LGBT-friendly religious leaders join #BlackLivesMatter campaign

AFRICAN-American LGBT religious leaders are collaborating with churches across the US to wear black during Sunday mass services to fight discrimination.

The initiative is part of the wide-reaching social media campaign #Blacklivesmatter, which started in response to the police brutality that has occurred in recent months.

“In response to… Ferguson, Missouri, Staten Island, New York, and other parts of the country where black lives are ended senselessly over minor offences or for no offence at all… Our hearts are broken by the lack of justice for the victims of violence at the hands of law enforcement,” Bishop Yvetter Flunder and Reverend Elder Darlene Garner said in a joint statement on behalf of LGBTI-inclusive Metropolitan Community Churches.

Sunday’s significance will be twofold, seeking to combat discrimination against both African-Americans and LGBT community in the US.

“As black lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender religious leaders, we are all too familiar with oppressive systems that discriminate and kill,” Flunder and Garner said.

“[We] have created an historic alliance among ourselves as we assert that enough is enough.

“We uphold that all black lives matter and condemn all the ways black bodies are marginalised, and subjected to hostility.”

It is speculated that the day has the potential be a historical moment for the US, but it is reliant on national unity.

The African-American LGBT religious leaders are urging every faith organisation, youth movement, and nationality to spread the word and participate in #Blacklivesmatter on Sunday.

“We lift our voices in solidarity with the families, protesters, and all those who stand against discrimination,” Flunder and Garner stated.

“We affirm that the walls of racism, homophobia, transphobia and injustice must be pulled down in our communities, nation, on the continent of Africa and throughout the diaspora.”

The US has been gripped with protests since a Missouri grand jury did not indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for fatally shooting Michael Brown, and most recently, when video footage emerged of Eric Garner allegedly dying in chokehold by New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo.

Both police officers are white, while Brown and Garner were both African-American and reportedly unarmed at the time of their deaths.

Reverend Grainger Browning, who leads the 8000-member Ebenezer AME church in Fort Washington, Maryland, told the Washington Post this week that when he asked his largely African-American congregation how many have had some negative interaction with police, “99 per cent of the hands rose”.

“Our solidarity is not just on those [recent] cases. For African-Americans the relationship with police has been an ongoing challenge,” he said.