A few weeks back, Jim Garlow announced that, due to Newt Gingrich's possible presidential run, Gingrich and Rick Tyler had stepped down from their roles of leadership in Renewing American Leadership – leaving Garlow in control as Chairman, CEO & President.
Ever since, the updates from ReAL have taken on an even more pronounced Religious Right tone, with Garolw announcing things like the formation of a ReAL prayer team and now sending out messages like this one from Vivian Berryhill, founder/president of the National Coalition of Pastors' Spouses, announcing that the "Black faith community" will never accept marriage equality:
America is now witnessing a bold, organized and calculated assault on families in the move to redefine what constitutes marriage in our culture. As a wife, mother, grandmother, and religious leader, I have drawn a line in the sand, as I say, “Enough is Enough.” And I am standing with other religious leaders across America in declaring, “Leave the 5,000-year-old definition of marriage alone for the preservation of the family!”
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Now, the homosexual lifestyle and agenda is not new to the Black church community. However, the inclusion of “same-sex” marriage as acceptable and biblically “okay” is both new and dangerous. It is no surprise that on any given Sunday in some Black church in the US, a Black preacher continues to extirpate that message by reiterating to his flock that “God made Adam and Eve… not Adam and Steve”.
That message has been so steeply ingrained… it is no wonder that the very concept of same-sex marriage is soundly being rejected, and continues to be viewed as taboo in the majority of Black churches ... In spite of what the polls and political pundits are saying, Black folks by and large are not embracing legalizing homosexual marriages as an accepted way of life––even those of us who have covert or overt homosexuals within our own families.
To the notion that “two moms,” living together, raising their children and openly flaunting that relationship in the Black church community will be endorsed as the norm anytime soon, I say: FUHGEDDABOUTIT! It will not happen for two reasons: there remains a large portion of African-American parishioners who view the gay lifestyle as sinful and an abomination, and the majority of God-called, God-fearing, Bible-believing clergy firmly believe they must answer to God for that which they support and exegete from their pulpits.
