{"id":35271,"date":"2014-01-02T20:21:17","date_gmt":"2014-01-02T20:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=35271"},"modified":"2014-01-02T20:21:17","modified_gmt":"2014-01-02T20:21:17","slug":"melissa-harris-perry-lgbt-advocates-need-public-progressive-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=35271","title":{"rendered":"Melissa Harris-Perry: LGBT Advocates Need Public Progressive Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

Melissa Harris-Perry: LGBT Advocates Need Public Progressive Faith<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Religion Dispatches<\/a>
\nSexuality\/Gender
\nUniversity of Southern California<\/a>
\n2011-05-31<\/p>\n

Peter Montgomery<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Editor<\/p>\n

Political scientist Melissa Harris-Perry<\/a> has developed a devoted following with her appearances on Bill Moyers Journal<\/em> and Rachel Maddow\u2019s<\/a> MSNBC show, and her insightful commentaries on race, history, politics and culture in The Nation and elsewhere. Less well known among progressive activists may be that the self-described social-scientific data geek also makes a compelling case for a more powerful progressive religious voice in the public arena.<\/p>\n

On May 23 (in the midst of a very public debate<\/a> with her former Princeton colleague Cornel West<\/a>) Harris-Perry gave the keynote address at the Human Rights Campaign\u2019s Clergy Call<\/a>, which drew hundreds of LGBT<\/a>-equality-supporting clergy to Washington, D.C. for inspiration, mutual support, training, and lobbying visits on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n

The Civil Rights Agenda of Our Time<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cMy work is based in the empirical, not in the spiritual\u2026 I like data points. I like survey analysis. So what in the world am I doing here, an empirical social scientist straight girl at a clergy call around LGBT issues?\u201d she asked. Her answer: \u201cI believe that the struggle for equal human and civil rights for lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual, same-sex-loving, gender-nonconforming and queer persons is the civil rights agenda of our time.\u201d And, she said, \u201cfaith must be part of the work we\u2019re doing.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The religious history of Harris-Perry\u2019s own family has the sweep of an American saga. Her mother, whose Mormon<\/a> ancestors pushed handcarts across the country to their promised land in Utah<\/a>, graduated from Brigham Young University in 1964, having spent most of her time there, Harris-Perry says, writing articles about Mormon womanhood. Meanwhile, her father, whose great-great-grandmother was sold as a slave on a street corner in Richmond, Virginia<\/a>, attended Howard University where he was \u201cconverted to Black nationalism\u201d and shared a room with Stokely Carmichael<\/a>. By the time her mother and father met in Seattle in the early 1970s, each had become a parent and had been divorced. After they had Melissa, they moved their blended family and children\u2014white, black, and mixed-race\u2014to Virginia<\/a> in the immediate aftermath of the civil rights movement. \u201cIn that context you had to be Unitarian Universalist<\/a>,\u201d she said to knowing laughter…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Melissa Harris-Perry: LGBT Advocates Need Public Progressive Faith Religion Dispatches Sexuality\/Gender University of Southern California 2011-05-31 Peter Montgomery, Associate Editor Political scientist Melissa Harris-Perry has developed a devoted following with her appearances on Bill Moyers Journal and Rachel Maddow\u2019s MSNBC show, and her insightful commentaries on race, history, politics and culture in The Nation and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,666,8,820,20],"tags":[6477,16691,16690],"class_list":["post-35271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-gaylesbian","category-media-archive","category-religion","category-usa","tag-melissa-harris-perry","tag-peter-montgomery","tag-religion-dispatches"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}