The Rejected Stone: Al Sharpton and the Path to American Leadership by Al Sharpton Read Free Book Online Page B

black church’s long-standing opposition to homosexuality, and you will get a community still grappling with gay rights—and in many cases, standing staunchly opposed to it.
    I often hear African-Americans expressing contempt at the fact that gays have begun to co-opt the language and methods of the civil rights movement. As the argument goes, the fight for equal rights for gays can never be compared to the fight for equal rights for African-Americans, because gays can conceal their sexual identity and assimilate anytime they want, while blacks never have that option. But the issue is rights, not levels or degrees of discrimination or victimization. Because the victimization of African-Americans was harsher or more widespread or more easily enforced, gays are therefore not entitled to the same rights as African-Americans? Is that what we’re saying here? Why are we setting a minimum standard for discrimination that another group has to reach before we can accede that they shouldn’t be discriminated against? Shouldn’t the goal be for all of us to be free? If we have 90 percent experiencing discrimination, and they only have 10 percent, then they aren’t entitled to equal protection? (And last time I checked, black people are allowed to get married.)
    Along with the criticism I have heard on same-sex marriage is the idea that someone like me isn’t supposed to speak out on behalf of gays. I’m supposed to stay in my lane, fight injustices against black folks, and not get distracted by the battles of nonblacks. But anyone who tries to put me in that box doesn’t understand who I am. You can’t try to limita freedom fighter from standing for people’s freedoms. This is an attack that we’ve heard leveled against black leaders for years—from Malcolm X and the Black Panthers to Dr. King and Rev. Jesse Jackson. Why are you worrying yourself about the Vietnam War, or poor white people, or undocumented immigrants? That’s somebody else’s struggle. But you can’t take care of black folks in isolation. We are a global community, connected to the larger world. And you can’t help your own community without making alliances with like-minded people in other communities. That was my thinking when I decided to take a public stand with Puerto Ricans against the U.S. Navy in Vieques. Black people can’t just go off to a corner somewhere and fight for our space in a vacuum. It doesn’t make practical sense. And if you’re committed to what’s good and right, you’re committed to it across the board. You don’t segregate your passion for liberation and freedom based on the melanin count of the victims. That’s totally antithetical to the whole idea of being a freedom fighter.
    When it comes to the nation’s struggles with gay marriage, let us take a step back and consider how this looks to outsiders, perhaps someone from one of those Muslim countries that Americans are constantly condemning because of their willingness to rule the land by the laws of their religion. We are quick to berate countries in the Middle East and Africa that are intent on imposing Sharia law, lecturing them about how undemocratic they are, about how they should consider separating church and state the way we do. We even invaded Iraq and used the spread of democracy as one ofour justifications—this after the “weapons of mass destruction” argument failed to stand up to the facts. We Americans are so infatuated with our democracy that we believe we can sprinkle it across the globe like topsoil and just watch it grow, naively believing it’ll take root in countries that have been invested in other governing systems for centuries. But as we scold Pakistan and Syria for their religious fundamentalism and preach to them about the healing powers of democracy, if we turned our gaze back on ourselves, we would quickly see how hypocritical we must look to the outside world.
    When we try to deny rights to same-sex couples based on our religious