Center for American Progress blasts Bishop Jackson

. . . Yet the marriage bill is not without controversy, as a small but vocal group of religious organizations and leaders has risen up to oppose the law. Bishop Harry Jackson is driving the charge to defeat the council’s current marriage bill. Jackson leads the Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Maryland, as well as the High Impact Leadership Coalition, which is closely aligned with the most conservative elements of the Republican Party. For example, Jackson has lobbied to kill efforts to reform health care using odd logic to argue that health care reform will prevent wealthy people from being able to access coverage because low-income people will consume all of the nation’s health resources.

Bishop Harry Jackson’s bogus claims

Jackson frequently claims that D.C.’s lesbian and gay community is highly affluent, and therefore does not need full legal equality:

“Many of our gay people here are professionals in this city, disproportionately educated and they have all kind of opportunities to make more money than other folk. They’re living in these new condos that are being brought to the city…The so-called persecuted gay [rights] movement…is a handful of privileged people.”

He further asserts that if the District Council passes a marriage equality bill, it will somehowviolate the political rights of the district’s residents and be tantamount to gays and lesbians bribing the Council into supporting their civil rights:

“The truth is that the gay community has ‘manipulated’ the political process through extravagant campaign contributions and strategically infiltrating the city’s Democratic Party’s hierarchy over the last five years. DC council members have ironically participated in the suppression of the citizens’ right to vote in order to advance a privileged minority’s pet issue.”

Perhaps no one told Jackson that the marriage equality bill’s chief champion is David Catania, who until five years ago was a member of the Republican Party, before he became a political independent. Anyone who paid the smallest amount of attention to the District Council prior to the marriage debate would quickly realize that Catania does not vote in lockstep with his Democratic colleagues. Jackson also apparently missed the memo from the chairman of the District’s Republican Committee, Robert J. Kabel, who is a vocal supporter of the marriage bill.

Jackson also implies that extending full marriage rights to gays and lesbians is somehow a zero-sum game, and will take something away from the district’s poorest residents:

“The unwed black mother, living on public assistance, understands true discrimination. She understands that there are privileged people in our culture and institutional barriers that prohibit whole segments of our society from experiencing the American dream. In D.C., gay activists enjoy better education, better jobs, better housing, greater access to the system, and now—legislative power. Something is wrong when the privileged feign that they are the persecuted, when the powerful posture themselves as victims.”

Jackson likely does not even consider the possibility that an “unwed black mother” might be bisexual or a lesbian, and appreciate having the option to marry another woman, and thereby secure the whole range of financial benefits for her family that come with marriage.