Why Martin Luther King Jr. Would Have Opposed Same-Sex ‘Marriage’

By Matt Barber Published on July 12, 2015

Ever notice how the secular left conveniently omits the fact that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a devout Christian minister?

Though he and other Christian leaders have, no doubt, welcomed aid and support from honorable and like-minded secularists, it was and remains Bible-believing brothers and sisters like King, William Wilberforce, Harriet Tubman, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others who have spearheaded great movements on behalf of human rights.

Even so, in recent decades, sadly, and in what amounts to a sort of soft racism, a mostly white, hard-left movement of secular extremists have managed to hijack Rev. King’s Christian legacy and invoke his character-based “dream” to advance the radical homosexual agenda.

How would Martin Luther King Jr. have responded? “The moral law or the law of God,” as Rev. King called it, was his guidepost. The Bible teaches that all humans are made in the image of God, and that Christians are all one in Christ Jesus regardless of race or nationality. Rev. King understood that these biblical truths made no room for racism, and he gave his life working to secure human rights for racial minorities.

Similarly, from a biblical standpoint, homosexual behavior, or “the sin of Sodom” as its oft referred, is likewise objectively immoral (along with its oxymoronic offshoot and counterfeit “same-sex marriage”). God’s book of special revelation describes marriage for us as between a man and a woman. So, too, does God’s book of general revelation: the book of nature. Jesus affirmed all this:

He answered, “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder. (Matthew 19:4-6).

The very thing that defines same-sex “marriage”, the biologically and spiritually disordered act of same-sex sodomy, is likewise a poor counterfeit. It mocks God’s design for natural sexual intercourse.

Indeed, the Bible, throughout both the Old and New Testaments, unambiguously condemns as “vile affections,” as sin rising to the level of “an abomination,” all same-sex sexual conduct, be it “loving, monogamous and committed,” or otherwise.

Homosexuality is a mockery of sexuality. And same-sex “marriage” is a mockery of marriage.

So-called “gay rights” are tied up in moral wrongs. Homosexual sin has nothing to do with civil rights and, from what we know of Rev. King, he would have wholeheartedly agreed. While he said little in public on the issue, what he did say was crystal clear.

In 1958, while writing an advice column for Ebony Magazine, Rev. King responded to a young “gay” man looking for guidance:

Question: I am a boy, but I feel about boys the way I ought to feel about girls. I don’t want my parents to know about me. What can I do? Is there any place where I can go for help?

Answer: Your problem is not at all an uncommon one. However, it does require careful attention. The type of feeling that you have toward boys is probably not an innate tendency, but something that has been culturally acquired. Your reasons for adopting this habit have now been consciously suppressed or unconsciously repressed. Therefore, it is necessary to deal with this problem by getting back to some of the experiences and circumstances that led to the habit. In order to do this I would suggest that you see a good psychiatrist who can assist you in bringing to the forefront of conscience all of those experiences and circumstances that led to the habit. You are already on the right road toward a solution, since you honestly recognize the problem and have a desire to solve it.

Dr. King did not celebrate and encourage the boy in his proclivity. He gently but firmly urged him to get help so as to turn away from homosexuality.

Although homosexual activists desperately cling to the fact that after his death Dr. King’s wife Coretta Scott Kin, voiced some level of support for the homosexual political agenda. The undeniable reality remains that based upon his own words, Dr. King supported neither homosexual conduct nor LGBT political activism.

Neither would he have supported same-sex “marriage.”

In 2005 Rev. King’s daughter, Bernice King, led a march to her father’s graveside in support of a constitutional amendment to defend natural marriage. Sharing his position on the issue, she later said that her famous father “did not take a bullet for same-sex marriage.”

No, Rev. King was a Christian minister who both embraced and articulated the biblical mandate to “love the sinner, hate the sin” when addressing homosexuality. Every Christian should follow his lead. After all, it is the lead set by Christ Himself.

And so, how would Dr. King have responded to the Supreme Court’s recent opinion presuming to invent a “constitutional right” to sodomy-based “marriage”?

It’s clear how he would have responded.

In his “letter from the Birmingham jail,” Rev. King famously declared, “One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”

“A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God,” he explained. “An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.”

And similarly as the national sin of systemic racism was “out of harmony with the moral law,” so to is sodomy-based “marriage.” And so the good reverend would have opposed it. Quite likely, he would have led the charge against it.

 

Matt Barber is founder and editor-in chief of BarbWire.com. He is an author, columnist, cultural analyst and an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. Having retired as an undefeated heavyweight professional boxer, Matt has taken his fight from the ring to the culture war. (Follow Matt on Twitter: @jmattbarber).

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