Same-Sex Marriage: New York Senator To NYC Mayor – You Lie!

New York State Senator and Reverend Rubén Díaz, just hours after NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg delivered an excellent speech describing why everyone — including conservatives — should support same-sex marriage, released a racially-charged statement invoking slavery and the Holocaust, while claiming there “is no just comparison between America’s struggle to overcome the evils of slavery and the promotion of the lifestyle of homosexuality.”

READ: Kill The Gays NYC? Gays Should Die Says Pastor At NOM Marriage Rally

The statement (full text below,) misleadingly titled, “Senator Reverend Rubén Díaz and Civil Rights Obstructionists,” claims it is “in response to reports of New York City Mayor Bloomberg’s speech about America’s civil rights movement.” The speech, which beautifully invoked many different elements of America’s civil rights movement, including the fight to end slavery, women’s suffrage, and workers’ rights. Diaz did not seem to take issue with those noble causes, only with Bloomberg’s mention of rights for LGBT New Yorkers.

Calling the fight for marriage equality “the push to legalize homosexual marriage,” Diaz, 68, says, “Black Americans should not sit back and let Mayor Bloomberg compare the long struggle of their ancestors against American slavery to the current fight for a lifestyle choice. The effort to redefine marriage to include a man and a man or a woman and a woman can never be compared to the struggle against slavery.”

Note to the Senator: homosexuality is not a “lifestyle choice,” any more than being African-American is. But being an Evangelical Pentecostal Minister is. And, less you forget, there is a clear separation of church and state in this country, even though you choose to say there is not.

New York State Senator and Reverend Rubén Díaz, who has meshed his secular duties as a New York State lawmaker and elected representative of all the people — not just African-Americans or those over whom his ecclesiastic mores he can dictate — has been working actively and rigorously against gay men, lesbians, and bisexual and transgender peoples for decades. But this latest statement may go further than many others have in thew past, and must be roundly excoriated by everyone, but especially by African-Americans and people of faith, as they are the only ones Senator and Reverend Díaz hears.

New York State Senator and Reverend Rubén Díaz should hear the words of his neighbor, New Jersey Senator Nia Gill, who while speaking on the floor to her fellow Senators in 2009, said marriage equality is a civil rights issue. Gill, an African-American, stated,

“It is a civil rights issue — not because African-​Americans own the copyright to civil rights, it is a civil rights issue in the analysis of the equal protection of the fourteenth amendment in the constitution. And maybe some in my community want to hold on to it, because it’s ours. Because our blood has been shed for the right to vote, and we jealously guard that as a re-​affirmation of being American. And so we hold it, because no one can do civil rights and have civil rights better than we do. That’s emotional, but it is certainly not an analysis of the constitutional imperatives that face us. It’s a civil rights issue.”

Listen: NJ Senator Gill: “I vote for the equality of marriage because I believe in the constitution.”

Or perhaps New York State Senator and Reverend Rubén Díaz should listen to the words of the wife of Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King, who spoke in 1996 at the Atlanta Gay and Lesbian Pride Festival in Atlanta, and proclaimed, “I believe all Americans who believe in freedom, tolerance and human rights have a responsibility to oppose bigotry and prejudice based on sexual orientation.”

While directing Mayor Bloomberg to “take a look at the uncivil discourse that is taking place by those whose goals he has embraced,” he conveniently forgets the anti-gay marriage hate rally he headlined and promoted, both as a New York State Senator and as a Minister, during which another man of the cloth just moments before Senator Diaz himself spoke, said “gays are worthy of death.”

The “uncivil discourse that is taking place by those whose goals he has embraced,” is a false flag, Senator Diaz. Surely your own granddaughter will tell you that.

 

Here is the full text of New York State Senator and Reverend Rubén Díaz’s statement:

May 26, 2011

For Immediate Release

Senator Reverend Rubén Díaz and Civil Rights Obstructionists

New York State Senator Reverend Rubén Díaz (D-Bronx) released the following statement today in response to reports of New York City Mayor Bloomberg’s speech about America’s civil rights movement.

“It was disturbing today to hear Mayor Michael Bloomberg trivialize the suffering and agony of African Americans during the slave era by comparing it to the push to legalize homosexual marriage.

 

Slavery in America destroyed countless human lives. The slave trade involved kidnapping people from their homes in Africa, placing them in bondage, shackled, whipped and abused on cargo ships until sold here in America. At that point their families and their lives were subject to the whims and cruelties of their masters. Even after Emancipation, former slaves, who were freed faced lynch mobs, segregation and denial of basic opportunities for housing, education and employment. Peaceful efforts to address these injustices were met with police in riot gear, fire hoses and violent dogs.

 

There is no just comparison between America’s struggle to overcome the evils of slavery and the promotion of the lifestyle of homosexuality. It is preposterous for Mayor Bloomberg to degrade and minimize the plight of African-Americans in this civil rights struggle by equating it with the effort to push to legalize homosexual marriage.

 

As all survivors of the “Holocaust” will likely agree, comparing the unique evil of that genocide to other tragedies in the world devalues its lesson to the world. While the dictionary may have its official definition, it means so much more and is not allowed to be tossed about to make a point.

 

Black Americans should not sit back and let Mayor Bloomberg compare the long struggle of their ancestors against American slavery to the current fight for a lifestyle choice. The effort to redefine marriage to include a man and a man or a woman and a woman can never be compared to the struggle against slavery.

 

Before Mayor Bloomberg attempts to borrow from history for comparisons, he should take a look at the uncivil discourse that is taking place by those whose goals he has embraced.

 

Black leaders should not allow Mayor Bloomberg or anyone else trivialize their suffering and their history!”

 

 

(Hat tip to Jeremy Hooper at Good As You, who lists nine examples of Diaz & Co.’s “uncivil discourse.”)