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With the results of the election fresh on his mind, Pastor Ken Friendly called a meeting of black and white ministers in Anchorage, Alaska, to discuss forming a chapter of the Traditional Values Coalition.

The African-American pastor of Lighthouse Christian Fellowship said the group will ensure that his state's legislators and school board members hear the racially diverse voices of religious conservatives.

"I don't care if a person is polka-dot," said Friendly, who expects to move beyond an anti-gay marriage agenda to address helping children who are homeless or fatherless. "If they're concerned about the will of God being done, then that's who this group is for."

Fired up by pre-election summits and rallies and invigorated by election results, some African-American and Hispanic religious leaders say they're ready to join their white evangelical brethren to support traditional marriage and work on issues ranging from judicial nominations to improved adoption procedures. If successful, these racially diverse coalitions could influence the fate of a constitutional amendment on marriage as well as local, state, and national elections for years to come.

As the presidential election illustrated, even small demographic shifts can make an enormous political difference. President Bush significantly increased his share of the Hispanic vote nationally, thanks in part to values-laden issues. In Ohio, Bush nearly doubled his share of the black vote from 2000, to 16 percent, pushing him to a narrow state and national victory.

Many analysts attributed the Ohio vote to black churchgoers' opposition to gay marriage, which Bush also opposes.

Yet while some religious activists are willing to cross racial and denominational lines to oppose same-sex marriage, many say they are not about to support other Republican positions, such as lowering taxes and reducing the size of government. These black and Hispanic leaders say the time might be right to focus on issues and values that uniquely energize their ethnic constituencies.

The Rev. Dwight McKissic of Arlington, Texas, traveled to Washington for a September summit that Traditional Values Coalition Chairman Louis Sheldon pulled together for African-American pastors to join the fight against same-sex marriage. But McKissic, a Southern Baptist, said the bipartisan "Not on My Watch" group he started with other African-American clergy will remain an "intentionally black" endeavor, seeking passage of both state and federal constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, but not joining white evangelicals on other causes.

"Many black pastors I know chose to make that effort independent of white evangelicals because they did not want to be seen as carrying water for the Republicans or white conservatives," he said.

Pastor Ken Hutcherson, the African-American organizer of Mayday for Marriage, a multicultural event that drew thousands to Washington's National Mall in mid-October, takes a different view. "Tell them that if that was the same attitude we had taken toward same-sex marriage, we would have a different president," the Seattle-area pastor said, adding that the 11-0 win on state amendments affirming traditional marriage would have gone in the opposite direction.

"They better get off their pride and start working together."

Hutcherson looks forward to next leading his multicultural congregation—and, he predicts, an eventual national movement of religious conservatives—in an effort to halt discriminatory adoption practices in which people pay more to adopt a white child than an African-American one.

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November (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48