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 Four decades after Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot, abruptly ending his fight for basic civil rights for all Americans, the battle to ensure that all citizens of this great land are treated equally rages on. Sadly, there are those in the Civil Rights battle that are willing to leave some of the movement’s strongest fighters out in the cold.
There has been a blatant attempt of the more conservative religious minded black leaders to distance themselves and the Civil Rights Movement from the gay rights movement. “To equate a lifestyle choice to racism demeans the work of the entire civil rights movement,” reads a statement recently issued by a group of two dozen Atlanta black pastors. The reverends were supporting a state effort in Georgia to add a constitution amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
 But one only has to look to the top echelon of leadership within the civil rights movement to realize that its generals understood clearly that their cause and that of the LGBT community were one in the same. Coretta Scott King, speaking just before the 30th anniversary of her husband’s assassination, said that Martin Luther King’s memory demanded a strong stand for gay and lesbian rights. “I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice,” she said. “But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brother-and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”
 Gay and lesbians have been at the forefront of the civil rights movement since its inception. It was Bayard Rustin, an openly gay man, who organized the 1963 rally in Washington, the event where Dr. King made his ‘I have a dream!’ speech. Rustin is considered by many to be one of the most important figures in the Civil Rights Movement’s history. When some in the King camp tried to shun Rustin because of his homosexuality, King was adamantly opposed. “We are not concerned with Bayard or the past associations or affiliations of any participants. We are not going to conduct a witch-hunt,” Dr. King said.
Politics really do make strange bedfellows. Worried that Americans might notice obvious similarities between the fight for equal rights by the LGBT community and the African-American civil rights battle, the religious right has jumped into the fray. Sandy Rios, president of the fundamentalist extremist group Concerned Women for America (CWA) echoes the sentiments of the previously mentioned Atlanta pastors. “To compare rich, privileged homosexual lobby groups to brave civil rights crusaders-who risked their lives to advance freedom-insults every black American who overcame real injustice and poverty,” Rios stated in a press release.
To say that Rios’s words are disingenuous would be an understatement. For Ms. Rios to even try to talk about these brave men and women who ‘risked their lives to advance freedom’ is utter hypocrisy! It was the men and women of her ilk, the good church-going white folk of that time in history, that were the biggest threat to the physical safety of the Civil Rights Movement leaders!
 Alas, here we are forty years after Dr. King’s death and the battle for basic civil rights for all Americans continues. Sure, we’ve made some tremendous strides in regards to equal rights for people of color, but those of us in the gay community have to keep fighting, ballot initiative after ballot initiative, constitution amendment after constitutional amendment, court case after court case. The passing of great defenders like Coretta Scott King and Dr. King leave us exposed to the arrows of hate and disdain from the religious right and even some in the black community.
 But we still have allies in the black community. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Leonard Pitts, Jr. has always been eloquent in defending gay rights and former US Ambassador Andy Young, a pioneer in the Civil Rights Movement, continues to speak on our behalf. But now it’s up to us to fight our own battles. While we hope for the support of the members of the traditional civil rights movement, we realize we just might have to go this one alone.
So today, January 21, 2008, this national holiday celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, I pause to remember this courageous man and his wife. I am careful to remember the ultimate sacrifice Dr. King made in the fight for equal rights for everyone of us. I voice a prayer of thanks for Coretta Scott King and her willingness to stand up for the entire LGBT community. The memory of these two courageous straight black Americans serves to inspire this one gay white American to fight hate and discrimination wherever it may raise its ugly head.
"Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood,” Coretta Scott King said in a speech at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel in Chicago several years ago. “This sets the sage for further repression and violence that spread all to easily to victimize the next minority group,” she explained. Amen, Sister!
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