Monday, July 13, 2009

Using children to play the black and gay communities against one another

There has been yet another nasty attempt to set the black and gay communities against one another via the Frank Lombard case.

Frank Lombard is an official at Duke University who was arrested for molesting his five-year-old adopted son.

Lombard is a gay white man and his son is African-American.

This unfortunate component of an increasily unfortunate situation has been like gold at Sutter's Mill for the religious right as certain figures have stepped up to milk it for all it's worth.

The lastest person exploiting this situation is Meeke Addison, an African-American "on-air personality" with American Family Radio. American Family Radio is owned by the American Family Association, the religious right organization which also owns One News Now, the place where her column is featured.

How very convenient.

Addison, for reasons that are solely predatory, tries to spin this situation as a case of the American black leadership missing the boat:

While Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton were competing for the most on-camera interviews and vying for preeminence at Michael Jackson's memorial service on the West Coast, Frank Lombard -- a white, homosexual Duke University employee -- was being arrested on the East Coast for allegedly molesting his five-year-old black adopted son.

No planes were chartered, no press conferences were held to condemn Lombard's alleged behavior. No marches stopped traffic, no black shirts or berets were donned, and no fists were held high. Not that I necessarily approve of this behavior -- but my point is, you have a white homosexual male who admitted online that he was "into incest" and had adopted two black children (males) because they were easier to get than their white counterparts. This man was arrested for repeatedly abusing these children, he posted the attacks online because he's sick, and his alleged victims happened to be black -- but the crickets are chirping.

Mainstream media will not even report that the man is a homosexual or, in some instances, even that the children are black. They won't report that Frank Lombard had a live-in partner in a community that includes other homosexual couples with black adopted children.


First of all, maybe the media didn't report on these things because they are irrelevant to the situation.

Secondly, I find Addison's column disgusting. Her attempt to blame the black leadership for missing out on this situation is disingenuous at best.

And she makes absolutely no case against gay adoption. In that regard, her column reminds me of a racist leaflet I used in my book, Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters.

The leaflet, created by a white supremacist group, featured pictures of three heterosexual black men who had infected their partners with HIV.

The leaflet went on to say:

These black sexual predators lied about being HIV positive and had sex with dozens of white women . . . Don't be the next victim.

It's ironic that earlier in her column, Addison hints that the lgbt community is unfairly "piggybacking" on the civil rights movement being that she demonstrates that the desire to stigmatize an innocent group of people knows neither the lines of racial make up nor sexual orientation.

The sad thing is that Addison dances around a good point - are there so many African-American children waiting to be adopted that they are susceptible to being taken by in those who have less than honorable intentions in mind. Were there warning signs in the Frank Lombard case that were ignored?

The fact that he is gay is not a warning sign, no matter how the situation is spun by the religious right. There are too many lgbt parents who are taking care of their children to the best of their ability.

Too bad Addison was so damned determined to beat up on the black leadership and the lgbt community (two favorite targets of the religious right) that she didn't expound on that point.

So if Addison wants to find a someone who failed our black children, she needs to take a look in the mirror.

Other HB/HM posts on the Frank Lombard situation:

Should white women be teaching children?

Michelle Malkin, Mike Adams, and One News Now exploit a molested child


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