Ben Jealous, the president of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP),
has suggested that civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
would have supported gay rights.
Jealous on Saturday accepted on behalf
of the NAACP the Human Rights Campaign's (HRC) National Equality
Award at the latter group's 16th Annual National Dinner at
the Walter E. Washington convention center in Washington D.C.
In his acceptance speech, Jealous
honored civil rights icon Bill Lucy, “who thirty years ago stood up
at a tough and contentious union convention and said that the fight
for LGBT rights and the fight against racism were one in the same.”
“As Dr. King once said to a teacher
of mine, 'You're comfortable with your coalition, your coalition is
too small.'”
“As an American people we celebrate
the many times that our nation has lead this world away from hate and
ever towards hope. And so in this precipitous moment, when we as a
movement are on the brink of massive change and tremendous progress.
Here we are less than 50 years removed from when my parents' own
marriage was illegal in our home state of Maryland. When here we are
finally at a place where we can be confident that the day will come
when marriage equality will be the law of the land in every single
state.” (The video is embedded on this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)
The
NAACP endorsed marriage equality in May.