Misusing King's legacy
Taped messages denouncing gay marriage are becoming nearly as common on home message machines as sales calls. Still, one that arrived last weekend stood out.
"Dr. Martin Luther King's dream is being violated," the anonymous voice intoned. "The civil rights movement is being compared to the same-sex marriage movement. If Dr. King was alive today, would he permit this? We must be the voice. We must stand up for what millions have died and suffered for, the dream of equality. Same-sex marriages will hurt our dream. More importantly it will hurt our children." It ends by telling listeners to call their state representatives and "tell them to remember Dr. King's dream." Nowhere does it mention who sponsored it, though I suppose, to paraphrase the late Louise Day Hicks, we know where they stand.
There is an ongoing controversy, I know, about whether gay marriage is a civil rights issue. Proponents believe it is; opponents, among them many African-American ministers, denounce the appropriation of the movement for a cause they see as having no connection to it. This argument tends to quickly degenerate into a position that "white gay people have never suffered like we've suffered." More than one person has said to me in the past few months, there are no gay Emmett Tills, which ignores the tragedy of Matthew Shepard.
But the telephone message goes well beyond that argument. Without coming right out and saying so, it strongly suggests that King, were he alive, would oppose same-sex marriage. How on earth do they, whoever they are, know that? Nobody can say what someone who died 36 years ago would think about anything. Gay rights, let alone gay marriage, were barely a blip on the radar screen in King's lifetime. The King position on this issue simply does not exist.
Still, if anyone would have a valid guess about how this controversy fits into the King legacy, that person might be Coretta Scott King, the matriarch of the civil rights movement. This is what she had to say a few weeks ago.
"Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union," she said. "A constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay-bashing."
So, who wants to be the first to accuse her of violating Dr. King's dream? She has spent half her life as the preeminent guardian of his legacy.
I wonder, too, what the sponsors of the message I got would say to US Representative John Lewis of Georgia. Lewis is a hero of the movement, a speaker at the March on Washington in 1963 and one of the organizers of the Selma-to-Montgomery march that became known as Bloody Sunday. his is from a John Lewis op-ed piece in the Globe last year: "I have fought too long and too hard against discrimination based on race and color not to stand up against discrimination based on sexual orientation. I've heard the reasons for opposing civil marriage for same-sex couples. Cut through the distractions, and they stink of the same fear, hatred, and intolerance I have known in racism and in bigotry."
Are we to believe that John Lewis has forgotten Martin Luther King's dream? Or what it was like to spend his early adulthood facing police dogs and fire hoses? It's easy to make speeches about remembering what people suffered for in the movement; Lewis was one of the people who actually suffered.
No one is obliged to change their position on this issue because some civil rights martyrs have taken the other side. For some people, the idea of same-sex marriage is simply anathema. They have a right to their point of view and to wage their campaigns.
This is what they don't have a right to do: Imply that they can speak for Dr. King. Call your state representative, call away. But don't tell me you're standing up for the dream of equality and that your opponents are betraying the dream.
And for goodness' sake, leave Martin Luther King out of this.
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com. 
