Some " indeed, many progressive black ministers " agree that biblical pronouncements of grace should trump mean-spirited, hell-fire denunciations of gays and lesbians.
As the Rev. Dennis Wiley of Covenant Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. and the co-chairman of the DC Clergy United for Marriage Equality, preaches: "My support of full marriage equality for the District of Columbia is rooted not only in my passion for social justice, but also for morality and moral truth. I believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the gospel of love, not hate.
That's the pew where I sit and belong. My faith is strong and my love of humanity is sacrosanct. That's why I completely fail to comprehend how the exchange of vows between a loving couple "be it a man and a woman or two men or two women "changes anything of importance in my life.
No, all it does is move the city I live in one step closer to being fairer to all of its citizens.
Sam Fulwood III is a Senior Fellow at American Progress, where he analyzes the influence of national politics and domestic policies on communities of color across the United States. Fulwood is the author of two books, Waking from the Dream: My Life in the Black Middle Class (Anchor, 1996) and Full of It: Strong Words and Fresh Thinking for Cleveland (Gray & Company, 2004). Prior to joining the Center, Sam was a metro columnist at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio, the last stop in a nearly three-decade journalism career that featured posts at several metropolitan newspapers. During the 1990s, he was a national correspondent in the Washington bureau of Los Angeles Times, where he created a national race-relations beat and contributed to the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Los Angeles riots in 1992.
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