Lead religious right 'scientist' says black Africans were fortunate to become slaves

Happy MLK's birthday to you too.

He also says the civil rights movement is "irrational." The man is on the advisory board of the lead "ex-gay" group, NARTH (the "ex-gays" are the gay-hating religious right activists who claim that you can pray-away-the-gay, or in the case of NARTH, that lots of gays are gay because they were abused as children or some other such nonsense). Well, it seems that they have a racism problem and they're not doing very much about it. The Southern Poverty Law Center - the organization that monitors the movements of hate groups - is now weighing in, and they're not happy. From SPLC:

A prominent member of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) is under fire for publishing an essay in which he argues that Africans were fortunate to have been sold into slavery, and that the civil rights movement was "irrational."

"There is another way, or other ways, to look at the race issue in America," writes Gerald Schoenewolf, a member of NARTH's Science Advisory Committee. "Africa at the time of slavery was still primarily a jungle.... Life there was savage... and those brought to America, and other countries, were in many ways better off."....

Titled Gay Rights and Political Correctness: A Brief History (PDF) Schoenewolf's angry polemic was published on NARTH's webpage. In addition to his outrageous historical claims about the conditions of life in Africa, he writes that human rights proponents are intellectually stunted.

NARTH's response? They took the document down from their Web site, and then issued a lame non-apology apology:

[O]n Oct. 6, NARTH posted this statement to its website: "NARTH regrets the comments made by Dr. Schoenewolf about slavery which have been misconstrued by some of our readers.

Misconstrued? Oh, and NARTH is keeping Mr. Slavery-Can-Be-Fun on their board of advisers. No misconstruing that message.

To truly appreciate who the "ex-gays" are and who they're connected to:

The movement's leaders and their close allies at Christian Right powerhouses like James Dobson's Focus on the Family have failed to condemn Schoenewolf's inflammatory arguments.

Dobson, he'd be the guy that John McCain is looking to make amends with. I wonder what John McCain thinks of the advantages of slavery? (I'm sure some of his best friends are slaves.)

(Hat tip, Talk To Action.)