Black pastors pushing back against gay marriage and the Chick-Fil-A attacks
The Rev. Williams Owens, who is president and founder of the Coalition of African-Americans Pastors, is the leader of a campaign of conservative black pastors who are increasingly more and more vocal against President Obama’s support of gay marriage and the attacks by Democrats against Chick-Fil-A.
“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.”
At the press conference, Owens was joined by five other black regional pastors and said there were 3,742 African-American pastors on board for the anti-Obama campaign.
When asked at the press conference for specifics about the campaign – funding, planned events and goals – Owens said only that the group’s first fundraiser will be on August 16 in Memphis, Tennessee. But Owens insisted that “we are going to go nationwide with our agenda just like the president has gone to Hollywood.”
In May, Obama announced on ABC News that he thought “same sex couples should be able to get married.” The president had previously said that he opposed gay marriage, but said in May that his views were personal and did not represent a policy change.
In a fiery Tuesday press conference at the press club, Owens said Obama was taking the black vote for granted and decried the idea of similarities between the gay rights movement and the civil rights movement, an assertion made by the NAACP following Obama’s same-sex marriage support.
Now responding the Chick-Fil-A attacks by politicians and vocal comments against Chick-Fil-A (started by Boston Governor – read here) Rev. Charles Lyons spoke out.
“It’s a disgrace. It’s the same thing that happened when I was marching for civil rights, when they didn’t want a black to come into their restaurant, they didn’t want us staying in their hotels. Now they’re saying, because we take a Christian position, they don’t want us in their cities.”
Owens continued, “Well, we won’t take it. We will stand up and they will learn, they will learn that they can’t do that to any people, by destroying religion, by destroying the family, we will stand up.”