Brother Outsider or Louis Coleman does not care about black (gay) people.

Rev. Louis Coleman of the Justice Resource Center
was quoted in the November 16 issue of the
Courier-Journal that 'he worries that expanding our
school district's harassment and employment policies
to protect against sexual orientation discrimination
will open the door for gay and lesbian employees to
push their beliefs onto students.

"I just don't think policies should be put in place
to protect habits or behaviors."

That's news to me since he was a Fairness supporter
back in the day.

Fellow Frank Simon-flunkie Rev. Charles Elliott said
that the fight for equal rights for LGBT people is
nothing like the struggles of black folks during the
civil rights movement. "We were fighting a race
problem back then, not a habit or behavioral
problem…Being (gay) is a choice. We didn't have a
choice to be black, we were born that way,” he
insists.

Being LGBT isn't a 'choice' as he disrespectfully
put it either.

Mike Slaton, organizer for the Fairness Campaign of
Louisville, said no one is suggesting that anti-gay
bias is the same as racism. "Hate hurts no matter
who it is directed at. We all deserve fairness
regardless of our race, sex, creed, sexual
orientation or gender identity. No one chooses to be
the object of discrimination."

While Mr. Slaton’s attempts at mitigating the gay
rights movement are admirable, he is only half right.

Anti-gay bias is indeed the same as racism, sexism and
the other isms. The fact is that all oppressions are
linked and injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
everywhere.

In our society, the heterosexual, middle-class, white
Christian male is the benchmark against which all
others are measured. Generally speaking, the less one
of us measures up to this standard, the lower we find
ourselves on the totem pole of social justice and
public opinion.

As long as some people believe its okay and have the
misguided idea that their religion makes it's okay to
discriminate against people, then it will be necessary
for political leaders to pass civil rights protections
for the low people on the societal totem pole.

Changing this negative paradigm demands that we all
work in coalition with others (yes, even gay folks) in
the social justice movement without leaving anyone
behind.

LGBT people have no more of a choice in deciding
our identity than black folks, heterosexuals or
women. The only 'choice' we make is either to hide
who we are or to live openly as gay, lesbian, bisexual
and transgender people. Religion and political
affiliation are choices that are currently protected
by JCPS nondiscrimination policies, so why are Coleman and crew
getting upset about the proposed addition of sexual
orientation and gender identity to those policies?

I’d like to point out to Rev. Coleman and those who
think like him the story of Bayard Rustin, an
influential black civil rights activist who did much
of his work behind the scenes. Rustin was the
principal organizer of the 1963 March on Washington in
which Dr. King delivered his famous 'I Have A Dream'
speech.

Bayard Rustin injected Gandhi’s non violent protest
techniques to the Black civil rights movement and
helped sculpt Dr. King into the iconic Nobel prize
winning international symbol of peace and nonviolence
that he would became.

Only one problem. Bayard Rustin was gay.

Some of Rustin’s contemporaries in Dr. King's inner
circle decided that Rustin’s audacity to be true to
himself as an openly gay man overrode his blackness
and diligent work for the movement and was a
liability. Then-Senator Strom Thurmond and the FBI
attempted to raise public awareness of Rustin’s
sexuality and even circulated false stories that
Rustin and King were romantically involved -- all in
an effort to undermine the civil rights movement.

Those scare tactics worked in 1963. NAACP Chair Roy
Wilkins wouldn’t allow Rustin to receive any public
credit for his major role in planning the March.

It’s time that black LGBT people stand up and refuse
to be the Rustin to Frank Simon’s Thurmond and Louis
Coleman’s Wilkins. It’s time that black LGBT people
refuse to be silenced, bullied, overlooked
disrespected or disregarded simply because we have
the audacity to live in our own truth.

Black LGBT people need to recognize our individual
and collective power as a community. Gay and straight
folks alike need to recognize that black LGBT people
have always played and will continue to play important
and indispensable roles in the struggle for the rights
of all people, whether it be the labor movement,
women's liberation and, even the fight for the rights
of blacks and Latinos in America.

It’s time that religious conservatives stop skewing
the Bible to justify their hatred, fear and
loathing of LGBT people.

And time’s up for all the cowards who sit idly by and
don’t speak up against injustice and bigotry in our
country. After all, as Edmund Burke eloquently said, the
only thing necessary for evil to triumph is that good
men do nothing.

A year before Bayard Rustin died in 1987 he said, "The
barometer of where one is on human rights questions
is no longer the black community, it's the gay
community because it is the community which is most
easily mistreated."

Actually, I think it’s both communities that are
human rights barometers, and there are more
similarities in their struggles than either would care
to admit.