Op-Ed: Would MLK Have Fought for LGBTQ Rights?

Today we mark 27 years of observing Martin Luther King Day. Some states began honoring Dr. King on January 20, 1986.

King would have been eighty-four. He was gunned down on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis by an assassin on April 4, 1968. If he were alive today he’d see how much has changed in our nation.

Today we mark 27 years of observing Martin Luther King Day. Some states began honoring Dr. King on January 20, 1986.

King would have been eighty-four. He was gunned down on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis by an assassin on April 4, 1968. If he were alive today he’d see how much has changed in our nation.

Since King's death every struggling civil rights group has affixed itself to his passionate cause for justice.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities, in particular, have been reviled for not only naming our struggle as a civil rights issue, but also for naming MLK as one of the civil rights icons that would speak on our behalf.
 
But would King have spoken on our behalf?
 
As we celebrate MLK Day 2013 we no longer have to hold King up to a God-like standard. All the hagiographies written about King immediately following his assassination in the previous century have come under scrutiny as we come to understand all of King -- his greatness as well as his flaws and human foibles.
 
As I comb through numerous books and essays learning more about King’s philandering, sexist attitude about women at home and in the movement, and his relationship with Bayard Rustin, I am wondering -- would King be a public advocate for LGBTQ rights?

James Cone, father of Black Liberation Theology and author of a book and several articles on King states that we must understand King within the historical context of the Black Church. And in so doing, I find it ironic that the public King we witnessed on a national stage talked vociferously about social justice and civil rights for all people yet his personal life did not reflect the same ethos concerning women and gays. Would the public King have spoken out on LGBTQ justice, risking his already waning popularity with the African American community and President L.B. Johnson?
 
In an address to the Gill Foundation’s National Outgiving Conference in 2007, I said “If Dr. Martin Luther King were standing up for LGBTQ rights today, the Black community would drop him, too.”
 
King understood the interconnections of struggles. An example of that understanding is when Martin Luther King said, “The revolution for human rights is opening up unhealthy areas in American life and permitting a new and wholesome healing to take place. Eventually the civil rights movement will have contributed infinitely more to the nation than the eradication of racial justice.”
 
This statement clearly includes LGBTQ justice, but would King have spoken on this subject at that time and even now?
 
King's late wife said yes.
 
In 1998, Coretta Scott King addressed the LGBT group Lambda Legal in Chicago. In her speech, she said queer rights and civil rights were the same. "I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King's dream to make room at the table of brother and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people," she said.
 
However, King's youngest and only living daughter, Rev. Bernice King, thinks otherwise.
 
Standing at her father’s grave site in 2004 with thousands of protesters denouncing marriage equality, Bernice King, who has been rumored for years to be a lesbian, and her aunt Alveda King, participated in a march against same-sex marriage in Atlanta. On speculating about her father's viewpoint on marriage equality, Bernice said, “I know in my sanctified soul that he did not take a bullet for same-sex marriage.”
 
In January 2005, Newsweek asked Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King, who has aligned herself with the religious right, lending her family name and voice against LGBTQ rights, if Martin Luther King would be a champion on gay rights. “No, he would champion the word of God,” she said. “If he would have championed gay rights today, he would have done it while he was here. There was ample opportunity for him to champion gay rights during his lifetime, and he did not do so.”
 
And that might be true. On the national stage, he talked passionately about social justice and civil rights for all people, yet his personal life did not reflect that ethos concerning women and gays.
 
Sadly, Bayard Rustin, the gay man who was chief organizer and strategist for the 1963 March on Washington that further catapulted Martin Luther King onto the world stage, was not the beneficiary of King's dream.
more on next page...