Bishop Harry Jackson gets the glamour shot treatment by the WaPo

by: Pam Spaulding

Wed Nov 18, 2009 at 14:45:00 PM EST

Setbacks seem only to embolden him. "All over the country, it's evident that the strategy of the radical gay movement is to work the courts and legislatures," Jackson says. "It's gonna be a knock-down, drag-out legal situation."

His neck is thick -- nearly stretching the clerical collar -- and his voice is smooth as molasses. "I just feel like I'm on a mission," he says. "It's not a mission of hate. It's a mission to protect godly boundaries."

Using his Pentecostal congregation, Hope Christian Church, as a springboard, he has founded the High Impact Leadership Coalition, which comprises ministers who plow into national moral dilemmas. In addition to same-sex marriage, the coalition focuses on abortion, two hot-button issues that cause liberals and conservatives to cross swords.

His admirers have multiplied, and so have his critics. More than once, police have stopped by his Southeast Washington apartment to check on his safety.  His mother, Essie, calls her son's crusade one of "holy boldness."

Jackson calls it stopping the erosion of the black family.

This man of God beds down with the anti-gay-for-pay Beltway set, most closely with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. He even wrote a book with him, Personal Faith, Public Policy: 7 Urgent Issues That We, As People of Faith, Need to Come Together and Solve. BTW, Perkins paid former KKK Wizard, cosmetic-surgery-enhanced, self-proclaimed head of the "European American" movement, David Duke, $82K for his mailing list.

This man is infesting DC, framing the marriage equality issue as the "privileged white gays" are working to deny black voters the right to vote on the issue" -- that's a powerful (and sick) message to cultivate. And he did it.

But the fact that Jackson  has a large following doesn't mean "might makes right." In Washington, DC, he's not the only voice of faith in the community. The Reverends Christine Y. Wiley & Dennis W. Wiley of Covenant Baptist Church, and co-founders of Clergy United for Marriage Equality, to show there is a vocal alternative to to sermons and speeches of intolerance. You can be pro-God and pro-civil equality under the law, and most in DC support equality, unlike the Maryland-based Jackson, who put up a tent in DC to raise his clout.

It should be noted that the profile of Clergy United for Marriage Equality was covered by the Washington Post. Kudos to the paper for doing this; with that already published, it should have been referenced along with Jackson's long history of working against equality, reproductive freedom and a host of other issues supported by the religious zealots. Without context, we're left with the impression that Jackson indeed holds sway over the majority of black religious voters in the district.

Peter Montgomery at People for the American Way penned an expose of Bishop Jackson's escapades shuffling and shilling for the bible-beaters, "Point Man for the Wedge Strategy: Harry Jackson is the face of the Religious Right's outreach to African American Christians." It is a must-read. Perhaps  Wil Haygood should be politely alerted to some facts. Generally in a profile piece of this nature, certainly with one about a controversial figure like Jackson, the reporter should have had Jackson address some of the numerous intolerant quotes and positions he's taken, but no, this is a puff piece that makes the WaPo look like the PR firm of the fundamentalist right instead of a major newspaper.

PFAW's profile of Jackson is below the fold.

Jackson insists that he's not anti-gay, and often works hard to sound reasonable.  He repeatedly told reporters last year that his effort to pass anti-marriage initiatives last year was not an attack on gays but based on his concern that "redefining" marriage could make it extinct in the African American community. But it's awfully hard to square Jackson's assertions that he's not anti-gay with his repeated accusations that gays are Satan-inspired enemies of religious freedom who have "hijacked" the civil rights movement and are out to shut down the church in America.

Gays as satanic:  Shortly before the 2004 election, Jackson outlined a strategy for defeating the "gay agenda," writing, "Gays have been at the helm of a fourfold strategy for years, but the wisdom behind their spiritual, cultural, political, and generational tactics is clearly satanic."  In 2007, he blamed the advance of hate crimes legislation on the fact that "the authority of the evil one in the nation has continued to ascend and get stronger and bolder."  And at the Jamestown celebration that year, he said, "And so what we are dealing with is an insidious intrusion of the Devil to try to cut off the voice of the church, and I for one am not going to let that happen."

Gays as enemies of religious liberty:  Jackson is a tireless proponent of the falsehood that gay-rights advocates are eager to shut down churches' and pastors' freedom to preach against homosexuality. He argues that most items on gay rights supporters' policy agenda - including anti-discrimination legislation, hate crimes laws, and marriage equality - are all dire threats to that freedom.  One of his columns, in fact, was titled, "Why Do Gays Hate Religious Freedom?"

In 2007, Jackson also organized a group of African American pastors to sign a false and misleading newspaper ad that called the hate crimes bill a threat to free speech, freedom of conscience, and freedom of religion, and urged Senators, "Don't Muzzle our Pulpits!"

...[O]n the April 21, 2009 broadcast of Janet Porter's radio show, Jackson portrayed federal hate crimes legislation and marriage equality as "an assault on the gospel" and "one unified battle that is being brought to us by the radical gays."  It started, he said, with the repeal of sodomy laws, and "ultimately they want the ability, at the end of the day, is to stop the preaching of the gospel."