The National Urban League (NUL) is joining the growing list of Black organizations grappling with what stance to take on the issue of marriage equality. As same-sex unions continue to be a hot-button political item, other Black groups come down on either side of the debate, with President Obama issuing a history-making endorsement of same-sex marriage.
NUL members gathered in New Orleans in July for the organization's annual conference and the group's president, Marc Morial, said the century-old civil-rights organization would begin mulling what position to take on same-sex marriage at that time. "This is an issue that we'll be considering internally," Morial said in a telephone interview.
Nolan Rollins, the president of NUL's New Orleans' chapter, was more candid about the group's approach to same-sex marriage and indicated the organization would examine the issue on a "case-by-case basis." Rollins noted that supporting same-sex unions would be dependent on how an endorsement "would affect the movement" in different parts of the country, allowing some chapters to back marriage equality and others to oppose the issue or take no position at all.
NUL's decentralized approach to marriage rights for gays and lesbians is indicative of how sensitive and politically volatile the issue has become for Black organizations and their leadership, as calls from a group of Black pastors grow for African-American voters to withhold support from Obama because of his marriage views. A board member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) left the group because of its support for same-sex unions.
However, failing to enter the political fray over who has the right to get married by adopting a national policy that affirms, rejects or remains neutral on the subject may only buy the group some time, and not spare it the ire of other groups and individuals seeking to push Black constituents and their representatives toward a more progressive position on the issue.
"The president and the NAACP sent the message that it is okay to 'evolve' [on the issue of marriage equality] and it is okay to have a conversation about orientation and gender identity in the Black community," Sharon Lettman-Hicks, head of the National Black Justice Coalition, a Black LGBT-rights organization, said in response to the NUL policy.
Lettman-Hicks said there is much work to do to advance equal marriage rights throughout the United States and protect the freedom to marry for gay and lesbian couples where it already exists. That work, she said, includes working with "organizations like the National Urban League that have yet to take a public stance on the freedom to marry" and for same-sex marriage proponents to interact with those closest to them to do the "work of personal outreach, education and understanding with all communities, especially among African Americans who have not 'evolved.'"
However, allowing each chapter to decide the issue for itself may be as far the decidedly more conservative NUL is willing to go on same-sex marriage. Unlike its more rabble-rousing and better-known counterpart, the NAACP, the NUL has traditionally been a more buttoned-down advocate for civil rights as Blacks fought to secure equal voting, housing and employment measures during the 1960s and in the years since the end of the modern civil-rights era.
The NAACP, headquartered in Baltimore, has been out front on the issue of marriage equality since the national body backed the issue earlier this year. Its local chapters have joined the fight for same-sex unions in Maryland and Maine, two of the four states with marriage amendments on the ballot this fall where voters could hand victories to LGBT activists for the first time.
Maryland has the highest percentage of African-American residents than any state outside of the Deep South. Same-sex marriage supporters are concentrating their get-out-the-vote efforts in Baltimore, the state's largest city, and in Prince George's County near Washington, D.C., also a stronghold for potential Black supporters. NAACP chapters in both areas have joined the political coalition seeking to keep Maryland's same-sex marriage law.
Maine has one of the smallest percentages of Blacks in the countryslightly more than 1 percentbut the state's sole NAACP chapter has joined more than 80 other political, civic and religious organizations in the state to win back marriage rights for same-sex couples after voters jettisoned a law in 2009 that granted gay and lesbian individuals the right to marry.
But while the NAACP has jumped feet first into the national marriage debate, melding its activist roots with the fight for marriage equality, the NUL is cautiously keeping one foot rooted in the organization's civil rights history and the other planted in an ambivalent stance that has allowed the organization to neither condemn nor condone equal marriage laws.
"We recognize that this is a very important issue," Scott Gray, president of the Minneapolis chapter of the NUL, said, referring to same-sex marriage. "But we will continue to focus on jobs and the economy, which are the things that are very pressing for the people that we serve."
Minnesota faces a ballot initiative this fall that would place a ban on same-sex marriage in the state's constitution. Same-sex marriage is not recognized in Minnesota, but GOP lawmakers want to make the practice harder to achieve through the courts. A constitutional ban on same-sex nuptials would make it impossible for state judges to overturn the state's existing legislative ban.
When asked if the NUL believes the issue of same-sex marriage rights fell under the group's purview, Gray reiterated his previous response to whether his chapter would endorse the campaign to defeat the ballot amendment. "We will continue to focus on jobs and the economy," he said.
Other NUL chapters have adopted similar posturing. In Chicago, Roderick Hawkins, a spokesperson for the city's NUL affiliate, said the group "has taken no position on same-sex marriage," but pointed out the organization's involvement with the Chicago Black Gay Men's Caucus and support for activities at the Center on Halsted as evidence of its support for LGBT rights. "We have been very involved in the LGBT community," Hawkins said.
Rollins, the New Orleans chapter president who first revealed the NUL's internal approach to same-sex marriage, did not respond to questions about whether his local organization would endorse same-sex weddings, but the New Orleans NUL has been critical of legislation that could allow private religious schools in Louisiana to discriminate against LGBT students.
Officials with the NUL in Seattlewhere, in November, voters in Washington state will choose to keep or discard a new law allowing same-sex marriageand Maryland did not return calls seeking comment for this story at press time. Maine has no NUL affiliate.
No resolution addressing same-sex marriage was issued during the NUL conference in New Orleans this summer; however, Morial said such an action is always unlikely. "We don't usually issue resolutions at our conference the way the NAACP does," Morial noted without shedding light on just how the organization carried out its deliberations on same-sex marriage.
Morial, a former state legislator in Louisiana and mayor of New Orleans, was a progressive advocate for LGBT causes as an elected official. Morialencouraged by local LGBT activistshelped to enact the city's domestic-partnership registry in the late 1990s and issued an executive order providing health benefits to partners of the city's gay and lesbian employees.
However, the former mayor has not taken that same political courage with him to the NUL, an organization headquartered in New York, the largest state to date to enact same-sex marriage at the behest of progressive politicians and aided by Republican lawmakers.
"I support the president's position," Morial said, referring to Obama's support for same-sex marriage. "During my career as an elected official, I was an advocate for LGBT rights and my personal view is that this is the right position to take." Morial was quick to note, however, that his personal feelings about gay marriage are his own and that he is "not speaking for the NUL."
Paul Guequierre, a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, which has been involved in numerous state marriage campaigns, said his organization "is happy to have the support of the NAACP" and "we look forward to working with the NUL on this issue."
Further inquiries about the NUL's position on same-sex marriage and attempts to clarify its federated approach to endorsing marriage equality were rebuffed by the group's national spokesperson in an emailed response to questions. "I'm sorry," wrote Teresa Candori, the group's director of media relations, "but the NUL has no comment on the matter at this time."