SCLC

Gays Are the New Niggers: 40 years after the Stonewall riots, what Bayard Rustin means for American democracy

Those who declare “Gay is the New Black” want to link the gay rights movement to the civil rights movement. Yet the slogan is full of internal contradictions and historical incongruities. Comparing the experiences of black folks and gay folks in the U.S. has outraged intellectuals, religious leaders, and politicians inside the black community.

It has outraged, for instance, Rev. Irene Monroe. She identifies three cardinal sins of whiteness plaguing the gay-marriage movement:

Among the remembrances of the April 4, 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. was an event at Riverside Church in New York City this Wednesday evening featuring the transformational lessons of King’'s last year for the American polity for today.

[Ed. Note: The following article will appear in the Spring 2008 issue of Fellowship magazine, and is offered here online in the context of this week's observance of the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968. Click here to subscribe to Fellowship.]

Sitting in our favorite coffeehouse, Tyler Jared, my eldest son, and I are having our “man time.” I am sipping a cappuccino and he is drinking some orange concoction. We stare into one another’s eyes, with an occasional “What?” breaking our silence. We are excited to see each other and saddened by the time we have spent apart. I hold a deep sense of calling that has taken me around the world, but away from him and his siblings. He has grown so much. He is now taller than me, his 13-year-old face starting to break out with pimples, voice cracking, but he is still my baby. I hold his hand and run my fingers through his golden locks. It embarrasses him, but he does not stop me, because I am Dad.

He interrupts the silence. “Dad, everyone knows you want to be like Martin Luther King.”