“Gay Community Stop Hijacking The Civil Rights Movement”

A leader of the NAACP has come out attacking gays, and he is demanding the “gay community stop hijacking the civil rights movement.” Rev. Keith Ratliff Sr., president of the Iowa-Nebraska chapter of the NAACP, spoke at a marriage rally in Des Moines on Tuesday, adding, “Deviant behavior is not the same as being denied your right to vote,” and calling any parallel between the African-American civil rights movement and the gay civil rights movement an “insult.”

Ratliff, according to reports, also condemned any idea that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., would have supported gay rights or civil same-sex marriage.



A Baptist minister for over thirty years, Ratliff is also an NAACP National Board Member, and, according to his church website, had worked closely with Tom Vilsack, when he was Governor of Iowa. Vilsack is now the Secretary of Agriculture and was recently embroiled in the Shirley Sherrod firing.

This is not Ratliff’s first attack on the LGBT community, and it directly counters his leadership role at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), whose mission clearly states, “is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination.”

Ratliff’s anti-gay actions also go directly against the teachings of the NACCP’s president, and Chairman, Benjamin Jealous, and Jealous’ predecessor, Julian Bond. Additionally, Dr. King’s right-hand man, Bayard Rustin, who planned the historic march on Washington, was openly-gay.

Jealous last year said, “I personally support marriage equality,” and Bond has spoken publicly and eloquently in support of same-sex marriage.