So imagine the irony of the fact that he chooses to support a "hard rock ministry" who have been very supportive of the persecution of African gays and lesbians
According to the Minnesota Independent:
The leaders of You Can Run But You Cannot Hide Intl., Inc., a hard rock ministry that holds Christian assemblies in public schools around the Midwest, said that locking up gays and lesbians in prison is the “right” and “moral” thing to do.
. . . On the group’s radio show, broadcast live from the Heritage Foundation on May 22, co-leader Jake McMillian praised the actions of the African nation of Malawi which has recently arrested a gay couple for getting engaged.
“They are very conservative,” he said. “They sentence people for crimes against nature.”
Frontman Bradlee Dean added, “They are very moral; they uphold the laws.”
McMillian continued, “We have got countries all over the world that are standing for what’s right and what’s wrong. In Rwanda, there’s legislation right now that repeat offenders of homosexuality will spend their life in prison.”
“Yes!” interjected Dean.
“Because they love and value life and they love and value that which God gave,” said McMillian. “And so they enforce laws against that which destroys life which again is crimes against nature”
People for the American Way recorded this program where supposedly Jackson not only came on to say that he has been reaching out to the group, but also compared them to the late Martin Luther King, Jr.
My guess is that Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and the head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference - an organization which King once led - will most likely be silent about this bizarre usage of her father's name.
Just like she was silent when World Net Daily writer Molotov Mitchell invoked her father's name in support of that awful "Kill the Gays" bill in Uganda.
Bear in mind that King was very quick to declare that she was sure in her "sanctified soul" that her father "didn't take a bullet for same-sex marriage."
I wonder if she feels that King was assassinated to support genocide?
King's silence and Jackson's hypocrisy merely highlights the unfortunate fact that during the controversy regarding the Ugandan bill and the Malawi couple, the African-American community - particularly the leadership - have been shamefully silent.
Where are these same righteously indignant people who were so quick to voice their anger at "rich white gays" exploiting the struggles of black people for their own selfish purposes when people like Scott Lively were leading Africans to pass laws against their own people for simply being gay?
When I was a teenager, I heard so much about apartheid in South Africa and how black colleges should divest from the country. The movement was featured in countless African-American articles, television shows, and speeches by black leaders.
Certainly African gays and lesbians deserve the same amount of support. But they haven't gotten it yet from the African-American community and I don't think they will.
The silence of the Black American community during the persecution of their African brothers and sisters (and Jackson's embracing of those who would support this persecution) serves to remind me that no one person or group owns the patent to struggling for the right to live free and in dignity unencumbered by someone else's ignorance.
But it also reminds me that even though no one owns this right, there are so many people ready to squander it.
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