Queer rights as the new civil rights: MLK’s words today
I just finished reading Why We Can’t Wait, by Martin Luther King Jr. Sure, I’d read “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” but I never read it in context. MLK’s thinking about the struggle for equality for Black Americans is enormously relevant for today’s struggle for equality for LGBTQ people. Read them once as Dr. King intended them for Black people; then read them again as they might apply to LGBTQ folks:
“Only a ‘dry as dust’ religion prompts a minister to extol the glories of Heaven while ignoring the social conditions that cause men an earthly hell” (page 54).
“Others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows . . . , mouth(ing) pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities” (78-79).
“So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound, an archdefender of the status quo. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, . . . it will be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust. Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church” (80-81).
“The system [white supremacy/queerphobia] . . . lies on its deathbed. The only . . . question [is] how costly they will make the funeral” (99).
Amen, Brother Martin.
-Marci
Image from Brittanica.com