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Op-ed: Same Church, Different Song of Equality
As supporters of gay rights were kicked out of Southern Missionary Baptist Church last week, Terry Angel Mason was reminded of the church's better days fighting for equality.
By Terry Angel Mason, op-ed contributor|Posted on Advocate.com September 08, 2011 04:00:00 AM ET
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The scene that unfolded last week as proponents for gay rights were expelled from Southern Missionary Baptist Church in California seemed out of sync with its history. It's not how I remember the community.
The year: 1963. The place: the very same popular and well attended black church nestled on the west side of Los Angeles. The political climate: blacks engaged in a revolutionary struggle against Jim Crow laws, hoping to eventually eradicate them and acquire civil rights — a struggle that would ultimately change the political climate of America forever. Standing in the wings is a young visionary by the name of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., destined to emerge as leader of this new cutting-edge movement and perhaps the most revered and inspiring black civil rights leader humanity has ever known
My own "law of ethnic history" is pretty simple and direct, "Your ethnic and cultural history tells me two things about your group, a) WHEN your goup was getting the stuffing kicked out of it and b) WHEN it was kicking the stuffing out of some other group." Both have happened to every ethnic group I have been made aware of in my last 60 years of life, no exceptions.
And the church is one place where marginalized should be able to come and feel welcomed. I'm saddened by the stance the church as taken regarding LGBT people. The black church, for the most part, was followed the footseps of the oppressor and that unthinkable. How many young black children who are LGBT have left, rejected God, or taken their lives because of this?