Pastor Amos Brown of the Third Baptist Church in San Francisco is also president of the local branch of the NAACP. Tonight he's holding an NAACP fundraiser, only many other ministers won't be attending. They are angry at Pastor Amos over his opposition to Prop 8:
Rochelle Metcalfe, a former writer for a local African American newspaper who now writes a community column on the Internet, said some black ministers are upset with Brown.
"I've been hearing about people who are upset that he supported the No on 8 campaign," she said. "He knows some people don't agree with him so I don't think the boycott is a surprise.
"But it is a hurtful issue because it is splitting our community."
Brown is convinced that some NAACP members are not attending the dinner because of his politics. He recently had a Sunday sermon interrupted by another minister who was upset that he was using the pulpit to show his support for gay marriage.
I happened to be interviewing Brown for an unrelated story, so I asked him for his thoughts on the subject. Brown does not perform gay marriages in his church, but he nonetheless opposes any measures making it illegal to do so, adding that "we don't live in a theocracy". Brown tied his opposition to Prop 8 to his experience growing up black in the forties and fifties, recalling the moment when he first saw Emmitt Till's mutilated body on the cover of Jet Magazine when he was only a teenager. "When I saw that picture," Amos says, "I promised G-d myself, never would I be mean to people who were different."
He also notes a connection between the some of the religious groups opposing gay rights and those who remained on the wrong side of the black liberation movement in the United States. "The Southern Baptist convention was organized because southern folks wanted to keep their slaves." Amos said. "They failed us on integration...Jerry Falwell opened the Christian academy that became liberty college in later years, because he and his members didn't want their children going to integrated schools."
Amos placed most of the blame on the religious organizations who funded and organized the Yes on 8 campaign, comparing them to churches in the past that acquiesced to racist laws rather than challenging them. In the meantime, the President of the NAACP, Benjamin Jealous, decided at the last minute to attend the fundraiser, possibly in a show of solidarity with Amos. Gov. David Paterson of New York, who pushed his state to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states, will also attend.
Amos had more to say about religious groups pushing Prop 8: "They're so insecure full of fear and fright that they're doing the same thing to gays that they did to black people when they came out against interracial marriages. They said there would be a mongrelization of the race, that it would tear up America."
"This is what was said. I heard that when I was young. I saw that. So why should I turn around and become that which I hated?"
I don't know.
--A. Serwer
