A judge's reversal of a voter-approved ban against same-sex marriage in Michigan is being protested by 100 black pastors in Detroit.
The pastors are offended by the comparison of same-sex coupling to the civil rights movement, and dismayed by the government's rejection of biblical marriage.
The 2004 Marriage Protection Amendment defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman in Michigan, but Federal Judge Bernard Friedman reversed that legislation on March 21.
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette was successful in getting 6th Circuit judges to keep the marriage ban in place while an appeal is pending in the United States Court of Appeals.
In addition to Judge Friedman's infringement on their rights by rejecting a voter-approved ban, the pastors are outraged by the frequent comparison of same-sex marriage activism to the civil rights movement.
"To state that marriage redefinition is in any way similar to the civil rights movement is intellectually empty, dishonest and manufactured," Minister Stacy Swimp, founder of Revive Alive Missional Ministry, told Charisma News.
"When has anyone from the LGBT demographic ever been publicly lynched, specifically excluded from moving into neighborhoods, prohibited from sitting on a jury and denied the right to sue others because of their sexual preferences?"
St. Galilee Baptist Church Pastor James Crowder said the comparison to civil rights is as fictional as a theater production.
"Judge Friedman is sanctioning the staging of a false story," he said. "On stage are many actors who pretend that redefining traditional marriage is as valid as blacks fighting against the carnage of chattel slavery and the humiliation of Jim Crow.
"Never have I been so insulted. The curtain must be pulled down on this play of disinformation."
Despite the federal government allowing benefits for same-sex couples, and gay marriage being approved in 20 states including Washington D.C., the pastors said they will continue to support the biblical definition of marriage, and reject political leaders who do not.
"We will not follow men who would rather believe a lie than the truth," Rev. Dr. Randolph Thomas, senior pastor of Greater Bethlehem Church and president of the Westside Minister's Alliance, told Charisma News.
"We cannot and we will not endorse anyone who blatantly blasphemies the Word of God and leads people in the wrong direction."
