Mrs. King's Legacy of Love

By Mubarak Dahir, AlterNet. Posted February 2, 2006.

When Coretta Scott King, died in her sleep overnight on Jan. 30 at age 78, America lost one of its most eloquent and forceful activists for gay and lesbian rights. That statement might surprise some readers, and anger others, who primarily remember Mrs. King, the wife of slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as a heroine in the fight for racial justice.

But for more than a decade, Mrs. King was also an unflinching advocate for the equal treatment of gay and lesbian people. She spoke out against the ban on gays in the military, testified on behalf of the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, and came out in favor of allowing same-sex couples to marry. She repeatedly addressed gay and lesbian rights groups and rallies, and spoke valiantly in support of gay causes. Even when it was controversial and unpopular among other black civil rights leaders, Mrs. King did not waiver. Indeed, members of her own family remain split on the issue of gay and lesbian rights, with some descendants of Martin Luther King Jr. vocally opposed to gay and lesbian civil rights.

Some black leaders, many of whom have their roots in the black churches, continue to organize actively against gay and lesbian rights, supposedly on moral grounds. Some of them even use Dr. Martin Luther King's name in their crusades. But no one knew the late civil rights leader like his own wife, and she adamantly maintained that the principles she and her husband established and fought for all their lives must apply to all groups, including gay and lesbian people.

"I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice," she said in March 1998. "But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to make room at the table of brother and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people."

Her history and her standing in the African-American community made her a particularly formidable ally. While many African-American leaders virulently oppose equating the black civil rights movement and the gay rights movement, Mrs. King embraced the obvious parallels. "Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood," she said in a speech in Chicago in April 1998, just days before the 30th anniversary of her late husband's assassination. "I've always felt that homophobic attitudes and policies were unjust and unworthy of a free society and must be opposed by all Americans who believe in democracy."

Though the phrase "human rights" is perhaps so over-used today as to have lost its meaning, Mrs. King was a true champion of that notion. And she made it clear that her vision included gay and lesbian people.

"Freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation is surely a fundamental human right in any great democracy, as much as freedom from racial, religious, gender or ethnic discrimination," she remarked in a speech at the November 2000 Creating Change conference, a gay rights convention held annually by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

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