After I graduated from Auburn, the first Black student entered. Took way to long for that step.
Lowery favors “civil unions?” That is like saying that the “separate but equal” was OK before interegration, IMO. He doesn’t agree with that, I’m sure.

How is a civil union not exclusionary, not about intolerance? Before the civil rights movement black people could not marry whites. If they suggested “inter-race unions” would he feel included, would he feel like they did not create a second-class institution.
No Way! he’d be up in arms fighting the fight until a union between a black man and a white woman was called a marriage, just as though they married within their race.
I’m tired of people suggesting that civil union is anything more than empty words to quite the weaker minorities, who’ll thank those that hold the power for their crumbs.
What do you call the person you are “civilly-unionized” with? they are not your husband, they are not your wife? How do you introduce them? And if you have to introduce them differently, isn’t that alone creating a feeling of shame and second class status?
The crux of this is The Rev. Joseph Lowery wants his religious views honored in our civil laws. Separation of Church and State protects both the Church and the State. Let’s honor that beautiful part of our constitution and insist on the separation.
Freedom, doesn’t mean that you are free to do what you want. True freedom requires the emotional strength to tolerate that which is different from you. Go ahead and believe that homosexuals will burn in hell but let homosexuals enjoy all the rights, and freedoms that straights do. Chances are they don’t even believe in your heaven or your hell, and that is OK.

Lowery is right but he was just way too politically correct to say the truth, that the main hijacking is homosexual advocates dishonoring King with the homosexual marriage problem. He did say he is not for homosexual marriage which there is no such thing and it is for people in their right mind unthinkable and ridiculous marriage is about one man one woman or visa versa. People are quick to equate homosexuality with the African American experience, no comparison, and I can and will elaborate on the difference if necessary but it gets pretty ugly when reality is revealed.

Rev. Lowery should cast his mind back to the day that the US Supreme Court handed down Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), emphatically rejecting the concept of “separate but equal” and noting that this concept was merely another mechanism in service of the perpetuation of gross social injustice. He should also heed the words of Martin Luther King’s widow, Coretta, who has made it absolutely clear that her husband, if alive today, would side with gay men and lesbians in their struggle to attain social and legal parity with heterosexuals. There can be no equality without equal access to what is regarded by the highest court in the land to be one of the most “fundamental” rights available to Americans (Zablocki v. Redhail, 434 U.S. 374 (1978)); Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)). Separate but equal does not cut it; separate but equal is, in fact, a contradiction in terms. If something is truly equal, then there is no need for it to be separate.
This objection runs deep in the souls of activists for marriage equality. It is sad to note that those Americans who have most keenly felt the lash of discrimination in their past now refuse to come out against similar discrimination when they see it manifest itself in the present. Whereas there are major differences between the struggle for equality fought by black Americans and the struggle for equality fought by gay Americans, there are even larger similarities between the two struggles. Both black and gay Americans seek the same outcome – equal justice under law, as inscribed in stone on the pediment above the stairs leading to the US Supreme Court building.
PHILIP CHANDLER

Correta is not Martin and for whatever reasons she said that doesn’t make it true. Blacks sought to be recognized as men and women homosexual seek to be recognized in various sexual preferences or persuasions. Just a few are some want to be recognized as women but you will have to ignore that they are men, some as men but you would have to ignore the fact that they are men. Some would like to straddle the fence and pop over to any yard they decide is greener at the time, some buy new body parts and their best imagined scenario is to convince poor sap that they are female if they are male or male if they are female. There are many ways that sexuality can turn from the norm it is not a people it is sexuality, black is a people. We can be identified even down to our skeleton like all races, or we can b e identified on cell level or DNA not so for homosexuality they are identified in one area only, sexuality.

I’d like to see any evidence that Dr. King actually believed marriage was exclusively between a man and a woman. If he was so opposed to homosexuality, why was he willing to work with an open homosexual? I’m speaking of Bayard Rustin, organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. He also advised Dr. King during the bus boycott in Montgomery. Rustin wasn’t ashamed of his sexual orientation and made no attempt to hide it. This made him many enemies on both sides of the civil rights movement. And it’s also probably why we don’t hear very much about him today. Because who wants to admit that a “queer” was involved in the fight for racial equality? Talk about political correctness…

The parallels are obvious. Too bad some folks refuse to recognize them.

There are no parallels, just because he had a homosexual on staff does not mean he would perform homosexual marriages and know Martin if he believe in such a thing he would have said so. I have homosexuals that I have put through college but it is a far leap to imagine I would agree with homosexual marriage. nnmns you would love to exploit African American history and heritage and I find that trail of slime sickening. Use the Jews, or the Irish, or the Pilgrims, how about the Latino population or Indians, Christians or Muslims all have heritages of struggle if you are going to target a race try for even a short time targeting another race and see what response you will receive.

There are no parallels, just because he had a homosexual on staff does not mean he would perform homosexual marriages and knowing Martin if he believe in such a thing he would have said so. I have homosexuals that I have put through college but it is a far leap to imagine I would agree with homosexual marriage. nnmns you would love to exploit African American history and heritage and I find that trail of slime sickening. Use the Jews, or the Irish, or the Pilgrims, how about the Latino population or Indians, Christians or Muslims all have heritages of struggle if you are going to target a race try for even a short time targeting another race and see what response you will receive.

Uh, cknuck, I think his wife knew him a lot better than you, even in your wilder dreams.

I think she was old and could easily be persuaded to say just about anything and there must have been a reason she didn’t speak when he was alive

Maybe she did. Maybe that, like many things, wasn’t a front-burner issue for them then.

“The problem is when you say `marriage,’ it sends us into cultural shock.”
As Joan Rivers used to say, “Grow up!”
It’s 2010, not 1810. The former Vice Presiden’ts daughter is a lesbian, with TWO children now. Legal same-sex marriage has been happening for a decade.
How long do you intend to stay “shocked” with something that is commonplace already?

Ten years ago Coretta Scott King endorsed the Marriage Resolution, a compact that calls for nation wide marriage equality. She said, “the civil rights movement she believed in thrives on unity and inclusion, not division and exclusion; all of us who oppose discrimination and support equal rights should stand together to resist any attempt to restrict civil rights in this country.”
To call the very intelligent, vibrant Coretta King ‘just an old lady’, Cknuck, is disrespectful and ridiculous. I think she would think of you in this way. You really should rethink your thoughts and attitudes regarding GLBT, because you are attempting to restrict civil rights in our country.

H, you GLBT, are several sexual preferences among many sexual preferences not a race of people but a behavior indulged in by people. This does not rate as a equal right, just sexuality, and the day we start molding our country and laws to the shape of sexuality is the day we are a little closer to crumbling.

One is born with their orientation “built in” thus there is no choice involved, cknuck. As has been asked before, why would anyone choose to be ridiculed, hated, told they were sinful etc.? No one in their right mind would. What harm does homosexual marriage do to heterosexuals? The word Marriage belongs to NO ONE…it isn’t the exclusive right of Christians (or other religions)…if that were true, why can a Notary Public, a Justice of the Peace, a Judge, a county clerk legally marry folks,when there is no religion or god involved? No, marriage is for any 2 consenting adults who want to commit to each other “until they are parted by death” as my daughter and son-in-law said to each other 2 weeks ago.

pagan actually marriage is and has been defined as a man and a women, well it has also been a man and his choice of women but never the less the attempt to say it should involve same sexes is not traditional. Sexuality is either heterosexual or one of many other varieties of some are homosexuality, bisexuality, gender confusion, polygamy, Necrophilia, bestiality, pedophilia, asexual, and dozens others. Your wish to lift and validate one to the status of heterosexuality is a personal preference which many people disagree. There is no concrete proof one is born of one sexuality or another the only real definition pertaining to birth is male or female.

Traditions can be changed, cknuck. If it weren’t for some Pagan traditions, there would be no Christmas trees, Yule logs, Easter bunnies, May poles etc. so IMO, “changing” the so called tradition of marriage only being one man and one woman is while within acceptable bounds.

If you change for one then change for all.

“If you change for one then change for all”. cknuck
What? No one is advocating pedophilia, bestiality, necrophelia. I’m only saying that homosexuals being allowed to marry harms NO ONE in the heterosexual world. Other things can be done, if necessary, on a case by case basis. Slavery was a “tradtion” for centuries and unfortunately still is in some countries…but that is another subject. The US finally “broke with tradition” and outlawed it, and finally, finally changed the laws to make everyone equal in the eyes of the law. That should be really be extended to “everyone.”

pagan this is not about slavery it is about “I now pronounce you husband and wife” being kept simple and what it is not something else.

No, you’re right, cknuck…it isn’t about slavery. Using a comparison you relate to often is all. Pronouncing 2 people married should be simple for all…SS marriage as well as M/F marriage. Simple. Tradition of M/F can be spread to include adults of the same gender. Simple…and hurts no one. Since you disagee because your holy book tells you to, then stay married to your wife. However your beliefs don’t trump the case of equal rights for all….even in the catagory of marriage.

there is no law that would define homosexual marriage as equal rights and by it’s very nature it is not equal to traditional marrriage.

NO, cknuck, there is no law that defines homosexual marriage as part of our country’s equal rights laws yet, but that is what there needs to be so all human beings in this country can have equal rights. You do think all human beings should have equal rights, huh? Or is it just heterosexual human beings that are entitled to equality? The problem is that your religious viewpoint of it being not equal to traditional marriage has nothing to do with human rights/equal rights. In this case, religion gets in the way of a person’s human and equal rights. Just a reminder….this isn’t a theocracy, as much as you and others want it to be.