Slowing Down the Freedom Train

In his book, Religion, Sex, & Politics, Dr. David Pence describes the civil rights movement as a train carrying African American’s to freedom. The “freedom train”, however, has been rapidly slowed down by the feminist and homosexual movements which have tried to get a free ride by hitching their cars to the civil rights movement’s engine. But why would the post-MLK civil rights movement allow this to happen? Because it promised to get more people behind the movement. In other words, God does not power the freedom train, people do. Or as Dr. Pence writes:

Adding first the baggage car of gender, then the braking caboose of homosexuality to the freedom train has depleted its fuel supply - religious tradition and natural law… The feminists and homosexuals promised to swell the crowd but, in a Faustian bargain, stole the movement’s soul. When the civil rights movement lost its religious center, it lost its soul. To forgo the word of God for a promise of government health care benefits makes even the idolaters of the golden calf look like bargain shoppers.

Indeed, the civil rights movement, like the abolitionist movement before it, ran on religious tradition and natural law. The divine power and providence which ran the freedom train, however, is incompatible with the feminist and homosexual agendas – no wonder the train has come to a screeching halt! And while President Obama has placed two radical feminists on the Supreme Court, repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and now supports gay marriage (which the African American community in particular rejects as an affront to the civil rights movement), the unemployment rate of African Americans is double the national average, 70% of African American children are born to single mothers, and President Obama himself laments the fact that there are more African American men in prison than in college.

The civil rights movement needs to cut loose the feminist baggage car and the homosexual caboose and return to its religious center.

Perhaps the actions of other nations will serve as better examples. Though our nation continues to parallel the economic policies and cultural outlook of Europe, Russia – our Cold War nemesis – may pass a national anti-homosexuality propaganda law this year. Five cities, including St. Petersburg (the second largest city in Russia), have already passed such legislation since March. While the Russian Orthodox clergy strongly support the legislation, a 2010 survey of the Russian population showed that 70% of Russians did not view homosexual acts as morally upright behavior.

The African continent as a whole, both in the Islamic north and Christian south, also rejects homosexuality. In Liberia, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning female President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has shared her support for laws criminalizing homosexual acts. In an appearance at a National Prayer Breakfast in 2010, President Obama blasted Uganda’s laws against homosexual acts and he has sent Hilary Clinton abroad in the name of feminism and homosexuality. But as Orthodox Russia, Islamic North Africa, and Christian Sub-Sahara Africa recognizes the religious character of their nations and cuts loose the braking caboose of homosexuality, let us pray these nations help the American civil rights movement reorient itself and recharge itself on religious tradition and the natural law.