The board of directors of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) on Saturday
endorsed gay marriage.
“Civil marriage is a civil right and
a matter of civil law,” NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous said
in a statement. “The NAACP's support for marriage equality is
deeply rooted in the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States
Constitution and equal protection of all people. The well-funded
right wing organizations who are attempting to split our communities
are no friend to civil rights, and they will not succeed.”
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the
nation's largest gay rights advocate, cheered the move.
“We could not be more pleased with
the NAACP's history-making vote today – which is yet another
example of the traction marriage equality continues to gain in every
community,” HRC President Joe Solmonese said in a statement. “It's
time the shameful myth that the African-American community is somehow
out of lockstep with the rest of the country on marriage equality is
retired – once and for all. The facts and clear momentum toward
marriage speak for themselves.”
The resolution reads in part: “[T]he
NAACP has opposed and will continue to oppose any national, state,
local policy or legislative initiative that seeks to codify
discrimination or hatred into the law or to remove the Constitutional
rights of LGBT citizens.”
The
North Carolina state chapter of the NAACP opposed Amendment One,
the state's recently approved gay marriage ban, without endorsing
marriage equality.