By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, New America Media

Bernice King made history when she became the first woman in the
52-year history of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
to take the organization's reins. Now she can make history in another
way. She should renounce the anti-gay bigotry of her recent past. That
bigotry was on shameful and insulting display in December 2004 when she
and thousands of marchers stood at the gravesite of her father, Martin
Luther King, Jr., and denounced gay marriage. The implication was that
King might well have stood with her and them in their protest against
gay rights.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s
fight against bigotry and discrimination, all bigotry and
discrimination, was relentless and uncompromising. If anything that
day, King would have been across the street from his gravesite with the
hundred or so counter-demonstrators. They loudly shouted that what
Bernice and the marchers were doing at her father's gravesite -- and in
his name -- was a travesty and a disgrace. Bernice sullied her father's
name to show her enmity to gay marriage. She also sullied her mother's
name, too. A few years before Bernice's gravesite antic, Coretta Scott
King issued a public statement forcefully denouncing anti-gay bigotry
and made it perfectly clear that her husband would be a champion of gay
rights if he were alive.

Bernice King is an outspoken evangelical, and she and other black
evangelicals have marched, protested, written letters and circulated
petitions denouncing gay marriage. This is her belief and she certainly
has the right to express it. That is she has the right as a minister,
evangelical, religious fundamentalist and private citizen.

Her anti-gay bias swims forcefully in the main current of conservative
evangelical belief, thought, and expression. A significant number of
blacks, and a majority of black evangelicals, like her also oppose gay
marriage and even gay rights. They rail at the notion that the battle
for gay marriage should in any way be called a civil rights fight. And
certainly in King's day, gay rights were invisible on America's public
policy radarscope, and homosexuality, among blacks and whites, was
hushed up. There's not a word in any of his speeches or writings about
homosexuality or whether he believed the civil rights struggle was
inclusive of gays. That's only because it was not a visible and
compelling issue of discrimination then. It is today. And Bernice King
now heads up the organization -- with her father's name and stamp all
over it  that was founded to fight against discrimination.

Martin Luther King, Jr., the ministers, and many of the thousands who
fervently believed in and marched with him in support of the ideals of
the SCLC would, without missing a beat, march against gay marriage
bans, the hate crime murders, and assaults on gays. They would have
cheered Congress for ending its years of stalls, dodges, and foot
dragging to pass the Matthew Shepard/James Byrd Hate Crimes Bill. The
bill adds gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity to existing
hate crimes laws. President Barack Obama quickly signed it into law.
King would have cheered loudly at its passage too. In fact, the SCLC
leadership, pre-King's election as president, also lobbied for it and
cheered its passage.

King almost certainly would have vigorously denounced California's
anti-gay marriage amendment, Proposition 8, and all other similar
initiatives and legislative acts that have encoded anti-gay marriage
bans into law. He would have applauded court and state rulings that
have upheld gay marriage. He would have pushed SCLC, including those
doubting, wavering, and tradition bound ministers in the organization,
to do the same.

This is not revisionism or after-the-decades fact speculation. King
refused to buckle to FBI and White House pressure, and pressure from
conservatives inside SCLC to dump his chief aid and the architect of
the March on Washington, Bayard Rustin, who was avowedly gay. It took
courage to resist their efforts to oust Rustin. But King deeply
believed that embodied in the civil rights cause was a person's right
to be whom and what he was. King may have even praised his daughter for
having the courage and conviction to march for her beliefs, but that
would not have changed his unyielding belief that bigotry is still
bigotry, whether it's based on race or sexual preference, and must be
uncompromisingly opposed.

On its Web site, SCLC clearly says "its mission is to challenge all
people of good will, of every persuasion, who believe in the principles
espoused by Martin Luther King, Jr. to join us." Presumably, that's the
mission of its new president. She can prove it is by publicly
renouncing her anti-gay bigotry.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a political analyst and the author of the
forthcoming book, "How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and
Challenge" (Middle Passage Press).

(Photo of Bernice King by Mark Blacknell from Wikimedia Commons.)