Get 'Em Al!

I won't lie. I have some issues with Rev. Al Sharpton. Sometimes I think he (and Jesse for that matter) blow incidents out of proportion and run to the media only to increase their own profiles. But when you're right you right.

The reverend read black megachurches like a bedtime story for focusing less on poverty and police brutality and more on dictating gay folks' lives:

"There is something immoral and sick about using all of that power to not end brutality and poverty, but to break into people's bedrooms and claim that God sent you," Sharpton told a full house on Sunday.

"It amazes me," he said, "when I looked at California and saw churches that had nothing to say about police brutality, nothing to say when a young black boy was shot while he was wearing police handcuffs, nothing to say when they overturned affirmative action, nothing to say when people were being [relegated] into poverty, yet they were organizing and mobilizing to stop consenting adults from choosing their life partners."

"I am tired," he went on, "of seeing ministers who will preach homophobia by day, and then after they're preaching, when the lights are off they go cruising for trade...[emphasis mine]We know you're not preaching the Bible, because if you were preaching the Bible we would have heard from you. We would have heard from you when people were starving in California--when they deregulated the economy and crashed Wall Street you had nothing to say. When [accused Ponzi scammer] Madoff made off with the money, you had nothing to say. When Bush took us to war chasing weapons of mass destruction that weren't there you had nothing to say.

"But all of a sudden, when Proposition 8 came out, you had so much to say, but since you stepped in the rain, we're going to step in the rain with you."

Sharpton has supported full marriage equality for years, and hasn't been shy about criticizing anti-gay black churches.

"It's not a question of bringing the issue of the gay and lesbian community to the church," he said in 2006. "It's about having an open discussion because they're already there," he said. "All of us know that this is nothing new. The only thing new is to have an open discussion on how we deal with it."

"Adultery broke up more marriages than gays did," he added, revealing that a member of his family was gay and dismissing the notion that gays were a "threat" to marriage.

Ministers cruising for trade when the lights go off? Sounds like somethin' I'd say;).