AlterNet: Happy MLK Day, ‘Homophobe’
According to Peter Drier on the far-left website Alternet,
Martin Luther King, Jr., “was a radical. He believed that America needed
a ‘radical redistribution of economic and political power.’ He challenged America’s class
system and its racial caste system. He was a strong ally of the nation's labor
union movement. He opposed U.S.
militarism and imperialism, especially the country's misadventure in Vietnam.”
Wow. So King was the perfect man of the left? Er, well, except for one thing: “Like most Americans in his day, King was homophobic, even though one of his closest advisors, Bayard Rustin, was gay.”
Gosh, MLK was afraid of homosexuals but he had a gay advisor. Or is “homophobe” just lazy shorthand to dismiss the views of anyone disinclined to celebrate the gay lifestyle?
Not to worry though, Drier assures readers the great man could have been made perfect: “But today King would undoubtedly stand with advocates of LGBT rights and same-sex marriage.” Undoubtedly King would change his Biblically based view on the matter, to suit the present culture’s popular standard, instead of sticking to his principles. He’d probably drop that quaint “content of his character” idea too, in this day quotas and affirmative action.
Today is America’s national holiday in remembrance of Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy as a civil rights activist. While MLK was both a civil rights leader and a social liberal, he was also a Baptist minister – a point of awkwardness to many secular liberals. They’d prefer to forget the religious basis of the man’s thinking.
Ironically, Drier notes that “Americans from across the political spectrum invoke King's name to justify their beliefs and actions … “as gun fanatic Larry Ward recently did in outrageously claiming that King would have opposed proposals to restrict access to guns.”
Yes, it certainly is outrageous to speculate how King would come down on a contemporary issue.
