"Why Are 'We' So Hateful...?"

Dr. Ben Carson

I am constantly amazed (and it is no small source of irony to me) that so many of the most vehemently homophobic people in America and the world are people of color.  I just don't understand how with our long history of being 'the' visible minority most discriminated against, we are also the people who proclaim with the loudest voices that we should deny GLBT and same-gender-loving people equal rights under the law.

Just this past week, we saw two notable instances of this, right here in America... 

Detroit born, Dr. Ben Carson is a "conservative hero" who once equated the quest for gay marriage to the beliefs of NAMBLA and beastiality.  He has once again had the spotlight shone on his hateful attitudes by Right Wing Watch.  Dr. Carson was a speaker at the hate-filled CPAC conference last week where he said he would “continue to defy the PC police who have tried in many cases to shut me up..." declaring, "Of course gay people should have the same rights as everyone else. But they don’t get extra rights, they don’t get to redefine marriage. (emphasis added)" To which this fellow Detroiter would ask Dr. Carson, "Would you have said the same thing to Mildred and Richard Loving who in 1967 "redefined" marriage by daring to marry each other despite being of different races thereby redefining "traditional marriage" at least as it was understood in most of the United States at that time?"

It was the Loving case and many others like it that tore down the racial barriers and Jim Crow laws that allowed Ben Carson, a fatherless young black boy from humble and impoverished circumstances to become a world-famous neurosurgeon, educator and great American success story immortalized in his own Hollywood biopic, "Gift Hands... The Ben Carson Story."  And yet, this man who owes the opportunity for the successes he's enjoyed to people like the Lovings who fought for equality under the law, actively seeks to deny the same (not "extra") rights to his brothers and sisters who happen to be gay.  I don't understand how this happens. How does someone like Dr. Carson get it so wrong?  Yet as we sadly know, he is not alone.

Last week also saw black homophobia come to the forefront in Virginia, the home state of the 1967 Loving decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously declared, "Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival..."

Richmond, Virginia Mayor Dwight Jones

Richmond Mayor Dwight Jones, who is also a Baptist minister is causing a rift in Virginia's Democratic party over his stance against marriage equality.

Mayor Jones, who is seeking to become the next state party chair, has expressed only lukewarm support for general LGBT equality but cites his religious beliefs as the source of his staunch opposition to marriage equality.  In 2006, Jones supported and voted for Virginia's constitutional amendment banning the recognition of all same-sex relationships.

While I support Mayor Jones' right to believe whatsoever he will, as the dictates of his religious faith proscribes, I don't understand how he cannot see how wrong his beliefs are.  In 1967, hate clothed itself in the garments of religion just as he is doing today to also deny the Lovings the right to be together, in love and married in the state of Virginia.  That same religious inspired hate sought to keep people like Dwight Jones from the polling places and at that time could have never accepted a black man as the mayor of a major city in the state of Virginia.  And yet, even though this hate is no different, black men like Dr. Carson and Mayor Jones are among the first to cite religion as a justification to oppress others.

Can it be that our collective memory is so short and so clouded by the scars of the oppression that we ourselves have endured, that we cannot remember when "religion" was the excuse used to justify slavery, Jim Crow and the denial of even the most basic rights to a whole class of people simply because they were not white?

I honestly would defend to the last drop of my blood, both Dr. Carson's and Mayor Jones' right to believe what they do (and in fact I did, when I swore an oath to defend the nation and the Constitution as a member of our armed forces, while I myself was forced to serve in silence and in fear of being found out to be a gay man).  But the hateful and harmful beliefs of the Dr. Carsons and Mayor Joneses of this world are only defensible to the extent that they hold those beliefs for themselves personally.  They have no right to impose their hateful beliefs on our society as a whole and upon me and their fellow GLBT and same-gender-loving citizens.  It's wrong, it's ignorant, it's un-American and worst of all, it's un-Christ-like.

"Fear Eats the Soul"