Today, more and more black preachers across the country are picking up the idea that gay rights activists have no right to cite the civil rights movement. These preachers are now becoming the new advance guard in the hard-line Christian Right's crusade to religiously and politically condemn homosexuals. They are demonizing gays in fiery sermons and hammering the message that gay rights and civil rights are not only separate issues, but also opposing forces.

Bishop Harry Jackson, among others have been featured at the series of "Justice Sunday" rallies sponsored by the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family.

At "Justice Sunday III," ... black ministers stood by as white evangelicals compared the "struggles" of conservative Christians to those of black Americans in the 1960s.

But at the same time, Mock reports, African American leaders in the religious right describe analogies of the struggles of gays and lesbians for equal rights to those of the African-American civil rights movement as offensive, even racist. Thus, the religious right appears to have finally succeeded in creating a significant division among African-Americans with possible long term benefits for the GOP.  And they are doing it in sermons like this one by Bishop Eddie Long of Atlanta:

"We're raising our young boys to be just like the women," he bellows to his congregation, which today numbers more than 25,000 people. "We keep telling men to get in touch with their [sweetens his voice] sensitive self."

Almost 45 minutes into the sermon, captured on a videotape that is for sale in his church's bookstore, Bishop Long grows louder and angrier.

"The problem today and the reason society is like it is, is because men are being feminized and women are being masculine!" he roars. "You can not say, `I was born this way.' ... I don't care what scientists say!"

Mock continues:

Like their white counterparts, these black anti-gay preachers routinely identify the so-called "homosexual agenda" -- not poverty, racism, gang violence, inadequate schools, or unemployment -- as the No. 1 threat facing black Americans today. Often, they take their cues from white Christian Right hard-liners like Traditional Values Coalition chairman Louis Sheldon, who told TV pundit Tucker Carlson in January 2006 that homosexuality is "the biggest problem facing inner-city black neighborhoods." Sheldon later delivered the same message to the Congressional Black Caucus, this time accompanied by Bishop Paul Morton, a black anti-gay minister from New Orleans.

Interestingly Intelligence Report also discusses African American anti-gay activism of the religious right in the context of the use of homosexuality as a wedge issue to divide the mainline Protestant churches in the U.S.; churches that have been at or near the forefront of advances for African-American civil rights and related social justice causes for more than a century. The Washington,DC-based Institute on Religion and Democracy,(IRD) and its satallite organizations, have for their part, been in the forefront of generating and exaccerbating these divisions.  

The most prominent among these, is the split in the Episcopal Church, largely bankrolled by longtime theocratic activists Howard (and IRD board member Roberta) Ahmanson, and whose public leader is Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria.  

Akinola wrote last December on his church's website... "Homosexuality does violence to nature. ... This lifestyle is a terrible violation of the harmony of the eco-system of which mankind is a part. As we are rightly concerned by the depletion of the ozone layer, so should we be concerned by the practice of homosexuality."

Akinola's Nigerian colleague, the Rev. David Onuoha, said homosexuality is simply not in the African's nature. In a column entitled "The Absurdity of Same Sex Union," he adds that homosexuality is "a satanic doctrine."

Remarkably, both African Episcopalian ministers have been actively involved in promoting anti-homosexual religious doctrines--in America. When American Episcopalian churches began to fracture over disagreements on condemning homosexuality last year, Akinola heightened the drama by starting the Anglican Church of North America. His church is exclusively for orthodox Episcopalians -- meaning absolutely not for gay Christians.

The article doesn't say, but it is worth pointing out that Akinola is also an advocate for national legislation in Nigeria that would criminalize homosexuality, gay marriage, and political advocacy for gay rights. The penalty for everything banned in the bill is five years in prison.  

The American Epsicopalians, especially members of the dozen churches in Virginia that recently split from the Episcopal Church and call Akinola their spiritual leader, now profess to be shocked, shocked, and say they had no idea about all this -- although the matter was well known enough that the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, DC published an op-ed more than a year ago in The Washington Post detailing Akinola's support for the bill.

The logical conclusion of the antigay rhetoric and politics of the religious right is the criminalization of homosexuality -- just like the Akinola-backed bill making its way through the Nigerian legislature. And while overt criminalization may not be possible in the U.S. right now, (it certainly is elsewhere) this, is the kind of division that the religious right seeks to bring the African-American community in the U.S.

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