MSNBC Host Tapes 'Marriage Equality' Promo for Gay Lobby

June 8th, 2012 10:01 PM

MSNBC's complete lack of a standard for moonlighting progressive activism surfaced again this week with a new video weekend host Melissa Harris-Perry made for the "Americans for Marriage Equality Campaign" run by the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay lobby.

The video, posted on YouTube on Wednesday, urges joining up with HRC: "I cannot imagine how in 2012 our government is still denying equality to committed and loving couples just because they are gay or lesbian. Join me and a majority of Americans who support marriage equality nationwide." (Video below)

Before the join-us language, Harris-Perry began with biography: "As the child of an interracial couple, I understand the deep injustice of laws that bar loving couples from marrying just because they upset the status quo. Intentionally disenfranchising a group of people like gay and lesbian couples violates the core values of our Constitution."

This is part of an ongoing relationship for Harris-Perry and HRC. Harris-Perry gave the keynote address at their “Clergy Call” last year, which drew “hundreds of LGBT-equality-supporting clergy to Washington, D.C. for inspiration, mutual support, training, and lobbying visits on Capitol Hill.”

She argued that LGBT forces must engage with faith. Religion Dispatches reported:

It is important to recognize that the Bible is problematic, she says. She has written that “we need to cultivate an active, public, prophetic, liberal core that can resist these texts of terror by arguing for a more comprehensive engagement with the Bible.”

....She suggests that rather than trying to deconstruct the meaning of the “terror texts” through exegesis, it is more convincing and useful to devalue them relative to other texts, elevating the “countering texts of liberation.”