How Do Blacks Feel Being Compared to Homosexuals?

Activist Azziza Nails said that if the people of Massachusetts wanted same-sex marriage legalized, they would have elected Shannon O'Brien governor.

By Geraldine Hawkins March 14, 2003 Seven homosexual couples who were previously denied marriage licenses heard their case argued by Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders in front of a full bench at the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts on March 4. "This is a civil rights movement," said Mary L. Bonauto, a lawyer for GLAD at a press conference following the hearing. "Marriage is the only thing that will provide a gateway for these families to have equal protection." Not all black people take kindly to hearing their struggles compared with the complaints of militant homosexuals. "There's no comparison whatsoever and I find it highly offensive, to say the least, to hear the civil rights movement invoked to justify sexual deviancy," Dr. John Diggs tells MassNews. "They make more money as a group than most people, and they wield political power out of all proportion to their numbers. To compare themselves to the civil rights movement is extremely offensive and logically inconsistent.

"I got up this morning a black man, I will go to bed a black man, I was born a black man and I will die a black man - whereas most gays go from gay to straight to bi- on a whim. They are claiming an immutable state when their behavior shows extreme mutability.

"Their argument is irrelevant because the institution of marriage is the stable building block of society."

Diggs, a medical doctor from South Hadley, said that when homosexuals raise children, whether through adoption, natural birth or artificial insemination, one of the other sex had to be involved.

"Two men and two women do not procreate," he says.

"Two men or two women do not constitute a family. Men in a barracks, students in a dormitory do not constitute a family. They are like a family, but they are not a family.

"There is no 'gay gene.' Medical people never claim that there's a gay gene, political people do that. There is no evidence whatsoever that anyone is born homosexual, and if civil rights is what they are using to make their case, then they should lose this case without a bat of an eye.

"Homosexuality is unquestionably a matter of preference, although it could be engendered by events they don't remember. There are a lot of factors that cause same-sex attraction. It is not a biological imperative. In order to justify sexual deviancy, they have grabbed onto the coattails of legitimate civil rights concerns.

"I am a black man in America. That is not something I do. In the case of homosexuals, what they do is what defines them."

Dr. Diggs says that the argument of the gay marriage advocates is "biologically impossible, offensive and illogical."

Not a Racial Issue

Darren L. Washington, Director of the national organization, Abstinence for Singles, tells MassNews that GLAD's comparison of laws against same-sex marriage to laws against miscegenation is not valid. "They're comparing a gender issue to a racial issue. Being homosexual is something people choose to do. When you're African-American, you can't choose between that and being Hispanic.

"They need to quit using racial issues that are totally different. If they're talking about minority couples, yes, the Supreme Court justices were against that, because if you look at the Dred Scott case, an African-American wasn't even considered a full person. To compare gay rights to civil rights is way off base and disrespectful.

"If you're talking about male and female, argue your point from there. That's a gender issue. But if they want to go the civil rights route, that's a racial issue.

"I'm 32-years-old and I've been celibate for 9 years. I go around talking to high school students about waiting to get married before they have sex. Ultimately it's up to that individual to make that choice.

"I've never had a student tell me that they were gay. But if they did, I would tell them, one, talk to your parents, two, if you are a religious person, talk to your priest, and three, no matter what, you should be abstaining from sex. Sex is dangerous today. If you are having sex and you are not married, you should not be having sex!"

Washington tells MassNews that people frequently try to give him statistics about how teenagers should be given condoms because so many of them are sexually active. He says that these statistics are not representative of the population because, "Nobody ever goes to the Health Department and says, 'I'm living a celibate lifestyle and I don't have any diseases.'"

He says that most critics of abstinence have never tried celibacy. "What gives them the right to tell a child that they can't be abstinent? It's easy to bring somebody from Planned Parenthood to say, 'Use a condom.' People generally think that other people are like they are. People crack me up with that.

"What's so awesome about abstinence is that you don't have to bring religion and God into it."

Washington explains how he gets away with spreading his message in public schools. "It's just the best thing to do from a statistical, scientific standpoint. I use positive R&B and rap music, because I have to reach the kids. And you can talk to them without being graphic about it.

"Kids want to talk about sex, but a lot of the parents are too scared, because they think it might sound hypocritical. Today, you have a lot of single mothers who are dating men and maybe sleeping with the men they're dating. They are not going to talk about celibacy to their kids."

Washington concentrates in his talks to teenagers on the trouble that promiscuity can cause "from a physical standpoint." He asks the students if they have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, and then asks: "Are you ready to get married? If not, is it fair for you to be hugging on them and kissing them, and maybe more? What if ten years down the line, you want to concentrate on one woman and raising a child with that woman? You might be good-looking and have got it together, and then you have to tell that woman you've got herpes. One mistake can cause you a lifetime of pain.

Peer pressure can led to a broken heart, says Washington.
"I tell them, 'I'm living a lifestyle. I'm standing strong like I want you to stand strong.' The kids give me the motivation to keep standing strong."

More can be learned from Washington's work at www.abstinenceforsingles.com.

Not a Civil Rights Issue

"Those laws against interracial marriage grew out of prejudice," community activist in Dorchester and Roxbury, Azziza Nails, tells MassNews, "but those marriages could fulfill what God deemed the people of the earth would be like. The covenant of marriage is for the protection of the children. Homosexuals cannot have children naturally, and I stress that word 'naturally.' "They can form a family under a joint agreement that includes shared medical expenses and that kind of thing, but the spiritual level of the covenant of marriage is totally out of range for them. We must stand up for God's law and not be afraid to hurt people's feelings. Not everybody is going to like you; that's just the way the world works. "It really bothers me that they think this is a civil rights issue. It's definitely not the same. I'm not a perfect Christian or none of that, but I love God's laws. They are fair to everybody.

Azziza Nails

"I'm going to stand on that Bible, and Romans Chapter One tells me that homosexuality is wrong. We've shown that passage to homosexuals in front of the State House and they throw it right down, because it goes on to say: 'They have accepted the lie of the creature rather than the truth of the Creator.'

"This is a war on religion. I know it is. The Bible says go and multiply. Do you see where the United Nations wants people to have only two children? That's the total opposite of the Bible.

"We're not the God-fearing people we used to be. This would never have come up in my grandmother's day. I'm a firm believer in what's tried and tested, over what's experimental.

"Isn't God's product good enough for us anymore? We're going to improve on God?

"I'll bet a bunch of gay scientists dreamed up artificial insemination, and they've got the right word for it: Artificial!

"I'm not going by my personal ideas. The Bible says to protect children.

Nails said that if the people of Massachusetts wanted same-sex marriage legalized, they would have elected Shannon O'Brien governor.

"People could have voted in Shannon O'Brien if they wanted that to go through. That was one of the issues that got people to vote for Romney. We are sick and tired of our children having gays up in their face.

"And Fistgate! I have gay friends who don't want to see kids learning that stuff.

"We need to get some money together and get our lawyers to fight for these issues. Those [GLAD] lawyers went right in and got a gag order on Brian Camenker. Their lawyers went right to work on us and found a judge who would go along with it.

"Gays need to know that there are other ways of looking at things. We don't want to read about it on the bus, in the classroom, in the hallways of schools. Keep it in the bedroom where it has been all these years!

"We are moving into a different type of age. How in the world could NAMBLA get started and nobody stop it? Where were the Christians? Tucked away in their little churches getting government funding.

"Homosexuals are now in key positions. I agree with Winston Churchill, who said that you need to fight when you have a chance of winning, or you will be forced to fight when you have no chance of winning!

"We really have to make a stand. We have prospered as a nation because of our Godly ways. God's people are going to go down along with all the rest because we didn't stand up.

"I dislike their putting that with the civil rights movement. If they want to know what that was about, let them go down to the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, where Martin Luther King was shot. It's a museum now. I went down in February and cried the whole time.

"They have the bus Rosa Parks rode, and the hotel room is just like it was when Martin died. Everybody should go, black and white. And Memphis has the best catfish in the world!"