Rev. Dr William Barber, II is the president and CEO of the North Carolina NAACP and one of the leaders in the progressive coalition effort to defeat North Carolina's odious Amendment One.
The Forces of Intolerance won that battle to enshrine hatred and discrimination in the North Carolina constitution.
Now fresh off that victory, NOM is resorting to their documented wedge issue playbook and sending their star sellout knee-grow Patrick Wooden out on the NC Black radio airwaves to try to smear President Obama, his positions and attempt to sow discord between African-American and LGBT voters
Rev. Dr William Barber and the progressive side ain't having it. He responded to the false ads featuring Wooden by writing this open letter..
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Open Letter to Clergy Who Are Trying to Confuse African American Voters on Wedge Issue of Marriage Equality
While the NAACP does not endorse candidates for President of our
nation, we vigorously debate the issues that should shape national,
state, and local elections. And we will challenge those who attempt to
mislead our communities. Some clergy are wrongly criticizing and
distorting the views of the President on the issue of marriage equality.
They are trying to confuse African American voters. They have a right
to their opinions but to mislead demands a response. These clergy -
whatever their motives - are woefully mistaken if they believe such
tactics will work.
President Obama is President of the United States. His position as
leader of all Americans represents the noble commitment he made by oath
to all Americans when he took office. The President, a former professor
of law, respects the 1st Amendment, which preserves the right of and
freedom from religion. He, like the Constitution, recognizes that every
church has the constitutional right to decide, depending on their faith
tradition, how to address the issue of marriage within their
ecclesiology. The President also respects the 14th Amendment to the
Constitution, which he also swore to uphold. This makes it his solemn
duty to guarantee the "equal protection rights" of every citizen. Civil
marriage is a right protected by the constitution, despite how one feels
about what constitutes a marriage personally or religiously. The
President swore to uphold the rights of all the people, not just some of
us. His position is the same as Republicans like Dick Cheney.
Those who insist on distorting and criticizing the President for
doing his sworn duty insult the Civil Rights Movement. These clergy ally
themselves with the same extreme right organizations and people who
have spent millions of dollars trying to overturn the 1965 Voting Rights
Act, what most historians say was the most important achievement of the
Civil Rights Movement. These clergy have allied with the same
regressive forces determined to re-segregate and rob our public schools
of adequate funding. These forces spend millions trying to block
workers' rights to organize; trying to force minorities, the poor, the
elderly, and students to spend money to obtain voter photo ID's to
exercise their right to vote; trying to cut the time and opportunities
to vote; turning their heads away from the gross racial disparities in
the criminal justice system.
These are the same extremists who are stirring the pot about "gay
marriage" and other code-slogans they dream up, all designed to divide
and conquer the 99% who obviously can out-vote them. Their strategy is
based on an arrogant assumption that we, the sons and daughters of the
Civil Rights Movement, are too dumb to see through their Trojan Horse
trick. They believe they can use wedge issues to seduce us into being a
part of their scheme to deny LGBT brothers and sisters of their
fundamental rights. This will not happen on our watch!
Many are disturbed and feel compelled to respond to the single-issue
moral litmus test being used to publicly denounce the President. Those
who are manipulating this wedge issue are unwilling to acknowledge his
attempts to lift the poor, lift the jobless, protect the weak from the
powerful, provide health care to the sick, educational opportunity to
the children, protect voting rights, and protect the rights of all
Americans, all of which are efforts that clearly line up with the
primary moral concerns of the Judea Christian faith. This intentional
ignorance renders their critique suspect and void of credibility.
We believe the issues that should shape our evaluation of
Presidential candidates and others is where do they stand and what are
their plans regarding 1) economic sustainability, poverty and labor
rights, 2) educational equality, 3) healthcare for all, 4) disparities
in the criminal justice system and 5) defending and expanding voting
rights and voter participation.
Theologically, from a bible-centric perspective, and from the Judeo
Christian faith I practice, the issues that should dominate our public
square are: How we treat the poor. How we treat the sick. How we treat
children. How we treat women. How we treat those on the margins. How we
treat the outcasts of society.
There are more than 300 scriptures on these issues, more than any
other moral issue noted in the scripture. The second most noted sin in
the bible is mistreatment of the" least of these", and the most noted is
the sin of idolatry and self-worship, selfishness, and attempting to
raise oneself to god status in judgment of others. Let us remember
scriptures like these that set the normative posture for faithful
service in the public arena:
Luke 4
God's Spirit is on me;
he has chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free,
to announce, "This is God's year to act!"
Or Isaiah 58
'Why do we fast and you don't look our way?
Why do we humble ourselves and you don't even notice?'
'Well, here's why:
The bottom line on your 'fast days' is profit.
You drive your employees much too hard.
You fast, but at the same time you bicker and fight
You fast, but you swing a mean fist.
The kind of fasting you do won't get your prayers off the ground.
Do you think this is the kind of fast day I'm after:
a day to show off humility?
To put on a pious long face and parade around solemnly in black?
Do you call that fasting, a fast day that I, God, would like?'
'This is the kind of fast day I'm after: to break the chains of injustice,
Get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
free the oppressed,
to cancel debts.'
When you look at voting records and public policy positions
carefully, the same forces fighting us on voting rights, educational
equality, economic justice, addressing racial disparities in the
criminal justice system, are the same forces sponsoring and paying for
the current attacks on the LGBT community and the President.
No matter our color. No matter our faith tradition. Those who stand
for love and justice are not about to fall for their trick. No matter
how you feel personally about same sex marriage, no one, especially
those of us whose forebears were denied constitutional protections and
counted as 3/5ths of extra votes for their slave-masters, who were
listed as mere chattel property in the old Constitution -- none of us --
should ever want to deny any other person constitutional protections.
What is most concerning about these clergy who try to suggest that
this one wedge issue is the standard for measuring the moral fiber of
our President, or anyone else for that matter, is that they seem to
dismiss the essential call of the Judea Christian faith -- to love
everybody. We are commanded by our faith and God to care for the
stranger, especially those on the margins as Jesus did.
Is it an act of love for these clergy to unite themselves with groups
like the Family Research Council, the National Organization on
Marriage, and other elements who have been classified as Hate Groups by
national organizations who track the extreme right? Is it an act of
caring for strangers, when these clergy embrace the right-wing
philosophy of othering people? Of demonizing fellow human beings whom
God clearly and dearly loves? Is it an act of Christian love to claim
allegiance to scriptural standards that say so little about what.
God
says so much and so much about what God says so little? Have these
dismissed the "weightier matters of the law"-- issues like poverty,
caring for children, protecting women, the vulnerable, the least of
these, and healing the sick? Do they fail to realize that it is even
possible to be religiously heterocentric, without being constitutionally
and socially homophobic? I pray that we will stop this denunciation of
the President and other public servants and judge Him and them by the
totality of their service and not through schemes designed by those
outside our community to divide us for their own sinister and cynical
motives.
Yours in the Spirit of Truth and Justice,
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II
President North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP
