Black clergy rejection stirs gay marriage backers

The Black Ministerial Alliance, the Boston Ten Point Coalition, and the Cambridge Black Pastors Conference issued a joint statement this weekend opposing gay marriage.

In response, gay and lesbian African-Americans are hastily pulling together an organization they say will seek to end their invisibility within the black church.

But the region's black pastors, some long associated with liberal political causes, say they are proud to be speaking out on an issue they consider to be hugely important. Several said that gay marriage would contribute to the further erosion of traditional family structure in the black community.

"As black preachers, we are progressive in our social consciousness, and in our political ideology as an oppressed people we will often be against the status quo, but our first call is to hear the voice of God in our Scriptures, and where an issue clearly contradicts our understanding of Scripture, we have to apply that understanding," said the Rev. Gregory G. Groover Sr., pastor of Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church in Boston.

African-American advocates of gay marriage were horrified by the pastors' statement, issued on the weekend before the state constitutional convention at which lawmakers were expected to debate a constitutional amendment to preserve marriage as a heterosexual institution.

"Martin Luther King [Jr.] is rolling over in his grave at a statement like this," said state Representative Byron Rushing, a Boston Democrat and an active Episcopal layman. "They are not acknowledging the responsibility that any people have who have been able to struggle and gain civil rights, which is that you have to then support others who are seeking civil rights."

A handful of leading black clergy in Boston are prominent supporters of gay marriage, but all work in historically white denominations. They include the Rev. William G. Sinkford, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association; the Rev. Peter J. Gomes, the American Baptist minister who is minister of Harvard University's Memorial Church; and Bishop Gayle E. Harris, a suffragan bishop in the Episcopal diocese of Massachusetts.

But within historically black churches, where most black Protestants worship, there appears to be a near consensus that marriage should be defined as the union of a man and a woman. Among those who have voiced their opposition are the Rev. Ray A. Hammond, pastor of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Jamaica Plain, the Rev. Eugene F. Rivers III, pastor of the Azusa Christian Community, and the Rev. Jeffrey L. Brown, pastor of Union Baptist Church in Cambridge.

"The decision was not very difficult, because our faith forces us to recognize something that is biblical and that history has affirmed," said the Rev. Wesley A. Roberts, president of the Black Ministerial Alliance, which represents about 80 churches with 20,000 to 30,000 members.

Bishop Gilbert A. Thompson Sr., who as pastor of New Covenant Christian Church in Mattapan heads the largest Protestant congregation in Massachusetts, said black ministers have many reasons for speaking out against gay marriage.

"We're weighing in on this because we're concerned with the epidemic rate of fatherlessness in America and in our community, and we don't think gay marriage helps that cause," he said.

Thompson said he believes that homosexuality is a choice and that "to say there is such a thing as a gay Christian is saying there's an honest thief," because gay people can choose not to act on their homosexual impulses.

"I've read that [former presidential candidate] Carol Moseley Braun didn't see any difference between same-sex marriage and interracial marriage, but we believe the difference is enormous," Thompson said. "Today, we look back with scorn at those who twisted the law to make marriage serve a racist agenda, and I believe our descendants will look back the same way at us if we yield to the same kind of pressure a radical sexual agenda is placing on us today. Just as it's distorting the equation of marriage if you press race into it, it's also distorting if you subtract gender."

The black ministers' statement was welcomed by other opponents of gay marriage, who say it inoculates them from accusations that they were opposed to civil rights.

"The Black Ministerial Alliance is eminently qualified to speak to this particular issue and to clearly state that it is not a civil right issue," said the Rev. David M. Midwood, the president of Vision New England, an umbrella organization of evangelical Protestant churches.

Black gays and lesbians, who have been increasingly concerned since the Black Ministerial Alliance joined the statewide Coalition for Marriage, are starting to speak up.

"Their terminology and reasoning is similar to that of segregationists and racists who have worked hard to keep blacks from attaining full citizenship," said Jacquie Bishop, 39, of Boston.

Pamela K. Johnson, 40, of Boston, who worships at the predominantly African-American Union United Methodist Church in the South End, called the statement "hurtful."

"The idea that gay people are somehow on the list of major concerns eroding the black family is ridiculous," Johnson said. "The real issues impacting our community impact us all, gay and straight."

And Judah-Abijah Dorrington, 47, of Framingham, who attends the Church of God and Saints of Christ in Boston with her partner of 22 years, said, "The statements being made are exactly the statements that have divided the black community for ages."

Christina Cobb, a 38-year-old financial consultant from Boston who attends Trinity Church, said she is organizing an alliance of black gays and lesbians in response to the ministers' statement.

"My great-grandfather was a black minister in the Methodist Church. I come from a long line of ministers, so this really hits home for me," Cobb said. "When you have the Black Ministerial Alliance speaking against us, and they're the only black faces you're seeing speaking about marriage, we're up against a wall where we finally have to step up and say, `We're not invisible.' "

Scholars say the ministers' statement should come as no surprise. Gays and lesbians rarely play a prominent role in black churches.

"What you're stumbling across is the traditional stance of the African-American church, which is that marriage is sacred and unique to men and women," said the Rev. Imani-Sheila Newsome-Camara, a United Methodist minister who is an assistant professor of theology at Boston University. "Marriage was traditionally undervalued in slave communities, not by slaves, but by owners, so the black religious institutions sought to give African-Americans legitimacy as human beings, and that history has been woven together with the theology that God created man and woman for marriage."

Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.