Over 150 Black LGBT Religious Leaders
from around the country have come together to demand an end to police
brutality and the criminalization of black bodies. Roland Stringfellow,
Coordinator of CLGS' African American Roundtable, Bishop Yvette Flunder, Presiding Bishop of The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries (TFAM), and Rev. Elder Darlene Garner, Director of the Office of Emerging Ministries,
Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC), co-authored this powerful
statement urging LGBT Black Christians and faith leaders to join tens of
thousands of historically Black congregations/denominations and allies
across the country in wearing black on December 14, 2014, to protest the
criminalization, disproportionate incarceration, and killing of black
and brown people by law enforcement.
Read The Full Press Release Here, Excerpt Below:
"We, as LGBT
religious leaders across faith traditions and across our country have
created an historic alliance among ourselves as we assert that ENOUGH IS
ENOUGH! We declare and decree our wholehearted commitment to
participating in a new wave of sacred resistance to power structures,
which demean black bodies, and reinforce policies, that undermine the
life, and vitality of our community. We uphold that All Black Lives
Matter and condemn all the ways Black bodies are marginalized, and
subjected to hostility.
To that end, we call for all Black religious voices to unite
together across the diversity that exists among us to proclaim that we
stand on the side of justice for all and that every life is sacred. To
do so we must connect the dots between the forms of oppression that rise
up from the toxic root of racism. We stand against oppressive practices
wherever they exist and are committed to the practice of peace and we
encourage our communities to find common ground.
We commit to moving from the margins to the middle as we articulate
an integrated multi-issue justice movement embracing the totality of
concerns impacting Black and Brown bodies: police brutality, mass
incarceration, violence against trans people, income inequality,
immigration discrimination, malnutrition, gun violence, the assault on
reproductive health, unequal pay for women, inferior education,
disproportionately high HIV/AIDS, Ebola, the homeless crisis among black
gay youth, and the lethal exportation of homophobia to Africa by the
Religious Right.
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As demonstrators around the country are organizing themselves to speak truth to power, we join our voices to this chorus of justice seekers and stand in solidarity with all who seek to change the ways our communities are oppressed and disenfranchised.
In response to grand jury decisions in
Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York, and in other parts of
the country where Black lives are ended senselessly over minor offenses
or for no offense at all, our hearts are broken by the lack of justice
for the victims of violence at the hands of law enforcement. We grieve
with the families in St. Louis, Cleveland, and New York City who have
lost their loved ones. We are also dismayed by militaristic police
tactics that try to silence the voices of peaceful protesters reacting
to the lack of justice from our legal system.
As religious leaders, we lift our voices in solidarity with the
families, protesters, and all those who stand against discrimination. We
affirm that the walls of racism, homophobia, transphobia and injustice
must be pulled down in our communities, nation, on the continent of
Africa and throughout the Diaspora."
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