MLK

Everyone probably knows what those initials stand for. Over on the right side of my blog you can see some of my favorite quotes and many of them are from Rev. Martin Luther King and the quotes are about oppression and human rights. However, Rev. King never made any public statements in support of LGBT people, but given the era that he lived that is not in itself an indication of what he thought. Back in the 60s being LGBT was a crime and that persecution was what lead to the Stonewall Uprising.

What we do know was,

What did MLK think about gay people?
By John Blake, CNN
January 16, 2012

(CNN)– Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was writing an advice column in 1958 for Ebony magazine when he received an unusual letter.

“I am a boy,” an anonymous writer told King. “But I feel about boys the way I ought to feel about girls. I don't want my parents to know about me. What can I do?”

In calm, pastoral tones, King told the boy that his problem wasn’t uncommon, but required “careful attention.”

“The type of feeling that you have toward boys is probably not an innate tendency, but something that has been culturally acquired,” King wrote. “You are already on the right road toward a solution, since you honestly recognize the problem and have a desire to solve it.”

We know what King thought about race, poverty and war. But what was his attitude toward gay people, and if he was alive today would he see the gay rights movement as another stage of the civil rights movement?

What he did not say is just as important as what he said. He did not condemn the boy, he did not say it was a sin, he did not say he was damned and going to Hell. He just told the boy to be careful and that life was going to be hard. To me that sounds like a compassionate response, not condemnation. 

Also,

There is no private or public record of King condemning gay people, Perry says. Even the FBI’s surveillance of King’s private phone conversations didn’t turn up any moment where King disparaged gay people, she [Ravi Perry, a political science professor at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts]says.
[…]
Though King was a Christian minister, he didn’t embrace a literal reading of the Bible that condemns homosexuality, some historians say. King’s vision of the Beloved Community – his biblical-rooted vision of humanity transcending its racial and religious differences – expanded people’s rights, not restricted them, they say.

He was friends with Bayard Rustin who was an openly gay civil rights. In an article on About.com Nadra Kareem Nittle writes,

…however, the Rev. Martin Luther King allowed an openly gay civil rights activist named Bayard Rustin to serve as his advisor. Rustin played a pivotal role in organizing the 1963 March on Washington and other seminal events during the civil rights movement. Although King reportedly received criticism for aligning himself so closely with an out gay man, he didn’t bow to their prejudice.

If you judge Rev. King by his actions, I would like to think that he would have supported us and equality for all people.