Don't forget the Doctor's wife

 I am editing the top of my post to include something that was sent to me after I visited someone else's blog and left a comment on MLK Day and I mentioned to check out mine because I thought it important to include Doctor King's Widow who carried his message many years longer than Doctor King did himself. At the end I will post my response to him.

Randy has sent you a new message Blog | Profile | Jan 15, 2007 4:50 PM Thank you for commenting on my blog.  I deleted it because, to be frank, I really just want to honor MLK and not get into heated debates about how the gay identified community is hijacking civil rights language.  I realllllly don't want to get into it on a post simply made to honor MLK.

The Doctor's wife

MLK Observances This Year Include Gay-Positive Coretta Scott King For First Time
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff

Posted: January 15, 2007 - 12:01 am ET 

(Atlanta, Georgia) Observances of Martin Luther King Day across the country will include for the first time memorials for King's widow, Coretta Scott King, who died last January 31.

"Her commitment and her accomplishments were equal to his," said William Jelani Cobb a history professor at Spelman College. "To view her as an equal in helping to establish racial democracy in America would be fitting."

Until she was disabled by a stroke last August King frequently spoke out, often to the anger of some Black pastors, in favor of LGBT civil rights.

King called her critics "misinformed" and said that Martin Luther King's message to the world was one of equality and inclusion.

In 2003, she invited the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to take part in observances of the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech.

It was the first time that an LGBT rights group had been invited to a major event of the African American community and drew the ire of some of the other speakers.

King said her husband supported the quest for equality by gays and reminded her critics that the 1963 March on Washington was organized by Bayard Rustin, an openly gay man. 

When she died last year NGLTF executive director Matt Foreman, who spoke at the 2003 anniversary, called her a model for equality. 

“Our community has lost a dear and courageous friend, someone who was there for us when virtually no one else was," Foreman said last January.

"From the beginning Mrs. King understood that homophobia is hate and that hate has no place in the Beloved Community that she and Dr. King envisioned for our nation and our world."

In March 2004, she told a university audience that same-sex marriage is a civil rights issue and denounced a proposed amendment to the Constitution ban it.

"Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union," she said in a speech at The Richard Stockton College in Pomona, New Jersey.

"A constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay bashing and it would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriages."

In her speech King also criticized a group of black pastors in her home state of Georgia for backing a bill to amend that state's constitution to block gay and lesbian couples from marrying.

Coretta Scott met Martin Luther King Jr. while she was studying at Boston's New England Conservatory of Music. 

They were married in June of 1953 and a year later moved to Montgomery, Alabama, to take on the leadership of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

When Dr. King was assassinated she was a young widow with four young children to raise.

The killing instantly thrust her to the forefront of the civil rights movement. She took up her husband's mantle of social justice crusader speaking in forums across this country and around the world.

It's very funny that other's believed they knew more about what Doctor King felt than his wife.  She also carried the torch for many more years than he did. She never forgot the lessons they learned together and she never forgot the heart of the message. Coretta Scott King... a true civil rights leader right along side her beloved husband.

Randy has sent you a new message Blog | Profile | Jan 9, 2007 9:04 PM Myke, First of all ... love the way you spell your name, very creative. Thank you for your very kind and courteous email!  Seriously, I appreciate that you did not have to do that but did so anyway.  Today I have been sort of convicted about going private as being hypocritical to why I started blogging in the first place.  I was never "in the closet" when I was gay and I refuse to be shoved into a gay activist version of the closet.  Shame and intimidation is shame and intimidation ... no matter who is using it as leverage to silence voices. To be clear, I don't feel shame.  My opponents don't have the power to affect me in that way even though they try.  I am just weary of the threats and there is no need to go into all of that with you. Your email, along with a couple of others have got me rethinking.  Would you mind if I posted your email if I do decide to go b! ack to some sort of "public" posts?  I won't edit it and will include linkage to your blog.  Or if you prefer to be anonymous OR don't want me to at all ... all understandable. Again, thank you for being so nice. - Randy Click here to reply

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