Why Black Churches Oppose Gay Marriage

The topic that Keith Boykin brings up is the issue that the Black community, black ministers and churches specifically, do not support same sex marriages. He addresses the hypocrisy he sees in this, as the black community was once the group fighting for equality. According to Boykin, blacks don’t support gay marriage rights for two reasons. Blacks only see images and representations from the gay white community, so they don’t feel like it involves them. There is not many people in the black community that are openly gay in their churches, so the community is lacking a face of their own to tie the issue to. They also don’t support same sex marriages because they have been offended by gay white activists trying to correlate and compare the struggle blacks had during segregation to the present day gay rights struggle.

Boykin believes that if a gay or lesbian from their community addressed the fact that they are apart of both groups, then it could add compassion to the ministers that have many gay and lesbian members of their congregation. There is a bigger debate underlying Boykin’s article, which seems to be the fact that there are many correlations and consequences to Blacks not supporting same sex marriages. If 48% of blacks support the Marriage Protection Initiative, then that means in November they will be voting for the Bush ticket on these initiatives, and the Democratic party will lose the support of several swinging states. The separation of opinion on this particular Initiative in the polls will make it hard for Kerry to win, thus making the issue on Gay rights overcast what may be more important to the Black community. This separation between supporters of Kerry will weaken his ticket, and allow Bush, and all of his other not so minority concerned bills, to win. The disagreement on this topic will exceed the fact that the Democratic Party is in their favor on issues that effect the entire community, proving that there is something greater at stake.

This article was written in the Village Voice, an alternative newspaper that is very free form, with a “no-holds barred” attitude towards