We’ve been very confused lately about Bishop Harry Jackson’s sudden interest in the inner workings of the District of Columbia’s city council and how he came to be a leader in the fight against its efforts to recognize same-sex marriages performed legally in other states, especially since we had always operated under the impression that he was actually a resident of Maryland.
After all, Maryland is where his church and his High Impact Leadership Coalition are both located and where a lot of his political activism has taken place:
On March 9, Jackson addressed the 30th Annual Maryland March for Life, which was protesting against pro-choice legislation and the nomination of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
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Jackson’s biggest political project was on behalf of Michael Steele’s run for the U.S. Senate from Maryland, where Jackson lives. Jackson organized gatherings around the state where Steele could meet African American pastors. According to a news report, “the High Impact Leadership Coalition had joined with the Maryland Catholic Conference, Maryland Right to Life and the Association of Maryland Families to spend about $70,000 for [pro-Steele] ads -- mostly on the radio in Baltimore and Prince George’s County until the Nov. 7 general election.”
Before the election, Jackson asserted boldly that “The Maryland race for the U.S. Senate will once and for all answer the question: Can a black man really be a successful Republican?” He gushed that “Steele’s credentials, credibility, and charisma speak of greatness” and predicted that the Senate could be a stepping stone to the vice presidency.
So imagine our surprise when, a few weeks ago during the rally he hosted on Freedom Plaza in DC at which he declared that they would “launch the Armageddon of the marriage battle in this country” he suddenly started identifying himself as a resident of the District of Columbia:
Jackson says that although his church is located in Maryland, he lives in the District and expects a large portion of those at the rally to be D.C. residents.
Perhaps he had moved, we thought, attempting to give him the benefit of the doubt. But now it seems as if we were being too generous, judging by this op-ed he wrote that showed up in the Washington Post over the weekend in which he declared that “today the District of Columbia is less democratic, less free and less just because it sanctions same-sex marriage reciprocity.”
The interesting thing about his op-ed is that it identifies Jackson as being from Beltsville, Maryland:
Needless to say, one cannot both live in Maryland and the District of Columbia since they are, you know, two different places:
So where does Jackson live exactly? Did he recently move to DC, or does he live in Maryland and is trying to create the impression that he lives in DC to make his local anti-marriage activism seem more genuine? If it is the latter, it wouldn’t be the first time he’s sought to create a misleading impression about his work, as we pointed out last year regarding his repeated references to himself as a “registered Democrat.”
