Black vs. Gay

Black ministers and gay activists are clashing in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. This is also causing a divide in the black community. The Mayor Jim Naugle recently came under attack for endorsing an advisory board proposal to spend $250,000 on an automated public restroom on Fort Lauderdale beach. The mayor said it would cut down on men having sex in public facilities.

This, apparently, is hate speech.

"20 gay activists wearing red shirts and AIDS pins condemned the clergymen the next day for not being sympathetic to their cause -- one they say mirrors the African-American struggle.
The ministers did not agree.

''You didn't have to drink from separate fountains. Our struggle is not the same . . . you can't equate race and sexuality,'' O'Neal Dozier, pastor of the Worldwide Christian Center, told one activist. ``Slavery was not a choice.''

''Yours is a message of hate, minister . . . You don't speak on behalf of freedom,'' answered Michael Rajner of the Campaign to End AIDS, a nonprofit group."

The NAACP is coming down on the side of the gay activists which upsets the black members of the faith community:

''The NAACP is getting away from their mission . . . the organization never got involved with sex sins,'' said Mathis Guice, director of the men's ministry at Koinonia Worship Center and former vice president of the Broward NAACP. ``Homosexuals have masterfully redefined words to suit their cause . . . theirs is not a civil rights issue.''

More:

Some black ministers in Miami-Dade also were disappointed in the NAACP.
''I was very taken back by their position,'' says the Rev. Richard P. Dunn, the head of PULSE, People United to Lead the Struggle for Equality. ``I get offended when they compare gay rights to civil rights.''

So I guess the denial of blacks drinking at the same public water fountains as whites is the same as the right to have anonymous gay sex in public bathrooms? No wonder the ministers are upset. It's absurd.