How Do Blacks Feel Being Compared to Homosexuals?
By Geraldine Hawkins for MassNews.com, “An Alternative Voice for Massachusetts”March 14, 2003
Seven homosexual couples who were previously denied marriage licenses heard their case argued by Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) in front of a full bench at the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts on March 4. "This is a civil rights movement," said Mary L. Bonauto, a lawyer for GLAD at a press conference following the hearing. "Marriage is the only thing that will provide a gateway for these families to have equal protection."
Not all black people take kindly to hearing their struggles compared with the complaints of militant homosexuals. "There's no comparison whatsoever and I find it highly offensive, to say the least, to hear the civil rights movement invoked to justify sexual deviancy," Dr. John Diggs tells MassNews. "They make more money as a group than most people, and they wield political power out of all proportion to their numbers. To compare themselves to the civil rights movement is extremely offensive and logically inconsistent.
"I got up this morning a black man, I will go to bed a black man, I was born a black man and I will die a black man - whereas most gays go from gay to straight to bi- on a whim. They are claiming an immutable state when their behavior shows extreme mutability. "Their argument is irrelevant because the institution of marriage is the stable building block of society." Diggs, a medical doctor from South Hadley, said that when homosexuals raise children, whether through adoption, natural birth or artificial insemination, one of the other sex had to be involved."
Two men and two women do not procreate," he says. "Two men or two women do not constitute a family. Men in a barracks, students in a dormitory do not constitute a family. They are like a family, but they are not a family. "There is no 'gay gene.' Medical people never claim that there's a gay gene, political people do that. There is no evidence whatsoever that anyone is born homosexual, and if civil rights is what they are using to make their case, then they should lose this case without a bat of an eye. "Homosexuality is unquestionably a matter of preference, although it could be engendered by events they don't remember. There are a lot of factors that cause same-sex attraction. It is not a biological imperative. In order to justify sexual deviancy, they have grabbed onto the coattails of legitimate civil rights concerns. "I am a black man in America. That is not something I do. In the case of homosexuals, what they do is what defines them."
Dr. Diggs says that the argument of the gay marriage advocates is "biologically impossible, offensive and illogical."
Not a Racial Issue
Darren L. Washington, Director of the national organization, Abstinence for Singles, tells MassNews that GLAD's comparison of laws against same-sex marriage to laws against miscegenation is not valid. "They're comparing a gender issue to a racial issue. Being homosexual is something people choose to do. When you're African-American, you can't choose between that and being Hispanic."
They need to quit using racial issues that are totally different. If they're talking about minority couples, yes, the Supreme Court justices were against that, because if you look at the Dred Scott case, an African-American wasn't even considered a full person. To compare gay rights to civil rights is way off base and disrespectful."
If you're talking about male and female, argue your point from there. That's a gender issue. But if they want to go the civil rights route, that's a racial issue."
Not a Civil Rights Issue
Those laws against interracial marriage grew out of prejudice," community activist in Dorchester and Roxbury, [African-American] Azziza Nails, tells MassNews, "but those marriages could fulfill what God deemed the people of the earth would be like. The covenant of marriage is for the protection of the children. Homosexuals cannot have children naturally, and I stress that word 'naturally.' "They can form a family under a joint agreement that includes shared medical expenses and that kind of thing, but the spiritual level of the covenant of marriage is totally out of range for them. We must stand up for God's law and not be afraid to hurt people's feelings. Not everybody is going to like you; that's just the way the world works. "It really bothers me that they think this is a civil rights issue. It's definitely not the same. I'm not a perfect Christian or none of that, but I love God's laws. They are fair to everybody.
African-American Azziza Nails
"I'm going to stand on that Bible, and Romans Chapter One tells me that homosexuality is wrong. We've shown that passage to homosexuals in front of the State House and they throw it right down, because it goes on to say: 'They have accepted the lie of the creature rather than the truth of the Creator.' "This is a war on religion. I know it is. "We're not the God-fearing people we used to be. This would never have come up in my grandmother's day. I'm a firm believer in what's tried and tested, over what's experimental. "Isn't God's product good enough for us anymore? We're going to improve on God? "
Gays need to know that there are other ways of looking at things. We don't want to read about it on the bus, in the classroom, in the hallways of schools. Keep it in the bedroom where it has been all these years! "We are moving into a different type of age. How in the world could NAMBLA get started and nobody stop it? Where were the Christians? Tucked away in their little churches getting government funding.
"Homosexuals are now in key positions. I agree with Winston Churchill, who said that you need to fight when you have a chance of winning, or you will be forced to fight when you have no chance of winning!" We really have to make a stand. We have prospered as a nation because of our Godly ways. God's people are going to go down along with all the rest because we didn't stand up. "I dislike their putting that with the civil rights movement. If they want to know what that was about, let them go down to the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, where Martin Luther King was shot. It's a museum now. I went down in February and cried the whole time."