JACKSONVILLE – Plans to introduce a measure banning discrimination in the workplace based upon sexual orientation have foundered, thanks to opposition from Jacksonville’s black Baptist pastors. Reverend R.L. Gundy, vice president of Jacksonville’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, told Jacksonville.com, “I told them that this was wrong on the first day they were considering it.”
In May, Jacksonville City Councilman Warren Jones, who is African American, introduced a measure to end discrimination in employment, housing, or access to public accommodations, based on a person’s sexual orientation. The proposal is supported by former Jacksonville elected officials and city business leaders.
Although councilors planned to vote on the measure this month, disputes over the language have stalled it until sometime next month. In 2009, a Pew Research Center survey found that 40 percent of African-Americans identify themselves as Baptist, a Christian denomination that is known for its literal Biblical interpretations.
And 46 percent said homosexuality should be discouraged. In her 1999 book “Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective,” author and religion professor Kelly Brown Douglas argued that because black churches have historically ignored sexual issues, it created an intolerance of homosexuality within the African-American community, and also contributed to that community’s slow response to the nation’s AIDS epidemic.