Liberty Council’s Matt Barber: Martin Luther King Was A Conservative Homophobe Like Me

Liberty Council’s Matt Barber: Martin Luther King Was A Conservative Homophobe Like Me

by Will Kohler

Failed insurance agent, washed up boxer and current Liberty Council hate group leader Matt "Bam-Bam" Barber has written yet another poison pen article today trying to disparage the LGBT community.

And to what deep dark level has Barber sunk to this time with his lies? Low enough to try and turn the late great civil rights leader Martin Luther King in to a homophobic conservative that's how far..

This past week America honored both the life and noble work of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a Bible-believing Christian minister who did more to advance the cause of race-based civil rights than perhaps any other person in recent history.

Regrettably--and as they do each year--the same flock of opportunist “LGBT”-activist vultures quickly swooped in, picking the live flesh from MLK’s character-based “dream,” to advance their own behavior-based nightmare.

In what amounts to a sort of soft racism, this mostly white left-wing faction has, over the years, disingenuously and ignobly hitched its little pink wagon to a civil rights movement that, by contrast, is built upon the genuine and noble precepts of racial equality and humanitarian justice.

What was MLK’s position on the homosexual lifestyle and so-called “gay rights”? While he said little in public on the issue, what he did say made his viewpoint abundantly clear. Unlike the “LGBT” lobby, I’ll let Dr. King speak for himself.

In 1958, while writing an advice column for Ebony Magazine, Dr. King responded to a young “gay” man looking for guidance. To avoid being accused of “cherry-picking,” here is the exchange in its entirety:

Question: My problem is different from the ones most people have. 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? Is there any place where I can go for help?

Answer: 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. Your reasons for adopting this habit have now been consciously suppressed or unconsciously repressed. Therefore, it is necessary to deal with this problem by getting back to some of the experiences and circumstances that led to the habit. In order to do this I would suggest that you see a good psychiatrist who can assist you in bringing to the forefront of conscience all of those experiences and circumstances that led to the habit. You are already on the right road toward a solution, since you honestly recognize the problem and have a desire to solve it.

No amount of leftist spin can muddy Dr. King’s lucid position on the homosexual lifestyle. He recognized it as a “culturally acquired” “problem” in need of a “solution” – a “habit” stemming from a series of negative “experiences and circumstances.”

Although homosexual activists desperately cling to the fact that, after his death, Dr. King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, did voice some level of support for the homosexualist political agenda, the undeniable reality remains that, based upon his own words, Dr. King supported neither homosexual conduct nor “LGBT” political activism.

Indeed, it strains credulity to suggest that MLK would have thrown his weight behind a political movement hell-bent on justifying sexual appetites and behaviors that he properly identified as “a problem” demanding a “a solution”--a “type of feeling” that requires “careful attention”--up to and including “see[ing] a good psychiatrist.”

No, MLK was a Christian minister who both embraced and articulated the biblical “love the sinner, hate the sin” model on homosexuality. Every Christian should follow his lead. After all, it is the lead set by Christ Himself.

Gary Glenn is a candidate for the Michigan State House. He is also president of the pro-family group AFA Michigan. Of Dr. King’s public position on homosexuality, Glenn recently noted a glaring--if not utterly twisted--irony: “If homosexual activists had been holding awards ceremonies back in 1958,” wrote Glenn, “they would have labeled Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a bigot for his published views on homosexual attraction.

“And under today’s Orwellian ‘hate crimes’ laws in Britain and other countries of Europe,” he concluded, “Dr. King would have faced criminal investigation, or worse, for publicly expressing those views.”

Indeed, were he still alive today, and when judged against today’s empty, politically correct standards, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.--quite literally the “King” of civil rights-- would be perpetually smeared as a “bigot,” “hater” and “homophobe” by the ever-”tolerant” left.

The polls are unequivocal. The vast majority of African-Americans resent the left’s comparison of sexual sin to the color of their skin. They understandably find such dishonest parallels both repugnant and highly offensive.

And well they should.

The left has hijacked MLK’s dream. For decades now, this pleasure-based, sex-centric political movement--delineated by deviant sexual appetites and behaviors – has ridden his coattails. They’ve dared to equate demands for celebration of bad behavior to Christian notions of racial equality. They’ve perverted the genuine civil rights movement to fit their own disingenuous designs.

It’s disgusting and it needs to stop.

Dr. Alveda King is the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She agrees. Alveda has picked up her like-minded uncle’s civil rights mantle, dedicating her life, primarily, to achieving equality for pre-born children.

Still, in the years since his death, Alveda has poignantly articulated how, arguably, based upon his published position on homosexuality, Dr. King might feel about “LGBT” activists’ misappropriation of his Christian legacy for their counter-Christian purposes.

“To equate homosexuality with race is to give a death sentence to civil rights,” said Alveda in 1997. “No one is enslaving homosexuals … or making them sit in the back of the bus.”

In 1998 at the University of North Carolina, she said, “Homosexuality cannot be elevated to the civil rights issue. The civil rights movement was born from the Bible. God hates homosexuality.”

And in 2012, Alveda publicly chastised the NAACP for abandoning its founders and constituents, saying, “Neither my great-grandfather, an NAACP founder, my grandfather Dr. Martin Luther King Sr., an NAACP leader, my father, Rev. A. D. Williams King, nor my uncle Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. embraced the homosexual agenda that the current NAACP is attempting to label as a civil rights agenda. …”

Indeed, it is high time that all supporters, from all races, of the historical civil rights movement stand together and demand that “progressive” propagandists stop misusing and abusing the language of genuine civil rights to propagate self-interested moral wrongs.

It’s time for the left to begin honoring the true beliefs, work, life and legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Barber in his usual hateful way does indeed cherry pick and worse tries to use a dated comment by the great MLK to defend his warped hate against the LGBT community.  In 1958 when MLK answered the above question homosexuality was not accepted and still classified as a physiological problem by the AMA.  King advising to seek a psychiatrist at that time was the usual advice. And in some cases the kindest since at that time gay men were routinely committed to hardcore institutions with some having to undergo electro-shock therapy and even lobotomies.  Kings advice of seeking someone to talk to is a very soft and compassionate way to deal with the question at a time when very little was known about being gay.  Barber also conveniently leaves out that 5 years later one of his closest confidants, friends and his right hand man Bayard Rustin was a gay man. If King was not accepting of gay individuals how could that be? I'm sure Matt Barber would never willing work with a gay man.

As for Barber using Alveda King as a model for MLK's legacy that alone should prove how warped Barber really is. Alveda has been milking the MLK name for years and has been ostracized by all of MLK's living relatives because of her involking her uncles name to justify her hateful crusades.

The beliefs and legacy of King cannot be reduced to politically conservative causes.  King’s message must be taken in toto rather than cherry picked for selective morsels. Indeed, King’s pronouncements on homosexuality, barely make a blip on the radar of his broader concerns. The attempt to reduce King to politically conservative causes is like asking the Tea Party to embrace the Poor People’s Campaign.

At the center of King’s protest were, in his own words, the three demons of “ racism, materialism, and militarism”, which he saw as the source of our social turmoil. Barber’s attempt at reductionism and usurpation of King for partisan purposes,is the same fallacy of which he accuses liberals and “LGBT-activist vultures"

Like it or not there are parallels between the black civil rights movement and the gay civil rights movement. Both groups have been discriminated against both privately and by the government. Both groups have had to deal with hatred against them based on ignorance. Both groups have been viewed as "lesser" people persecuted, beaten and even killed for who they are.

It is a slap in the face to all who believe in freedom and civil rights for Barber to twist the legacy and the man Martin Luther King.

Will Kohler