My friend Karen Ocamb stands up for a more inclusive moral ethic than that currently supported by the mainstream of the American Christian right:
This rainy Monday in Los Angeles, hundreds join in the annual march to honor Dr. King – including LGBT people of all colors.
Ironically, many parade participants and observers don’t know that the famous 1963 March on Washington – where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech – was organized by his openly gay friend, Bayard Rustin.
[Karen Ocamb's story, continued]
Nor might they know that one of the most forceful supporters of LGBT rights was Coretta Scott King – who introduced Bayard Rustin to her husband. And until her death in 2006, it was a white gay man – Lynn Cothren – who served Mrs. King as her closest assistant for 23 years. It was Cothren who served as chair of the program committee for the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington, ensuring that there were three openly gay speakers on the program.
And it was Cothren who escorted poetDr. Maya Angelou onstage at the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church during the Feb. 7 funeral for Coretta Scott King. Angelou told me later:
"I asked for him. He’s always been to me like a son. He was a son to Coretta and a son to Betty [Shabazz, widow of Malcolm X], too.
[snip]
I am aghast and appalled at any people who decide that another group should not have their rights. We’re all each other’s people."
This is the spirit that infuses the activism of such longtime civil rights leaders as Jesse Jackson, Julian Bond, John Lewis and Al Sharpton – who speak out in favor of LGBT rights in a way that surprises those who cleve to the stereotype that religious African Americans will not abide gay people as a biblical tenant.
The legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King is a clarion call for justice: