Coalition of African-American Pastors

William Owens of the Coalition of African-American Pastors and the National Organization for Marriage’s religious liaison is hoping that his anti-Obama, anti-gay campaign will pay off in November by pulling black voters away from supporting Obama. While sitting down with Jamilah Lemieux of Ebony, Owens said that black voters are turning against Obama “because [our site] had nearly 90 thousand hits and 85 percent of the people are on our side on this issue” and also told Lemieux that “there isn’t such thing as separation as church and state.” Owens effectively admitted to Lemieux that CAAP is a single-issue organization dedicated to opposing same-sex marriage, insisting that marriage equality for gays and lesbians must be stopped because “the Black family has been destroyed” and will “help deteriorate the Black family more than anything else.”

JL: Black people are literally on fire right now. You have people--- teenagers, kids---dying in Chicago. Getting shot 10, 12, 30 in a night and you're sending out daily press releases about same sex marriage. Is this the greatest challenge of your generation or my generation? is this the biggest fight that we have in the middle of an election season? Do we have that much to lose from gay people getting married?

RO: I think we do. First of all, the Black family has been destroyed. When I grew up there were more Black men going to college, now there are more Black men going to prison. Something is wrong.

JL: What does that have to do with homosexuality? There are Black men who have went to college and graduate and got married and are gay and also Black men who have women who they’ve been in intimate relationships with who didn’t go to college and who don’t provide for their children. So who is the problem in our community?

RO: We're our own problem right now. We are are own problem and we need good moral leadership and I expected that from Obama. Same sex marriage is not [representative of that]...I felt that that one issue was enough to help deteriorate the Black family more than anything else.

His wife Deborah Owens made a similar assertion in a Washington Times op-ed where she warned that the “homosexual agenda” will “erode the very foundation of our society” and “place our youth on a dangerous trajectory toward a bleak future in which mothers and fathers don’t matter, values don’t matter and children are placed at risk.” She said gays and lesbians “have crept out of the closet, and now they want to take over the entire house,” arguing that Obama is “putting our country on a dangerous path and our children and families in peril” by backing their right to marry, jeopardizing “our future as a nation” and “our freedom.”

Some criticize us for not supporting the practice, but accepting homosexuals and lesbians is a separate issue from redefining marriage for millions of Americans. Homosexuals and lesbians have been around for a long time, though many of them were “in the closet.” Over time, they have crept out of the closet, and now they want to take over the entire house. If a man loves another man or a woman desires another woman, there is nothing in our current law stopping two consenting adults from engaging in a relationship, though it is not normal behavior. We are about to cross a dangerous line, with civil leaders trying to force all Americans to accept homosexual unions and change the historical and biblical definition of marriage.

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The black American community already is plagued with problems related to children growing up in single-parent households. For example, a boy who lacks a father in the home is more likely to engage in delinquent and criminal behavior unless he has a positive male role model to help shape him. The homosexual agenda, which attempts to redefine family and marriage, will erode the very foundation of our society. It will place our youth on a dangerous trajectory toward a bleak future in which mothers and fathers don’t matter, values don’t matter and children are placed at risk.

Evidence shows that the lack of intact families in our society leads to social, psychological and emotional problems for children. Why would Mr. Obama want to make homosexual “marriage” equal to traditional marriage when children already face a multitude of issues? The president and others want to legitimize and normalize homosexual “marriage” and shove it down the throats of those who disagree because he is the leader and he said so.

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What black person would deny the first black man running for the highest office in America a chance to become president? He represented hope for us all, and he was the realization of the dream for many Americans who never thought they would live to see a black president. We were soon disillusioned. Mr. Obama has betrayed us by his endorsement of homosexual “marriage,” putting our country on a dangerous path and our children and families in peril.

On the homosexual “marriage” issue, this black mom is not following Mr. Obama.

Our hope in man, even one man, cannot come at the cost of our hope in God.

Our future as a nation is at stake. Our freedom is in the balance. Mr. Obama has given his followers an invalid command: Endorse homosexual “marriage.” This edict must not be the law of this land. The risks are too great.

After spending months attacking President Obama over his stance on gay rights and telling African American voters to stop supporting Obama in order to punish him for favoring marriage equality, William Owens of the Coalition of African-American Pastors told the Christian Post that he thinks it’s “ridiculous” for the marriage issue to dominate political debate. “We have more problems than any other group and here we are taking about gay marriage,” Owens said. “It is ridiculous.”

Owens, a liaison for the National Organization for Marriage, was quoted in an article where one pastor warned that the use of “the civil rights struggle to promote the sexual appetites of the homosexual agenda is an affront to the dignity of black people” and where the author described black Christians as conflicted over whether to support Obama due to his “surprise announcement in late May that he now supports same-sex marriage.” What the article fails to mention, however, is that the latest polling shows Obama leading Romney among black voters by an overwhelming 94-0 percent.

On the front burner is President Obama's surprise announcement in late May that he now supports same-sex marriage. While he solidified his support among liberals, many black voters viewed the issue in a different light. Even more so than some traditionally white conservative denominations such as the Southern Baptist Convention, predominately black churches have long held that homosexuality and specifically same-sex marriage, is a sin.

Plus, the language that gay activists use in comparing the fight for what they term "marriage equality" to the struggle for civil rights in the 1950s and 60s is insulting to many who marched along Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma and other places.

"Using the civil rights struggle to promote the sexual appetites of the homosexual agenda is an affront to the dignity of black people," Dr. J.M. Hunter of told The Christian Post. "No other group in America has had to suffer the wicked injustices as did African blacks who were forced to provide hard labor with no compensation, and their American descendants."

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During the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte two weeks ago, a group of black clergy calling themselves the Coalition of African-American Pastors held another in a series of press conferences to call on black Christians to withhold their support from President Obama until at a minimum, he agrees to meet with the group to justify his support for same-sex marriage.

Asked if the White House has answered his initial request for the meeting first made in mid-summer, the group's leader, the Rev. Bill Owens, was quick to reply. "Not a word, not a single word," he told a group of reporters in Charlotte.

Owens, who marched for civil rights in Nashville and Memphis in the 1960s said he believes the Democratic Party has taken the black vote for granted and that the National Association for the Advancement of Color People is simply just a puppet of Democratic Party leaders.

"At a minimum black Christians should think for themselves and vote for the person that best represents their beliefs," said Owens. "We have more problems than any other group and here we are taking about gay marriage. It is ridiculous."

The 700 Club today highlighted the anti-gay views of the Coalition of African-American Pastors (CAAP) and its founder William Owens, who praised the Republican Party for opposing gay rights in its platform and “ensuring that at least one party is willing to stand up for the common sense, biblical understand of marriage.” Owens’s son, William Owens Jr., told CBN that same-sex marriage will “hurt the heart of God.” While CBN’s Lee Webb described CAAP as a “major coalition,” the group receives all of its funding from allied conservative organizations like the American Principles Project and the Family Research Council, and CAAP’s long record of anti-Obama activism hasn’t paid dividends as President Obama currently leads Mitt Romney among black voters 94-0.

Host Pat Robertson, who in July called the Democratic Party’s likely endorsement of same-sex marriage a “death wish,” said that Obama risked alienating voters over the issue, “to think that the Democratic Party would put in their platform support of gay marriage you just say: what are they thinking about, what are they thinking about?” “Now you see this in the platform and you think: are you out of your mind?” Robertson asked, “Well maybe not, we’ll see.”

Watch:

Joining televangelist Pat Robertson who earlier today said that same-sex marriage will be the “death knell” of the Democratic Party, Mike Huckabee and other leading conservatives have denounced the party’s decision to include marriage equality in its platform. Huckabee told Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association that the move is the “best thing that’s ever happened to the Republican Party” and “may end up sinking the ship.” He said that while people tolerate people who “choose to live in lifestyles that they don’t necessarily agree with or approve of,” they are “no longer going to support” President Obama or the Democrats for having “openly declared war on biblical marriage.” “It’s to me a very tragic day,” Huckabee maintained, “when we’re so interested in getting votes form a certain community and the contributions that they’re willing to forego their own principles and just throw them overboard.”

Watch:

William Owens of the right-wing Coalition of African-American Pastors and a liaison for the National Organization for Marriage at the National Press Conference today claimed that Obama has gone down “a disgraceful road” and compared homosexuality to pedophilia:

“The time has come for a broad-based assault against the powers that be that want to change our culture to one of men marrying men and women marrying women,” said Owens, in an interview Tuesday after the launch event at the National Press Club. “I am ashamed that the first black president chose this road, a disgraceful road.”

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“If you watch the men who have been caught having sex with little boys, you will note that all of them will say that they were molested as a child…” Owens said. “For the president to condone this type of thing is irresponsible.”

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At the Tuesday press conference, Owens questioned Obama’s commitment to black Americans, stating that the president is just “half-black, half-white” and has long “ignored the black press.”

He is “ignoring the people that put him in the White House,” Owens said.

Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council urged Romney not to “shy away from making a clear distinction with President Obama and the Democrats on this issue.”

Thirty-two out of thirty-two states where voters have weighed in on the issue have upheld marriage as the union of one man and one woman. If President Obama were to lose those 32 states, he would face an electoral debacle. In addition, while opposition to same-sex 'marriage' may have become politically incorrect in the Democratic Party at the national level, there are many Democratic members of Congress, and office-holders further down the ticket, who live in states and districts where it will be a serious disadvantage to be identified with 'the gay marriage party.'

Gov. Romney, who has signed a pledge to support a marriage protection amendment to the U.S. Constitution, should not shy away from making a clear distinction with President Obama and the Democrats on this issue.

As always, the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer didn’t hold back in his column, warning that through its decision to “embrace moral perversion” it has “sealed its own doom and relegated itself to the ash heap of history” as its founder Thomas Jefferson “must be rolling over in his personal parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence.”

Rarely can you identify a moment in time at which a major political party sealed its own doom and relegated itself to the ash heap of history. Today is that day for the Democratic Party. The party of Thomas Jefferson, who once wrote a law calling for the castration of those who committed the infamous crime against nature, has now enshrined sodomy-based marriage in its party platform.

Jefferson must be rolling over in his personal parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence, which celebrates the unalienable, God-given right to liberty, not licentiousness.

We know from data collected by the Centers for Disease Control that homosexual conduct is as dangerous to human health as intravenous drug abuse. Of all the men ever diagnosed with HIV/AIDS since the “epidemic” began, 90% contracted it either through having sex with other men (60%), injection drug use (22%) or both (8%). Thus the Democratic Party has made a noble virtue out of behavior that is immoral, unnatural, and unhealthy, and will destroy the lives of those who engage in it.

For the Democratic Party to enshrine the infamous crime against nature in its party platform is the final nail in the coffin of a party that in its history has defended slavery and racism (the KKK was a Democratic institution) and filibustered Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s. This move signals its permanent slide into political oblivion.

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Every Democratic candidate for the House and the Senate needs to be pinned down by both the media and Republican opponents. The GOP needs to hang gay marriage like an anvil around the neck of every Democratic candidate for higher office. Any Democrat who tries to swim with that tied around his neck will find his candidacy seeking to the bottom of the sea. Republicans, force them to declare themselves, and either embrace moral perversion or reject their own party.