Last Tuesday, about 150 gay marriage protestors gathered in Freedom Plaza to protest the possibility of the DC City Council voting to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states, as they did yesterday. That protest, at which former DC Mayor Marion Barry was present, was organized by Bishop Harry Jackson, who was also present at Tuesday’s meeting, although news reports don’t describe him as “leading” the protesters there. Our own Brentin Mock profiled Jackson for the Southern Poverty Law Center two years ago. Jackson, aside from believing that black people are more prone to “physical intimacy with a nonspouse or enjoyment of pornographic materials,” has ties to religious right figures Rod Parsley and Rev. Lou Sheldon. Sheldon runs the Traditional Values Coalition, and Parsely drew attention last year after John McCain rejected his endorsement over Parsely’s comments about Islam. Parsely said that “America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed,” and described Mohammed as “the mouthpiece of a conspiracy of spiritual evil”. Jackson’s Hope Church is located in Greenbelt, Maryland.
I have no doubt that marriage equality will prove to be a divisive issue in DC, and that there are local black preachers who have signed on to the anti-marriage equality effort. But so far, to the extent that a movement against equality has materialized, it seems to be driven by out an city activist with ties to the religious right who, in the past, has been drafted to do just this sort of thing.
— A. Serwer
