A recent press release from Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King Jr., came with the headline: “My Uncle Martin Luther King, Jr. Did Not March For Same Sex Marriage.”
If you recall, And MLK’s surviving daughter, Elder Bernice King, famously said in a 2004 march against same-sex marriage with the now disgraced Eddie Long “”I know deep down in my sanctified soul that he [Dr. King] did not take a bullet for same-sex marriage.”
The only time King publicly mentions homosexuality was in 1958 while answering a question in his advice column in Ebony magazine in which a boy asked:
“I am a boy. But I feel about boys the way I ought to feel about girls. I don’t want my parents to know about me. What can I do?”
King answered: “Your problem is not at all an uncommon one. However, it does require careful attention. The type of feeling that you have toward boys is probably not an innate tendency, but something that has been culturally acquired. You are already on the right road toward a solution, since you honestly recognize the problem and have a desire to solve it.” Professor
Michael Long explained that King’s response was notable for how temperate it was given that during this time LGBT people were commonly referred to as perverts and sociopaths by religious leaders such as Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and Billy Graham. Throughout his life, King expanded his circle of concern to include the civil rights movement, to the Vietnam War, to the plight of poor people of every color. Dr. Wallace Best, a religion and African American studies professor at Princeton put it succinctly: “Fundamentally, King stood for justice, equality and fairness and certainly against any kind of discrimination.” –terry shropshire
