At a press conference held on Monday,
NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous reiterated the group's support
for gay marriage.
At the NAACP's quarterly board meeting
in Miami on Saturday, the 64-member board approved
a resolution which calls gay marriage a “civil right and a
matter of law.”
(Related: Julian
Bond says Obama nudged NAACP on gay marriage.)
“It is the responsibility and the
history of the NAACP to speak up on the civil rights issues of our
times,” Jealous said at the press conference held at the
103-year-old civil right organization's national headquarters in
Baltimore. “We are both proud of our history and challenged by it.
Challenged to never allow threats to equality for all people go
uncontested.”
“As marriage equality has expanded to
an ever expanding number of states, there have been other states that
have taken to once again enshrining discrimination in their
constitutions. I should point out that our country had a great
history for many decades of always using constitutions to expand
rights. And this development turns us in a dangerous direction,”
he added. (The video is embedded in the right panel of this page.
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(Related: Keith
Ratliff: NAACP board's most outspoken gay marriage foe.)