Frederick Clarkson on Talk To Action explores "The Religious Right's Anti-Gay Agenda in the Black Community."
There have always been conservative and Republican African Americans, of course. But the conservative movement and the GOP have long sought to exploit these differences and to promote Black leadership more to their liking. For the most part, these efforts have not been very successful. They have, however, enjoyed some success in recent years in using homosexuality as a wedge issue, and promoting African-American leaders in the religious right to drive those wedges.
Clarkson draws attention to the Spring issue of Intelligence Report, the magazine of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which includes articles on several anti-gay African-American leaders.
Clarkson also highlights the fact that the "Washington, DC-based Institute on Religion and Democracy, (IRD) and its satallite organizations, have for their part, been in the forefront of generating and exaccerbating" divisions not only within the African-American religious community, but mainline Protestantism in general, and not only in the U.S. (The IRD's international machinations put me in mind of Max Blumenthal's excellent article about the international designs against progressive Anglicans by multi-millionaire, Howard Ahmanson Jr.)
