Slave Catcher of the Week: Alan Keyes, Life Always, & Conservatives Who've Co-Opted Blackness on Abortion & Gay Marriage

Since we're down to our last day of Black History Month here in our third year of post-racial bliss. What would yet an unnecessary month of recognizing Black achievement be without heralding a couple slave catchers among us. I mean, why recognize the brother who invented the Super Soaker and leave out fellow Black people, who are bent on holding up progress; and, who would possibly go as far as to say that slavery never happened, and the Middle Passage and all that went with it is a lie, much like the people who deny the Jewish Holocaust.

So, apparently things have gotten pretty dangerous and, "The Safest Place For African Americans is in the Womb." I don't know just how it got that way all of sudden; and just why we were never given this information before now. I mean, this information could have come in handy just before the slave-ships landed on the African coast, you know? But at any rate, though many several centuries late, the important thing is that we now know:


Now I have to be honest: when I first read the above story I automatically assumed the people behind the ad were your typical white right-wing group. I figured since we're all post racial now, and white conservatives now care about the well being of Black folks, that the strategic use of it in Black History Month was genius. Shit, they had me so convinced that I was looking for a vagina to dive into, and curl up like a fetus in a Black womb just to be safe. Shit, forget Black on Black crime, HIV/AIDS, and bad credit, son; I wanted to be safe.

But then I saw the above video clip, and found out that this was the work of a Black church? An organization known as Life Always? Chile, I was livid. OK, not that it surprised me that a Black church would allow itself to be co-opted by right-wing fundamentalist. But the nerve of these fools doing this in the middle of a perfectly good Black History Month - a post-racial one at that. And to hear them talk, you'd think Planned Parenthood has offices in the hood on every corner like they do churches, liquor stores, and gun shops.

So you might say: what's the big deal RiPPa? They're just strong in their belief and they're doing God's work on earth! Which is true, but, I remember Jesus healing the sick. He may have gotten pissed off and kicked people selling DVDs and t-shirts out of the church. But I doubt he would fight to shut down an organization that offers more services to poor people than just the less than 3% of abortions it offers; Planned Parenthood does more than abortions. Besides, I doubt Black women are actually debating on whether to use contraceptives or go to Planned Parenthood should they get pregnant, just before they have sex.

Sorry Pastor Steve, what you see as an issue of morality, I see as one of lack of access to health care. As egalitarian as our society is, I'd like to think that poor Black women and men would never have a need for the services of Planned Parenthood. I mean, just think of all the Black and Latina women without access to affordable health care, who would die from breast or cervical cancer if it were not for the free screening provided by Planned Parenthood. It's bad enough that conservatives are targeting po' folk with their budget proposed budget cuts, but it's even worse when a Black church assists them in setting womanhood back. But I suppose abortion clinics like the one busted in Philly are what's best for Black women without access to affordable health care.

Sorry, but the rate of abortions in the black community doesn't amount to so-called black genocide.Black genocide is what happened to black folks once the slave ships landed on the African coast. Black genocide is what's happening in the Sudan, that is being ignored. Hell, black genocide is Black folks in America earning a few pennies for every dollar a white person makes. Black genocide is the rent being too damn high, not being able to feed your kids healthy food, not having access to affordable health care, or jobs in 2011.

And lastly, what would a slave catcher of the month be without recognizing Alan Keyes. Not  stranger of my slave catcher awards as his antics have been well recorded on this site. Keyes, while speaking on yet another conservative wedge issue - gay marriage - in a piece over at WorldNetDaily, had this to say to on the subject:

After a little feigned deliberation, Obama has announced his "decision" to withdraw the U.S. government from participation in cases arguing in support of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), legislation passed when Bill Clinton was in the White House. I've received e-mails from several well-known conservative organizations with breathless subject lines like the one that speaks of Obama's "betrayal of the American people." Another announces "Obama comes out of the closet on marriage."

These subject lines make about as much sense as the Obama faction's contention that his decision has something to do with the fact that some federal judges have concluded that the DOMA is unconstitutional. Obama has little or no inclination to respect the Constitution. He has little or no inclination to respect the unalienable right involved in the defense of the natural family. Just as he promotes the physical elimination of the child's life through abortion, he tacitly promotes eliminating the prospect of the child's life from the definition of marriage. That's what's involved in the assertion that as such, homosexual couples can lawfully marry without eviscerating the natural basis for the definition of marriage.

Government doesn't endow people with the ability to procreate the species. The Creator takes care of that. Like all unalienable rights, those associated with the natural family exist in consequence of this endowment. A couple that cannot, by nature, procreate has no claim to those rights. Nor can government grant them a semblance of it without impairing the claims of one or both of the parents biologically implicated in the physical conception of the child. The DOMA simply makes more explicit the government's obligation to secure the Creator-endowed unalienable rights of the natural family. This obligation precludes government from fabricating other rights that impair them. In this respect, granting homosexuals the right to marry is like granting plantation owners the right to own slaves.

Alan Keyes

Oh great, granting the LGBT community the right to marry is much like saying the evil and inhumane institution that was slavery in the United States is, well, not so evil and inhuman and OK? Which is funny because Keyes' argument is that it goes against God's laws, but I don't remember God or anyone in the Bible fighting or pleading a case against slavery. The real irony is that Keyes uses the slavery analogy to argue against gay marriage, but is a well known supporter of the abolition (pun intended) of Affirmative Action measures. I'm not sure whether Keyes is married to a white woman. But I'm sure if he is, given his obvious pathological conservative affliction, he'd probably argue against interracial marriage given that Obama is of evil miscegenation.

I really have a problem with the intersection of religion and politics. But I have an even bigger problem when social issues championed by conservatives, co-opt Blackness. It's not enough tyat they've claimed that Martin Luther King Jr. was a republican, first cousin of Ronald Reagan, and Godfather of Sarah Palin. Now they're concerned with "black genocide" and teh gays as they seek to set po' and working po' folk back a few decades back At the end of the day, conservative or not, keep your religion out of my politics. And, keep your regressive policy arguments out of blackness; blackness is intertwined with the need for progress.