African-American clergy divided over gay marriage

They love President Barack Obama. But when it comes to his support for same-sex marriage, some of the nation’s leading African-American clergy are divided, sometimes passionately.

Meeting in Washington on Thursday, the Conference of National Black Churches couldn’t reach agreement. As a group, the only thing they found conclusive was that the Bible – Old Testament and New – presents no consensus when it comes to homosexuality. But most of the ministers, pastors and theological scholars expressed firm positions on where they stand when it comes to marrying same-sex couples.

“I love all homosexual brothers and sisters, but my discipline says I can’t marry them,” Bishop John Adams, an African Methodist Episcopal minister and former conference chairman, said to cheers. “Same-sex marriages are not being approved by the Christian community because it is a contradiction of creation. . . . The species continues by the procreation of male and female.”

Michael Eric Dyson, a Georgetown University sociology professor who holds a doctorate in religion from Princeton University, scolded African-American clergy members who rail against gay marriage and homosexuals yet still take donations from them and allow them to serve as church ushers and to sing in or direct church choirs.

“Some of the most homophobic preachers there are probably gay themselves,” Dyson asserted to hoots and hushes in the ballroom. “I’m not saying you must be secretly gay. My point is that the gay self has been so constructed and demonized that even the gay person, as a rite of passage, hate(s) the gay self . . . in order to gain legitimacy in black church circles.”

Thursday’s public debate reflected one that’s already taking place in some form in African-American churches across the country since Obama, previously a gay-marriage opponent, declared his support earlier this month amid growing pressure from within the Democratic Party and close advisers to embrace the issue. [More]

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McClatchy Newspapers