The D.C. area’s most vocal gay marriage opponent, Maryland’s Bishop Harry Jackson, spoke to a crowd of social conservatives over the weekend at the annual Values Voter Summit, a convention that serves as a ‘merger of mainstream Republican Party rhetoric and the priorities of “Christian right” activists.’ Video of Jackson’s speech is posted above, courtesy YouTube.
Jackson’s remarks were notable to those of us who have been following his anti-same-sex marriage crusade locally for several reasons, key among them that he was aligning himself with an entirely right-wing agenda even while he tries to appeal to District of Columbia voters, who are 90 percent Democratic. We also couldn’t help but chuckle at Jackson’s weak attempt to deflect the fact that he’s been claiming to be a D.C. resident only recently, in order to be able to file petitions with the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics.
“I’ve been living in this city for about 20 years,” Jackson asserted, then qualifying that with, “predominantly on the outskirts of the city.” Jackson is the pastor of Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Md., and owns homes in Silver Spring, Md. He continued to describe how he “already had plans to move to D.C.” and “had an apartment all picked out” before he decided to launch a campaign against the D.C. Council’s attempts to extend marriage equality to same-sex couples in the District. Maybe the Values Voters were buying that line, Bishop Jackson, but we sure ain’t.
Later in his speech, Jackson went after who he calls the “K Street Lawyers,” a class of people he equates with gays and lesbians who are “disproportionately educated, and they have all kind of opportunities, make more money than other folks, they’re living in these new condos,” and so on. Jackson said he doesn’t believe that his “K Street Lawyers” could ever understand the life of a single black mother living in one of D.C.’s poor neighborhoods, which … somehow makes it OK to be against same-sex marriage? This line of argument is pretty fun to pick apart, actually. See, Bishop Jackson is suggesting that LGBT people are singled out for better educational opportunities (we presume in high school?), while at the same time assuming that a poor black person could never, ever be attracted to the same gender. Also, every lawyer on K Street is gay!
