My husband, Martin Luther King Jr., once said, “We are all tied together in a single garment of destiny… an inescapable network of mutuality,… I can never be what I ought to be until you are allowed to be what you ought to be.” Therefore, I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.
Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Ga. and St. Augustine, Fla., and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions.”
—Coretta Scott King, speaking at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Creating Change Conference on November 9, 2000.
SEXXYJAMAICAN
A great lady….My maternal grandparents took part in the Albany Movement, they were the first ones I came out to and they have done nothing but love and support me ever since.
Alex, UK
Please more positive, non-bitchy news like this!!
Marie Cohn
Some of her spoiled brats need a good talking to about this subject, though.
Marie Cohn
It’s also the Bayard Rustin Memorial Holiday, in this house.
Caliban
Mrs King’s speech should be sent to the pastors of homophobic churches each year on MLK day, to the bigot “Bishops” and pastors who preach homophobia to their congregations, calling it Biblical, while blithely ignoring the parts of the Bible that promote slavery and the subjugation of women.
Shannon1981
What an awesomely classy lady. Always an honor to hear of her.
Isaac C
@Caliban: They wouldn’t care.
And anyway, she should’ve and could’ve spoken up more for GLBT people and civil rights in her time, helping to join communities. But I guess she just wasn’t deeply concerned. And her extremely homophobic, anti-gay children are no great boon to gays.
Caliban
Here’s a CNN article asking whether MLK would have supported gay rights. The conclusion of several biographers and historians is that he would have, based on statements Coretta Scott King made about MLK’s beliefs and his defense of Bayard Rustin when others in the movement wanted to expel him.
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/16/what-did-mlk-think-about-gay-people/
There’s another interesting factoid in that article. Guess who was standing with MLK’s daughter Bernice King when she made her homophobic statements? “Bishop” EDDIE LONG, best known now for accusations by several young men from his congregation that Long seduced them into sexual relationships! Long settled those claims out of court by paying off his accusers. Yet another homophobe who’s really a self-hating homo.
Marie Cohn
QED: Closeted dyke Bernice shunned Down Low Eddie Long the instant he got his name scandalized in the media. She had to protect her “brand.”
Robin Quincy
@Isaac C: She should have done more for GLBT in her time?! In her time, she was working along with her husband to see that all people were treated equally. And even GLBT people weren’t speaking up for their rights then. Leave it to some one who probably has done little, if anything, to put down someone else who did many things to help people be treated equally.
scribe31
classy beautiful lady… I thank her for her support.
christopher di spirito
What a classy dame. I liked Coretta a lot.
Isaac C
@Robin Quincy: I mean in the post-Civil Rights era, she should have done more. She is deceased, so that is why I wrote “in her time”- as in, before she died. And you are wrong, there actually was gay activism during that time.
Aiden
@Isaac C: Of course you’re still being negative. She was busy fighting for her own rights.
Isaac C
@Aiden: AND she got her own rights decades ago. If she really believed what she’s being quoted as saying here, she would’ve done more.
Timmmeeeyyy
@Isaac C:
Yes, she could have done more. You could have done more. I could have done more. She is not the enemy, why attack her?
tjr101
@Timmmeeeyyy: Isaac C attacks her because he is a conservative and has an agenda.
Isaac C
@Timmmeeeyyy: The difference is that she is in a certain position and has a certain history. Why give lipservice when you could have done more? It’s not an attack because I respect her, but I have doubts about her sincerity.
Isaac C
@tjr101: And what would that agenda be? And how do you figure I’m a conservative if I’m talking about support for gay rights?
tjr101
@Isaac C: Conservatives for ages have attacked the Kings for the most ridiculous things. You have doubts about her sincerity? You think she was out to get brownie points for saying this? She didn’t have to say this to get favor from anyone. She could have said nothing at all about gay rights like the majority of our presidents and more influential persons of our time.
Isaac C
@tjr101: You are being ridiculous. I haven’t attacked her, I pointed out something the makes me doubt her. A Civil Rights icon throwing a scrap of support to the gay rights movement decades into it makes me question her sincerity. The fact that she has children who are openly and strongly homophobic also doesn’t help. Sue me.
Aiden
@Isaac C: Do you just sit in a corner waiting to shit all over black people? What do you do to help trans rights? How about racism in the gay community? I’m guessing nothing. You don’t stick your neck out for others, but you have the audacity to call people out for for doing the same.
Interesting
@Aiden: He’s a nut. Save your breath
Esculapio Mitiríades Torquemada de la Cueva
@Aiden: What Interesting said. Don’t engage the man in a discussion on race, unless you want to fall through the rabbit hole.
Isaac C
Hmmmm, all three race parrots on one story on MLK day. Nice.
Interesting
@Shannon1981: If you are the same Shannon from the other article, the next time you are trying to figure out why people have a problem with Isaac C, all you need to do is the read his comments along this thread. The article is a positive one, but somehow he manages to turn it into a reason to attack people of color.
Interesting
@Esculapio Mitiríades Torquemada de la Cueva: Found out today , not just on race. He’s an all around nut, but race especially. The lesson is that he’s at best a troll and likely a racist nut job.
Esculapio Mitiríades Torquemada de la Cueva
@Isaac C: Yeah. You’re a racist. I’ll never get tired of saying that, because it’s the truth. YOU. ARE. A. RACIST.
Isaac C
Hopefully some of you get lives outside of Queerty. This is beyond hilarious. I’m glad I’m on your minds :).
And make sure you accuse me of “racism” in future articles. I love how my cheerleaders get so worked up.
stevoj
@Isaac C: are you aware of the things she has done for civil rights (for both blacks and gays)?
you read one quote and talk about “lip service” but are you actually educated on the things she did in her lifetime…
Isaac C
@stevoj: Yeah, I know of her involvement in certain gay rights organizations in the 90s, and certain speeches she’s given at one time or another. I never said she hasn’t done *anything.*
Brand
I for one think Coretta Scott King is one of the exemplary women of the 20th century before you even get to the fact that she explicitly supported gay rights and linked my struggle to her own in light of her husband’s work. That puts her into the stratosphere in my book.
@Isaac C: I’m not interested enough in you or this digression to hunt down your posts on other threads to determine if you are racist, nor do I interpret your initial comment about Mrs. King here as racially motivated. But I have noticed you’re a misanthrope and an iconoclast who wants to ruin people’s day, examples for which one has to look no further than this thread. When you make the retorts “I’m glad I’m on your minds”; “Hmmmm, all three race parrots on one story on MLK day. Nice.” and “Make sure you accuse me of ‘racism’ in future articles”, it is clear that you enjoy race baiting and “taking the piss out of” gay posters in general and those who object to racism in particular, all while you’re pissing all over the loving and meaningful words of a wonderful woman on the day we remember her husband’s profound impact. Bloody ironic, then, given your antagonism of those here, that you would tell them they need to get lives beyond this site.
Just as with the words of Jesus, or the words of the U.S. Constitution, the words of Dr. and Mrs. Martin Luther King don’t need to explicitly spell out “and the gays, too” in order that we realize such universal spiritual and civil declarations do not exclude us. African Americans had to fight and sacrifice and push and march and sweat and cry and bleed and die and mourn and be thrown in jail in order to change the various pieces of legislation that explicitly or implicitly excluded their group from these universal truths and national civil rights, and the way I see it, part of her point was that once King’s point has been made both in the abstract and as specific to the phenomenon of skin color it rings every bit as true specific to any and every identifying aspect a citizen can rightfully claim by accident of birth. The table is there for all of us, that was their ticket, and now that they’re there she is acknowledging our place as well.
As you’re so dead set on deriding Coretta Scott King and deflating those who are wont to give her props, perhaps you could enlighten us with a list of ten straight women of the 20th century outside the field of entertainment, and whom a cynic such as yourself couldn’t accuse of co-opting the issue for self-promotion or a fanbase, whose support of gay rights does or ought to bring more legitimacy, class and clout than hers? You can’t, but I’d like to see how many you could number.
Question her sincerity, that’s rich.
Isaac C
@Brand: You shouldn’t be as concerned about my responses to race parrots as you should be about their willingness to call someone a “racist” just because said person may have an opinion about a person of color they don’t like. I encourage them to keep using the word because it lets me know they have nothing to say otherwise. And I’m going to keep encouraging them to use it. Sorry.
As for the topic, I have an opinion on Coretta. I stand by my comments and that’s that. I don’t need to provide you a list of 1, 10, or 100 pro-gay straight women because my opinion on her won’t change.
Hopefully you can build a bridge and get over it. I already am.
stevoj
@Isaac C: well if the “certain” speeches she gave and “certain” organizations she supported, especially in that era, don’t amount to much to you then it appears we’ve found the problem
Aiden
@Isaac C: We’ve done more than call you a racist, but you have no response to anything else said. In fact you seem to harp on that one thing ,because you know you don’t really have anything of value to say.
Drew
I agree Issac C. She should have also included Trans people and bisexuals and not just gay men and lesbians.
Isaac C
@Drew: I agree.
@Aiden: I don’t care what else you’ve done. You’ve called me racist and that’s enough for both of us. I really don’t need to respond to anything else you write, so don’t expect me to, mmmkay? Thanks.
Halston
@Drew: Don’t forget dragqueens and transvestites. And, Mother Theresa forgot to help poor people in the West Virginia mountain area-you know the ones with Mountain Due Mouth that Diane Sawyer did a piece on a couple of years ago. They are one in the same and probably burning in Hell for their insincerity.
Halston
@Drew: Oh, and all that talk about the blacks-what about the Gypsies, the Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland, the Polish people, Catholics in the deep south, unattractive and overweight homosexuals who are taunted, shunned , ignored, and sometimes in gay media just forgotten and invisible in the gay community. Worse upon upon worse are the Old gays how they suffer and no one of her stature ever stands up for them and how the gay youth treat them like lepers of society. Never giving them the right to share a nice warm bed now and then with a pretty young thang. She was such a closet racist and homophobe.
Queer Supremacist
My God, this is like the real-life Judean People’s Front in Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Or is that People’s Front of Judea?
@Isaac C: I don’t think you’re a racist but you are looking a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe she could have done more, but the point is she was on our side, and that’s what counts.
Isaac C
@Queer Supremacist: There are lots of people “on our side” who aren’t in her position and don’t have her influence. I stand by that claim that she could’ve done more, especially since there’s such a huge gap between the black community and the gay community.