Black Pastors Push for Civil Disobedience Against Gay Marriage Ruling
By Onan Coca / 4 July 2015 / 38 Comments
The Reverend Bill Owens, president of the Coalition of African-American Pastors (CAAP) spoke to Newsmax over the weekend about the recent Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage, and what he had to say might surprise some folks.
The Reverend Owens is calling on American Christians to oppose the court’s decision using civil disobedience, saying that sometimes “you do something to get arrested to call attention to the injustice.”
"I was in the civil rights movement, so I know how to do it. When we sat at the counters at restaurants, we knew we were going to be arrested. You do things to get arrested, to call attention to it. So many people were silent. The church people were absolutely silent on this issue. A few leaders spoke out, but the masses of the church people were silent."
The Reverend Owens added that he believed many people were unwilling to speak out against the President because "The whites didn't want to come out against Obama since he endorsed it so strongly and they didn't want to be called bigots — and the blacks didn't want to say they were betraying a black man. I came out very powerfully against Mr. Obama when he stood for same-sex marriage."
Owens continued, "I absolutely would not do a gay marriage. Absolutely. I think of our children. What it's going to do to our children. What kind of world are they going to grow up in? I've said for two years that we're going to have to have civil disobedience. They were very cunning in the way they did it," Reverend Owens said speaking about LGBT activists.
image:
http://cdn1.eaglerising.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Rev.-Bill-Owens-300x227.jpgRev.-Bill-Owens"Since I was in the civil rights movement, I know that if the people come together in force, things will happen. How they will happen, I don't know. The homosexual community has not shown all of what it's going to do," the Reverend said. He then mentioned a 2013 California law that forces public schools to allow boys and girls to use whatever restroom they choose. “They have a game plan that, now that the Supreme Court has ruled, will take this country down a very immoral path," Owens said.
Reverend Owens continued by arguing again that civil disobedience is the only way to respond to the court’s decision to force gay marriage on us.
"It's going to be much harder, because we're going to have to go from state to state. It's going to be hard to do, but it can be done. Remember, blacks worked for 300 years for civil rights in the courts. Three-hundred long years. It's not something that we're going to win overnight. There is no quick fix, but I think now the church will rise up. All the Christian churches in the United States that believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, they need to rise up. We're asking people to rise up and be ready to go to jail. Why go to jail? To let it be known that we will not bow down, we will not give up, whatever the costs. It’s the new civil rights movement, because they are taking away our rights. They are taking away the Christian's rights. This is just a start. We have nothing against homosexuals, but when you start talking about marriage, and then indoctrinating children, where are we going? Where is this society headed?"
Tough talk from Reverend Owens, but he may very well be right. Civil disobedience may be the only way that we can show the sincerity and strength of our resolve. It remains important to remember that we are protesting being relegated to second class citizenship and being forced to participate in activities that we find morally repugnant.
One reason that I have argued for the privatization of marriage (or for the government to get out of the business of marriage) is because I didn’t think that we could stop gay couples from holding commitment ceremonies (or weddings). By getting the state involved, we ourselves were risking being forced into being involved in these activities, which is what’s happening now. If the state were uninvolved, we could simply refuse to participate on religious grounds, and that would (probably) be the end of the story. But all of that is moot now as the Supreme Court has seen fit to act as royal master forcing us to bow and scrape before them on the gay marriage issue.
To that end we may indeed be forced to run afoul of the law in the not so distant future. Are we ready to do that?
Read more at
http://eaglerising.com/20430/black-pastors-push-for-civil-disobedience-against-gay-marriage-ruling/#x4BbT7JOvxmlCC98.99
