GAY BLACK GROUP LAUNCHES SSM CAMPAIGN: From the Washington Post

A coalition of gay and transgender African Americans announced yesterday that it will use a nationwide advertising campaign to reach out to a group that some say seems to dislike them most: the broader African
American community.

Representatives of the National Black Justice Coalition said their goal is to inform black Americans about marriage equality for same-sex couples and drum up black community opposition to a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, which has been proposed by some conservatives. ...

[Keith] Boykin, who served as a special assistant to President Bill Clinton, said the coalition plans to spend $100,000 to place advertisements in black magazines, such as Ebony, Essence and Jet, and black newspapers, such as the Michigan Chronicle in Detroit and the Baltimore/Washington Afro-American.

Mandy Carter, another member of the coalition, said the group would meet to determine what the ads should say. But their intent is to convince black people that discrimination against committed couples on the basis
of sexual orientation is a form of social injustice.
"We can't get family health insurance, so we have to pay two deductibles instead of one," Alicia Heath-Toby and Saundra Heath-Toby, a same-sex couple, said in a joint statement. "We are your neighbors next door. We
ride the bus and subway with you. We sit next to you at lunch."

Civil rights organizations that sponsored sit-ins at lunch counters in the 1950s and '60s -- the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference -- have been silent on marriage equality, as has the National
Urban League. "We haven't formally taken a position," said Sheriee Bowman, director of information and public relations for the SCLC. "We would definitely be open to a dialogue, but we don't know enough about what their issue is."

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