Sunday, October 7, 2012

Martin Luther King Jr. would VOTE NO

So I get that the "Vote No" campaign is largely a Minnesota thing for this election. But in doing my reading for my Gender and Popular U.S. Religions class, I came across this quote written by Martin Luther King Jr. in a letter to his "Fellow Clergymen,"
"An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I it" relationship for an "I thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong."
While this was not written explicitly about orientation equality, it is still very applicable. I don't actually know what MLKJ's views were on the "gay rights" issues to which I am applying this quote, but based on this one instance, I'd like to think he'd vote no.

1 comment:

  1. "A Letter from Birmingham Jail" is one of his most prized works of writing. I think there are a lot of similarities between the Civil Rights Movement and the Gay Rights Movement.
    Here is a site that does an alright job of explaining it!
    http://www.queeried.com/martin-luther-king-birmingham-city-jail-lgbt-lessons/

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