An Open Letter To Bishop Eddie Long

Dear Bishop Eddie Long: I write in opposition to your homophobic "Reigniting The Legacy" march to be held this Saturday and in response to the habitual offenses by local Atlanta and national Black churches against the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Out of line with the third Covenant of your church to "walk and talk in the manner of love" that New Birth members must sign to be a part of your church, this weekend you and your congregation will walk for and talk hate which is not of God or love. Jesus Christ would not have attended this march and never spoke of homosexuality, certainly not about discrimination against LGBT or organized oppression of any group. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. who's legacy you've hijacked by carefully and deceptively crafting promotion of your march against a backdrop of The King Center would not have attended this march. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy is one of equality for all people that include protection of human rights of LGBT people. New Birth's attempt to twist this legacy is a mere ploy and evidence of pervasive un-Christ-like deception in order to further your agenda of hate, oppression and homophobia. I will be at The King Center on Saturday in protest alongside other LGBT persons and allies sending your congregation, the media and the nation a strong message that we will no longer sit in silence to your church's attempt to oppress LGBT people. That there are LGBT members in your congregation willing to sit in silence is not your gift certificate to oppress us. That LGBT members of New Birth are fattening your purse helping to fund this ignorant agenda is not an ordination for you to continue this hatred. It is simply evidence of the impact and pervasiveness of the oppression you perpetuate, the oppression to which you are Bishop. As you are fully aware, The King Center does not endorse your march and its primary focus as listed on New Birth's website http://www.newbirth.org/feature.htm calling for strategic policy direction for a Constitutional Amendment to fully protect marriage between one man and one woman. Your hijacking of the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is a blasphemous attempt to deceive the Atlanta and Georgia communities, the nation and the world. So why organize and march now, particularly with a primary focus of a non-threatening issue for a community plagued with numerous conditions that threatens our safety and survival? In your blatant disregard of so many other ills, many of which offends the protection of marriage, are you ignorant to your march's agenda being misguided? Why didn't your congregation call for a march to highlight a concern about the majority of unions, over 50% of marriages between one man and one woman ending in divorce in America? Your church even has a support group for divorce as listed on your website http://www.newbirth.org/counseling.asp#5. Active members of your congregation can get married and divorced three and four times and this is then supported with a New Birth support group. Your agenda is seriously confusing. Where was your call for full protection of marriage when Americans could vote by telephone to decide for one man who his one woman should be? And when that television sport of a "sanctified" union was annulled after the full publicity tour, why didn't your congregation march? Why didn't you march about the preponderance of prenuptial agreements and shotgun 55-hour marriages? Did you or anyone in your congregation, many of whom are guilty by participation in these threats, care about any of this? Or am I to intellectually understand that my struggle for equal treatment under the law, my struggle for equality is more of a threat to the protection of marriage? Even deeper, where was your march about absent fathers abandoning their children leaving unwed or divorced mothers to financially and emotionally head the family often times while swearing off men and marriage because of the habitual atrocities of some men. For this, you did not march. You could have marched for teen pregnancy or drug and alcohol abuse but did not. We are twenty-two-plus years into an epidemic of HIV where African-Americans are disproportionately represented, members of your church a part of AIDS statistics and you did not organize nor march. All of these issues threaten our community and ultimately the protection of marriage that you allege to be concerned about. These atrocities you've ignored for years, while this weekend you'll march in hate against the protection of human rights for LGBT people. It seems that your idea of full protection of marriage between one man and one woman is to fully protect heterosexual failure at achieving the sanctity that you claim to be concerned about. All while endorsing a support of continued heterosexuals' attempts at this "sanctity" that history proves most heterosexuals are unable to achieve. Please help me understand what it is that you want to fully protect. I, a black gay man living in Atlanta, will no longer sit in silence against you, your church and your congregation spewing hate & inequality my way. In line with the seventh item of the Covenant that your church members sign, I hope that this weekend, you too are being "slow to speak and swift to hear so as not to cause confusion or division with your ranks or outside your ranks." To date, you, leaders of New Birth, members of your congregation and The Black Church nationally has not been slow to speak or swift to hear as they habitually cause confusion and division outside the ranks of church, particularly your church. By organizing this march, you and your congregation have pledged a war on me as a black gay American who will die for my human rights and I will no longer sit in silence. I will not be silent this Saturday or ever against these habitual and pervasive offenses against me. Disgusted, Anthony Antoine McWilliams