Tremont Temple and the

Racists

Captioning from Citizens Informer: included with pic - Louisiana CofCC meeting (L to R) state Co-chair Mary Elizabeth
Sanders, Secretary Hope Lubrano, guest speaker State Rep. Tony Perkins, and co-chair Herb Price, held on May 17 at
Bonanno’s Restaurant in Baton Rouge. The next Louisiana CofCC meeting will be held on August 23, same location.

Love Won Out and NARTH

● In recent weeks, the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuals (NARTH) – a group
whose president was a featured speaker at last years Love Won Out conference at Tremont Temple Baptist
church – has been ridiculed for a racist website article posting by Dr. Gerard Schönewolf, a member of
NARTH’s Scientific Advisory Board.

● Schönewolf stated in his article “that Africa at the time of slavery was still primarily a jungle, as yet uncivilized or
industrialized. Life there was savage…” and that slaves “brought to Europe, South America, America, and other
countries, were in many ways better off than they had been in Africa.”

● He also said that the Civil Rights Movement “has been vehement about pointing out the hysterical lynchings
that took place in the old South, but completely blind to its own hysterical tactics.”

Tony Perkins, David Duke, and the Council of Conservative Citizens

● In 1999, Perkins was implicated in a scandal involving his 1996 purchase (he signed the contract and the
checks paid) of an $82,000 phone list from former KKK Imperial Wizard and notorious white supremacist
David Duke, when he was the campaign manager for then-Louisiana Sen. Woody Jenkins.
● Perkins then participated in an attempt to hide the transaction with Duke by funneling the money through a
third party—something the Jenkins campaign was fined for by the Federal Elections Commission.

● Perkins also spoke in front of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) not once, but
twice—once in 1997 and again on May 19, 2001, according to the CCC’s Citizens Informer newsletter.

● In 1998 Sen. Trent Lott and Rep. Bob Barr received widespread national media attention (and outrage) for
speaking in front of the CCC—and both politicians used the “I-didn’t-know-their-politics” copout. This
incident prompted US Rep. Thomas Wexler to sponsor a House Resolution condemning the racism of the CCC.

● More importantly, a picture of Perkins featured in the Summer 1997 issue of Citizens Informer (above) shows
that he addressed the CCC in front of a humungous flag with an all-white field and a Southern Cross (the
Confederate battle flag) in the corner. This particular flag was the second official flag of the Confederacy,
adopted in 1863, and was explicitly designed to represent white supremacy.

● For Perkins to speak in front of a group that used this particular flag, without asking any questions or without
being prompted to further investigate the group is recklessly irresponsible. It’s more likely that he was well
aware of what the CCC’s politics were, but did not care.

● If you are an ultra-reactionary politician in the Deep South, open racists are a part of your right-wing
constituency. While a right-wing politician may disagree with racists when it comes to their beliefs about race,
they by and large share widespread ideological agreement—including the notion that the Civil Rights
Movement went “too far” and that persistent structural racism against blacks and other people of color does not
exist.

“And There Was No One Left to Speak for Me…”

● The Rev. Ray Pendleton, pastor of Tremont Temple Baptist Church, boasts of his church’s history as “the
first church in New England to proclaim the Emancipation Proclamation and the first church in Boston to
preach the abolitionist message” which “stood against the state of Massachusetts in helping to house fugitive
slaves.”

● It is a betrayal of the history of Tremont Temple and its largely black parishioners for Rev. Pendleton
to appear on the same stage as these people.

● Many leaders of predominantly black churches are so blinded by irrational homophobia that they are willing
to deal with far-right politicians to support their own prejudices. But these deals with the devil will bring a
torrent of Faustian consequences on the black community. Over the past few decades, LGBT people have not
been the only targets of the Right’s offensive. They have also been gunning for affirmative action and, more
terrifyingly, they have been working overtime to promote the idea that institutional racism is nonexistent and
that blacks should simply “get over” the historic legacy of discrimination in America.

● The anti-gay Right is a political coalition that includes open racists and people who want to turn back the
clock on Civil Rights. That’s a reality that black churches and church leaders have to account for when they flirt
with the Right.

For sources and full article check out www.queertoday.com