Black community doesn’t support same-sex unions
In “Gay rights fight mirrors black civil rights struggle” (SN 2/23), Sam Curcuruto, who appears in photographs to be white and too young to have been alive during the African American Civil Rights Movement, ridiculously wrote, “(Michigan’s) Marriage Protection Amendment is no better than the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. … (The) argument that half the nation can identify with the desire to protect marriage goes hand in hand with the fact that during the Civil War, half the nation could identify with keeping African Americans as slaves.”If Mr. Curcuruto’s premise is correct, perhaps he can apply his expertise to the following questions:
Why did communities in Michigan with the largest African American populations — Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Saginaw, Muskegon and Benton Harbor — all vote in favor of the Marriage Protection Amendment?
Why did the Detroit Free Press report that its 2004 exit polls found that 59 percent of all black voters statewide voted in favor of the amendment?
Why did former state Rep. Triette Reeves, D-Detroit — who, at the time, was chaplain of the Michigan Legislative Black Caucus — co-sponsor the amendment?
Why did Dr. Alveda King, niece of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a former Georgia Democratic legislator, travel to Michigan to campaign in favor of our marriage amendment?
Why did the Rev. Bernice King, daughter of Dr. King, lead a march on the Georgia state Capitol in support of that state’s marriage amendment?
Why is former Congressional Delegate Walter Fauntroy, D-Washington, D.C., who organized the 1963 march on Washington at which Dr. King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, serving along with many other nationally prominent African Americans on the board of the Alliance for Marriage, which organized to promote a federal marriage amendment?
If Mr. Curcuruto can’t answer, perhaps he should talk to someone who knows more about the Civil Rights Movement than he does and who knows the difference, as African Americans obviously do, between protecting one-man, one-woman marriage and denying individuals basic civil rights based on the immutable color of their skin.
