Dr. Susan K. Smith is offended by comparisons between Martin Luther King, Jr. and Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who has refused to sign any marriage licenses since the Supreme Court imposed same-sex marriage on her state.
Smith, a pastor and “social justice advocate” (whatever that is) protested the invocation of St. Martin of Atlanta’s name to justify the deeds of a bigot like Kim Davis. “But I am angered by the claim that Ms. Dixon (sic) is acting as did Dr. King when he was thrown into jail for working to end racial injustice,” wrote Smith in a recent column at the Huffington Post. Dr. Smith is apparently so sloppy that she didn’t even get the clerk’s name right. Her name is Davis, not Dixon. “Ms. Dixon (sic) has been jailed because her God-sense tells her it is right and fitting to discriminate against people; Dr. King was in jail because his God-sense told him it was wrong to mete out injustice against anyone – especially blacks.”
My own feelings about Kim Davis would probably require a separate column to spell out in detail. I understand why she has to make her stand and it pains me that she was forced into that situation. I don’t like the Obergefell decision—in fact, I loathe it. But her case is weak because she is a government official.
Furthermore, I don’t generally like lawlessness. Liberals, on the other hand, celebrate lawlessness, which explains why they gave the lawless Martin Luther King a holiday and generally revere him as something of a demigod. I don’t believe he deserves a tenth of the deference we afford him which is why I must stress that Kim Davis’s obvious similarity to King is not necessarily flattering.
It is, however, accurate. Dr. Smith would know this if she’d ever read anything that King wrote. Has she? I don’t see how she could have read, for example, King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” or his “Paul’s Letter to the American Christians” and concluded that King would oppose Kim Davis.
I think Dr. Smith falls into a common trap when evaluating King; that is, she creates in her own mind an image of the man as she wished him to be—a fighter for “justice,” as defined by Smith herself. It probably never occurs to her that King’s idea of justice might diverge from her own. In Smith’s mind it’s axiomatic that the mainstreaming of homosexuality and the crushing of dissenting voices are civil rights issues. As a champion for civil rights, MLK would certainly be on her side. Any attempt to counter her vision of King with the actual historical MLK is enough to raise her blood pressure.
Martin Luther King did not support same-sex marriage. Period. No one in pre-1968 America did, not even “gay” “rights” activists. (Their aim was to destroy the institution, not join it.) Nor did King find homosexuality morally acceptable. He was a mid-20th century Baptist minister with the accompanying moral code regarding sex. He claimed the Bible as his authority and the Bible is absolutely unequivocal on the subject of homosexuality. The fact that King had a plethora of mistresses and enjoyed an orgy every once in a while proves only that he was a hypocrite, not a “gay” “rights” activist.
King’s clearest public proclamations on homosexuality are found in an advice column he wrote for Ebony Magazine in 1958. When a boy asked his advice on how to handle feelings of attraction toward other males, King actually advised psychiatric treatment! He also referred to the feelings as a “problem.” Most importantly, King said that the boy’s attractions were “probably not an innate tendency.” In other words, he did not subscribe to the shoddy, unfalsifiable “born that way” theory. It doesn’t take much of a leap to infer that King would have rejected any comparison between race and homosexual conduct and would probably have been offended by it, as many blacks are even today. As they should be.
King did not march for homosexuals’ supposed “rights” because he did not see them as equivalent to his struggle against Jim Crow. He understood homosexuality as a behavior—and a deviant one at that. So if Kim Davis is a “bigot,” then Martin Luther King is a “bigot” too. What then is so outrageous about comparing the two?
Smith continues with her misguided rant: “There is a stark difference between the two ‘reasons’ for incarceration…” I see what’s she’s getting at. She believes that MLK went to jail for doing something good, while Davis went to jail for doing something bad. She is therefore endorsing the cafeteria approach to civil law. The King who lives in her imagination would oppose Davis, so comparing the two lawbreakers is, in her estimation, not fair. Never mind that the real King—as evidenced by his words—was on Davis’s side when it came to homosexuality.
But even that’s beside the point. Kim Davis and Martin Luther King both defied the law for the exact same reason—because they considered themselves responsible to a higher power. (I’m not sure King really meant it, of course, on account of his incredible hypocrisy.) They both claimed that God’s law was superior to man’s law.
From King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”:
| “The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws… Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.” Now some might argue that Kim Davis’s religion should have no bearing whatsoever on a civil marriage. That’s one argument, though certainly not one that MLK would make. He would agree with Davis that our civil law should always align with scripture and when it doesn’t Christians are called to defiance. Consider “Paul’s Letter to American Christians,” an epistle that King imagined St. Paul would have written to his church in 20th century America. After reading it, one can only conclude that Kim Davis is innocent of most of the failings that King found among Christians of his time. “I am impelled to write you concerning the responsibilities laid upon you to live as Christians in the midst of an un-Christian world,” wrote King as Paul. “That is what I had to do. That is what every Christian has to do.” Yes, and that’s all Kim Davis is trying to do. “But I understand that there are many Christians in America who give their ultimate allegiance to man-made systems and customs. They are afraid to be different. Their great concern is to be accepted socially.” Kim Davis doesn’t have that problem. She won’t compromise her faith for civil authority, or to be liked, just as “Paul” (King) advised. King continued: “For so many of you Morality is merely group consensus…You have unconsciously come to believe that right is discovered by taking a sort of Gallup poll of the majority opinion.” Yes indeed, that is a very accurate diagnosis of what ails our society. But Kim Davis is not that kind of Christian. She believes that right is right and wrong is wrong. Neither public opinion nor a court can change that. “Therefore, your ultimate allegiance is not to the government, not to the state, not to nation, not to any man-made institution,” wrote King. “The Christian owes his ultimate allegiance to God, and if any earthly institution conflicts with God’s will it is your Christian duty to take a stand against it. You must never allow the transitory evanescent demands of man-made institutions to take precedence over the eternal demands of the Almighty God.” King and Davis are in agreement on this point as well. On all of the key issues, King and Davis are of the same mind. Both oppose segregation. Both oppose homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and its accompanying imposition on people of faith. Both agree that they have an obligation to disobey any law that is unjust. Both measure the justice of a particular law by the standards of God. Susan Smith really wants to believe that Kim Davis’s rogue actions were the polar opposite of her idol Martin Luther King’s actions. Unfortunately, her arguments reveal her stunning ignorance. Her fantasies of what King would have become if he had lived long enough to “evolve” to precisely her own policy positions have clouded her judgement. She really ought to curl up with the collected writings of the man she claims to admire and read what he actually wrote. |
Read more at http://patriotupdate.com/if-you-dont-think-mlk-is-like-kim-davis-you-probably-dont-know-mlk/
Comments