Florida Agenda

By JAMES MICHAELS

Bishop Eddie L. Long of his New Birth Missionary Baptist Church resigned from the pulpit last Sunday to try to save his marriage just days after his wife Vanessa filed for divorce. They had been married for 21 years and have four children. Long, said that he would remain as head pastor of the church but needed the time to attempt to save his marriage, and that he needed time to take care of “some family business.”

Bishop Long has a long history of anti-gay sermons and activities. Long has ministered “homosexual cure” programs to recruit gays and lesbians for what he called “Sexual Reorientation” conferences and his church offered an ongoing “Out of the Wilderness” ministry to help convert homosexuals into heterosexuals.

In 2004, Long led a march with Bernice King to the grave of her father, Martin Luther King, Jr. The march was a protest against same-sex marriage and in support of a national constitutional amendment to limit marriage rights to couples comprising “one man and one woman.”

A 2007 article in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s magazine called him “one of the most virulently homophobic black leaders in the religiously based anti-gay movement.”

However, in September 2010, several civil complaints were filed against Long by men that stated he used his position as the church leader to entice or coerce the men into consensual sexual relationships in exchange for money, travel and goods. Long denied the allegations through his attorneys and spokesman. In a prepared statement, Long said that he had devoted his life to helping others and these false allegations hurt him deeply. However he said that his faith was strong and the truth will emerge. At that time, he asked his congregation for their patience and that he categorically denies all the charges against him.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in May 27, 2011, that the lawsuits were settled out-of-court but the terms were not disclosed. Later reports indicated that although not a plaintiff, there was a potential fifth accuser who participated in the settlement discussions.

As it turns out, these allegations were the most current controversy Long had been involved.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in August 2005 that between 1997 to 2000, Long received more than $3.07 million worth of compensation and benefits from his eponymous non-profit charity, Bishop Eddie Long Ministries Inc. Long contended that the charity did not solicit donations from members but instead gained its income from royalties, speaking fees and several large donations. In 2007, Senator Chuck Grassley announced an investigation into the tax-exempt status of six ministries including that under the leadership Long by the United States Senate Committee on Finance.

After being fired by the Ford Motor Company for alleged financial irregularities, Long moved to Atlanta to study theology and became the pastor of a small Jonesboro, GA church. In 1987,  he became the pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, which at the time had around 300 members. Under his charismatic leadership, membership grew to 25,000. Long also reached millions more through the church’s web site and television ministry.

Long was consecrated a bishop in  1994 by the Full Gospel Baptist  Church Fellowship, a relatively new movement within African-American Baptist churches that embraces Pentecostal beliefs. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Long’s title of “Bishop” comes from a break-away Baptist organization founded by self-appointed “bishops.”

In 2006, Long was chosen by the family of Martin Luther King, Jr. to host and officiate the funeral for Mrs. Coretta Scott King, wife of the late civil rights pioneer. The event was attended by four Presidents (George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter).

Long was a prominent supporter of George W. Bush’s faith-based initiatives. His ministry received a $1 million
grant from the U.S. Administration of Children and Families.

Support for Long has shrunk dramatically over this past year since his sexual coercion settlement was announced and Rev. Bernice King, the youngest daughter of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has left the church. Another Baptist minister in the area estimated that attendance in church has dropped to between 4,000 and 8,000 people. However, a large number of Long’s followers
have vowed to remain faithful to the church and Long and will remain active in the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church.

By Marc Paige

For those who believe the national Republican Party is progressing on LGBT issues, think again. With the rise of the Tea Party, the GOP has never been more homophobic. While gay Democrats and progressive allies have pushed the Democratic Party closer to embracing full equality, gay Republicans from Log Cabin and GOProud continue failing to bring their party into the twenty-first century.

Since conservative Republicans took control of the House of Representatives after the elections in 2010, they have focused not on jobs and the economy, but on their old standbys, God, guns, and gays. When President Obama declared that his administration would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court, the “deficit-obsessed” Republicans in Congress tripled the salary cap for lawyers to defend DOMA, from $500,000 to $1.5 million.

As House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi leads 130 members of her Democratic caucus in filing a friend-of-the-court brief challenging Republican determination to maintain the federal ban on marriage equality, House Republicans continue developing other ways to energize their base by attacking the LGBT community.

The Obama administration’s Depart-ment of Defense has authorized that military facilities be made available for private functions and ceremonies “on a sexual-orientation neutral basis.” So the House Armed Services Committee has passed an amendment forbidding U.S. military bases to be used to solemnize same-sex unions, and prohibiting military chaplains on base from performing these unions. All 35 Republican committee members supported the amendment; 23 of 26 Democrats were against it.

Eighty-six House Republicans have sent a letter urging the Senate leadership to pass similar legislation, declaring, “The use of federal property or federal employees to perform anything but opposite-sex ceremonies is a clear contravention of the law,” meaning DOMA. One of the signatories of this letter was Florida’s anti-gay Representative from District 22, Allen West.

In the Senate where the Democrats still hold a slim majority, the Judiciary Committee on November 10 voted to recommend passage of a bill to nullify DOMA. The Respect for Marriage Act would repeal DOMA, and offer federal benefits to same-sex couples married in states that recognize their relationships. It was passed on a straight party line vote: every Democrat voted in favor; every Republican opposed.

Reactions from two politicians over this Senate committee vote highlights the partisan divide on gay issues. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat from New York, described her support for The Respect for Marriage Act this way: “Every loving, committed couple deserve the basic human right to get married, start a family, and have access to all the same rights and privileges that my husband and I enjoy.” In contrast, Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley showed his complete disdain for gay families by maintaining that marriage should be limited to heterosexuals to “foster unions that can result in procreation, create incentives for husbands and wives to support each other and their children,” and to promote “stable families, good environments for raising children, and religious beliefs.”

The Respect for Marriage Act has 31 co-sponsors in the Senate who are all Democrats, and 133 co-sponsors in the House, 132 Democrats plus one Republican, Florida’s Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. There is zero chance for this bill to become law while Republicans maintain control of the House.

Gay Republicans are quick to point out that the two most notoriously anti-gay pieces of legislation, the now repealed DADT, and DOMA, were signed into law by Bill Clinton, a Democratic president. But since the 1990s, the national Democratic Party has moved closer to the American ideal of equality for all; the Republican Party, not so much.

Republican presidential candidates Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, and Mitt Romney have all signed an anti-marriage equality pledge from the National Organization for Marriage. According to Brian Brown, president of NOM, “Gay marriage is going to be a bigger issue in 2012 than it was 2008, because the difference between the GOP nominee and President Obama is going to be large and clear.”

Brown is correct in noting the stark difference between the candidates on marriage equality. While President Obama has yet to embrace full marriage equality for gays, he supports federal recognition and all federal rights for gay couples, and opposes changing the U.S. Constitution to ban marriage equality. Mitt Romney, the likely Republican nominee, has pledged to support amending the Constitution to ban gay marriage, and to nominate Supreme Court justices, federal judges, and an attorney general committed to “rejecting the idea our Founding Fathers inserted a right to gay marriage into our Constitution.”

In his November 6 column, Miami Herald writer Leonard Pitts spoke to right wing incredulousness over the Democratic Party’s hegemony with black voters: “So why don’t blacks vote Republican? The answer is simple. Black people are not crazy. Being not crazy, they understand a simple truth about conservatives: They have never stood with, or up for, black people. Never.”

In the last ten years, the gay community has seen progress on LGBT issues at the federal level and in many states, when the Democrats hold the reigns of power. But too often we’ve seen our rights stagnate or even reversed when Republicans are in charge. One day, when the national Republican Party ends their war on LGBT people, the GOP will earn our voting consideration. Until then, gays will also be “not crazy.”

Marc Paige is a writer, LGBT activist, and an AIDS prevention educator who is based in Fort Lauderdale. He can be reached at marcpaige@msn.com