Would MLK Approve of Today’s NAACP?

As his re-election hopes dim, the mainstream “progressive” media continue to run interference for Barack Obama. It’s predictable. They no longer even try to hide it. They persist in slobbering on their over-hyped, under-capable would-be savior as his campaign collapses around them. The sycophancy is embarrassing and the desperation palpable.

Most recently, they’ve created a stir around the NAACP crowd booing Mitt Romney at the decidedly liberal group’s national convention in Houston, Texas. The activist attendees didn’t like the fact that President Obama’s presumptive GOP challenger intends to repeal Obamacare if elected.

Still, what you won’t hear from the mainstream media is the fact that those very same left-leaning activists gave Mr. Romney a rousing ovation when he pledged to defend the institution of real marriage from secular extremists’ ongoing attempts to radically re-define it.

During his speech, Romney quoted former NAACP Executive Director Benjamin Hooks, noting that the family “remains the bulwark and the mainstay of the black community. That great truth must not be overlooked.”

The former Massachusetts governor then promised the conference-goers: “Any policy that lifts up and honors the family is going to be good for the country, and that must be our goal. As president, I will promote strong families – and I will defend traditional marriage!”

At this, the crowd erupted into sustained applause.

Herein lies the ongoing rift between the NAACP leadership, its rank and file and the African-American community at large. By recently joining with President Obama to endorse counterfeit “same-sex marriage,” the NAACP leadership betrayed the very constituency it presumes to represent. It blundered its way directly into conflict with the vast majority of African-Americans.

“Traditional marriage enjoys steadfast support in America, especially among African-Americans,” said Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) in response to Romney’s pro-family pledge. “Just this past May, an overwhelming percentage of black voters supported a marriage protection amendment in North Carolina, just as they did several years ago in California and in other states,” continued Brown.

“We know that despite the actions of some African-American elites, rank-and-file voters in the black community continue to support marriage as the union of one man and one woman,” he concluded.

Indeed, by throwing their collective weight behind such extremist, San Francisco-style social engineering, both the president and the NAACP have exposed just how out of touch they are with the rest America – particularly African-Americans. (Consider, for instance, that in 2008, over 70 percent of black voters supported Prop. 8, California’s natural marriage-protection amendment.)

By backing the absurd, oxymoronic notion of so-called “same-sex marriage,” the NAACP leadership has allowed itself to be played by “the man.” (In this case “the man” is the mostly white, “progressive”-elite establishment.)

The black community is having none of it. A group of leading African-American clergy called “The Coalition of African-American Pastors” (CAAP) has called on both President Obama and the NAACP to honor their pledge to represent the interests of the black community instead of radical white special interests.

In an interview with the Christian Post, the Rev. Bill Owens, CAAP president, noted: “The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People needs to be recalled to its founding purpose. Black people face acute and urgent needs, from unemployment to education, family fragmentation, discrimination and crime.”

“We are calling on the NAACP, a beloved organization in our eyes, to reclaim its mission. The black church founded the NAACP, and it is not the organization for the advancement of gays and lesbians – whatever the merits of that movement. Return to your roots and stand with the black church on marriage. The black church in our eyes remains the conscience of America.

“More than anything, this is an issue of biblical principles, and President Obama is carrying our nation down a dangerous road,” continued Owens. “Many African-Americans were once proud of our president, but now many are ashamed of his actions.”

For decades now, well-organized, well-funded and politically powerful homosexual pressure groups have, with impertinence, hijacked the language of the authentic civil rights movement.

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

Indeed, that Barack Obama and the NAACP would align themselves with a militant, immoral lobby that literally takes “pride” in arrogant rebellion against biblical principles is, perhaps, what’s most troubling about this inexplicable political misstep.

It’s offensive – disgusting, in fact – that this pleasure-based, sex-centric movement – delineated by deviant proclivities and behaviors – would dare to equate its demands for celebration of bad behavior to Christian notions of racial equality.

Ken Hutcherson, an influential black pastor from the Seattle area, put it well: “It has been said loudly and proudly that gay marriage is a civil rights issue. If that’s the case, then gays would be the new African-Americans. I’m here to tell you now, and hopefully for the last time, that the gay community is not the new African-American community.

“Don’t compare your sin to my skin!” he demands.

Alas, how far we’ve come from the character-content vision of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. who, like his fellow Republican, Mitt Romney, recognized the critical importance of marriage and family. How we’ve perverted what constitutes true civil rights.

 

Matt Barber (@jmattbarber on Twitter) is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. He serves as Vice President of Liberty Counsel Action

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Matt Barber (@jmattbarber on Twitter) is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. He serves as Vice President of Liberty Counsel Action.

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