Help Soulforce Place Billboards in Frist's Hometown

Soulforce is an amazing gay rights organization that spends a large chunk of its time in the streets talking about freedom from religious and political oppression. They spent the past few months on an Equality Ride visiting anti-gay colleges throughout the country. Now they are raising money to place 16 of these billboards in Senator Bill Frist's neighborhood in Nashville, Tennessee. Click here to make a donation.

The billboards feature part of a speech given by Coretta Scott King at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey on March 24, 2004, when she said, "Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protections, whether by marriage or civil union. A constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay bashing, and it would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriages."

In addition to the Soulforce.org web address, the billboards include a photograph of Soulforce Executive Director Jeff Lutes with his partner and son. Lutes adds, "Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and others, under pressure from wealthy fundamentalists, are again trying to write discrimination into the constitution rather than focusing on the real problems facing America. Soulforce reminds Senator Frist's hometown that Mrs. King stood for the full equality of lesbian and gay Americans and against homophobia, especially homophobia in the black community. Mrs. King publicly saluted the gays and lesbians that fought for her freedom in Montgomery and Selma and other places during the civil rights movement, and she compared homophobia to racism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of bigotry that set the stage for repression and violence."

Proponents of the previously failed amendment feel it is their duty to force a public vote by scapegoating gays and lesbians as threats to heterosexual marriage. Helen Palmer of the League of Women Voters says, "The rights of one group should not be subjected to the vagaries of the majority."