…never.

Source: Buzzfeed

Gun Appreciation Day Founder Larry Ward Believes It “Honors the legacy of Martin Luther King”

 

TOTAL wingnut and gun advocate Larry Ward the founder of Gun Appreciation Day appeared on CNN Friday to defend the nationwide gun rally, which is scheduled for Jan. 19 — just two days before Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and insisted that it “honors the legacy of Dr. King.”

“I believe that Gun Appreciation Day honors the legacy of Dr. King. The truth is, I think Martin Luther King would agree with me if he were alive today that if African Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from day one of the country’s founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history. And I believe wholeheartedly that’s essential to liberty.”

Gun Appreciation Day, backed by a coalition of crazy right-wing conservative groups, not only coincides with MLK Day, but also Obama’s second inauguration.

Not only is what Ward said quite possibly the dumbest thing ever said by a human. since, “God said…  There is evidence from history that one of the drivers of there even being a second amendment was to cater to fears of southern slaveholders who feared slave insurrection / revolt and wanted to make sure their slave patrols (militia) were legally protected.

Shame on CNN or any news network for that matter for giving this loony-toon a platform to speak on.