Rev. Joseph Lowery: “They’ve {homosexuals} never been enslaved and declared less than human"

Leading conservative pundit Bill Kristol is saluting Barack Obama for inviting Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. Kristol’s column in the Dec. 29 edition of the Weekly Standard is titled A President-Elect's Progress: From Rev. Wright to Rev. Warren. Those who have watched Obama’s evolution from the time he was handed the nomination by the DNC and the party’s superdelegates ought not be surprised at Kristol’s support. The minute he became the presumptive nominee, Obama took a dive to the right.

Kristol neglects to mention that although Rev. Wright is described by some as an aggressively progressive preacher and Rev. Warren is beloved among conservative Christians, the two men do have something in common. Rev. Wright’s rant – actually several rants - against Hillary Clinton from the Trinity UCC pulpit betrayed the pastor’s hatred of women, especially a powerful white woman.

Religious conservative Rick Warren’s stance on reproductive rights places him among those males in prominent positions who will never personally have to face the abortion issue, e.g., the pope and his army of priests, but who nevertheless claim the power to deny women the right to make a major decision in consultation with their doctors that affects their own bodies.

In debating the moral equivalence of discrimination against gays and women as civil rights issues, Kristol inadvertently calls into question Obama's selection of both Rick Warren and Joseph Lowery to pray at his inauguration. Kristol quotes Lowery, Obama’s pick to give the benediction: "Homosexuals as a people have never been enslaved because of their sexual orientation," he {Lowery} told the Associated Press. "They may have been scorned; they may have been discriminated against. But they've never been enslaved and declared less than human."

Never been declared less than human? There are obvious gaps in both Kristol’s and Rev. Lowery’s knowledge of history. According to the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum:

“The Nazi campaign against homosexuality targeted the more than one million German men who, the state asserted, carried a "degeneracy" that threatened the "disciplined masculinity" of Germany. Denounced as "antisocial parasites" and as "enemies of the state," more than 100,000 men were arrested under a broadly interpreted law against homosexuality. Approximately 50,000 men served prison terms as convicted homosexuals, while an unknown number were institutionalized in mental hospitals. Others—perhaps hundreds—were castrated under court order or coercion. Analyses of fragmentary records suggest that between 5,000 and 15,000 homosexual men were imprisoned in concentration camps, where many died from starvation, disease, exhaustion, beatings, and murder.

“In the racist practice of Nazi eugenics, women were valued primarily for their ability to bear children. The state presumed that women homosexuals were still capable of reproducing. Lesbians were not systematically persecuted under Nazi rule, but they nonetheless did suffer the loss of their own gathering places and associations.

“Nazi Germany did not seek to kill all homosexuals. Nevertheless, the Nazi state, through active persecution, attempted to terrorize German homosexuals into sexual and social conformity, leaving thousands dead and shattering the lives of many more.”

It’s beyond the scope of this post to comment on all of the widespread enslavement and horrible abuse endured by gays and women throughout history that continues to this day around the globe.

I’ll conclude with these words by former slave Frederick Douglas that the Obama team in its refusal to take seriously the rights of any group other than African-Americans would do well to ponder: “Until we are all free, we are none free.”