We've seen this phenomenon all too often!
It's a tragedy, as well as a grave injustice, when anyone seeks to deny full and equal civil rights to any minority group. But it's nothing short of irrational and bizarre when one minority group seeks to deny full and equal civil rights to another minority group!
We've seen this irrational and bizarre phenomenon played out in much of the African American religious communities in regard to LGBT civil and sacramental rights, and we're also seeing it in the Latino religious communities in Florida:
"Florida's Latino faith community leaders, Diocese of Miami Auxiliary Bishop Felipe J. Esteves, El Rey Jesus Church Pastor Guillermo Maldonado, Riverside Baptist Church Pastor Otto Fernandez and other Latino ministers joined millions of Floridians in their
support of Amendment 2 (The Florida Marriage Protection Amendment) when they announced that marriage is, has always been and should remain the union of one man and one woman as husband and wife today at the Miami-Dade Courthouse in Miami.
"The major Latino faith community leaders joined other faith community leaders and thousands of churches across Florida that support the common sense of having people and not judges define marriage in Florida. More than 426 Florida leaders have endorsed the Yes2Marriage.org campaign effort in support of Amendment 2 and will vote 'Yes on 2' on Nov. 4. The leaders endorsing the marriage amendment include businessmen, pastors, community leaders, bishops and legislators."
It may well be that when people only fight for, and only care about, their own civil rights, and only selfishly seek to have their own naked, short-sighted, self-interests met, without them seeing that eveyone's civil rights are threatened if even one minority group is denied full and equal civil rights, it is quite likely that when they get their short-term interests met by winning those rights for themselves, they may well turn around and seek to deny the dignity and civil rights of another minority group that they feel is "safe," and "religiously," socially, and politically correct to persecute.
This phenomenon helps play into the hands of the Power Elite in society. (In this context, please see my post of July 7, 2008.) Moreover, they even play into the hands of the handmaidens of the Power Elite, those handmaidens frequently comprising most of the institutional Church.
Any minority group members (And that's most of us!) that align themselves with the most reactionary forces within society makes them servants of, and allies with, those who would, and often do, hold them in contempt. Therefore, they are in the unwitting position of aligning themselves with the mind-set and prejudices of discriminatory groups which were always in the vanguard of their oppression in the first place, and that would exercise that oppression again if its members felt they could get away with it.
Therefore, when Latinos align themselves with the reactionary forces of the power structure, they are representing the mind set of a Rev. Gregory Daniels, an African American minister, who famously and inexplicably said, "If the KKK opposes gay marriage, I would ride with them." [See here.]
If any minority group, when fighting for its civil rights, fails to see how its own rights are inextricably linked to the rights of every other minority group, we can be fairly certain that when those rights are eventually achieved, a large proportion of that minority group is likely to turn around and discriminate against another minority group du jour.
This phenomenon guarantees a war of all against all within society, and by claiming a biblical basis to that war (As was also famously done by the White Supremacists until it was no longer socially acceptable to express their hateful prejudices in public.), they not only defame the minority group against which they are venting their hate, but defame God and Christianity by seeking to identify their irrational venom with some sort of manufactured and fallaciously claimed "godly" mandate to seek to deny full and equal civil rights to others.
TODAY BEGINS GLBT HISTORY MONTH!
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