IF MARTIN LUTHER King, Jr. had lived to see the gay rights chapter in this country’s ongoing civil rights movement, there is no doubt he would be dismayed at what fellow religious folk have wrought.

King’s talk of compassion, his dream of equality for all and his poetic use of language are gone, replaced by demagoguery, calls for legalized and constitutional discrimination and hate-filled rhetoric, often spewed from the pulpits of black churches.

Last spring, Bishop Alfred A. Owens Jr., the black pastor of Greater Mount Calvary Church in Northeast, used the slurs “faggot” and “sissy” to describe gay men. Incredibly, Owens served on former Mayor Anthony Williams’ Interfaith Council and stubbornly refused to offer a sincere apology for the remarks. Williams never removed Owens from the council. Let’s hope new Mayor Adrian Fenty has more of a backbone when it comes to standing up to such blatant bigotry.

Also last year, C.L. Long, a self-proclaimed “bishop” and pastor of scripture Cathedral on 9th Street, N.W., joined fellow minister Rev. Anthony Evans in calling for the city to deny a liquor license for a gay bar in Shaw because it would undermine the moral character of the neighborhood.

Owens, Long and Evans are hardly alone in ignoring King’s legacy. Just a year earlier, Rev. Willie Wilson warned in a sermon that, “lesbianism is about to take over our community.”

The hypocritical hatred of ministers and self-described religious people isn’t limited to black churches, of course. Fresh examples of this religious intolerance emerge each week.

IN ENGLAND THIS week, Christian, Muslim and Jewish groups are out in force protesting proposed legislation that would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in the provision of goods, facilities and services. Among other things, the law would bar hotels from turning away gay customers seeking a room. What a progressive and controversial idea!

And yet, the prospect of forcing hotel operators to accept gay customers has the good religious leaders of the U.K. staging torch-lit demonstrations. (I wonder if a closeted gay priest came up with the idea for that dramatic gesture.)

Some black churches abroad have said pastors would “go to jail rather than accept rules that would mean they had to open their meeting halls to gay lobby groups,” according to a report in the Manchester Evening News. The anti-gay bigots are even petitioning the queen herself to get involved to help block the legislation.

But we needn’t look across the ocean for signs of this disturbing trend. In nearby Virginia, members of nine Episcopal churches voted last month to leave the U.S. church and align with Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria.

In a bizarre footnote to the story, the Washington Post reported on its front page last week that members of some breakaway churches are prone to speaking in tongues.

The Post story describes “an ecstatic style of worship that includes speaking in tongues, a stream of unintelligible syllables signifying that the Holy Spirit has entered the worshiper.”

I thought that particular practice was limited to isolated Pentecostal churches, but apparently it’s been going on in some Episcopal churches for years, including at The Falls Church in Fairfax and nearby Truro Church.

If you thought, as I did, that speaking in tongues was a Deliverance-esque ritual practiced in rural churches, then guess again. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and former CIA director Porter Goss are among those who attend Falls and Truro. No word on whether they speak in tongues.

Truro and Falls are among the nine churches in Virginia that voted to leave the Episcopal Church, in large part because the U.S. church had become too liberal on gay issues. They chose to align with Akinola’s brand of theology. Akinola is the rabidly anti-gay archbishop of Nigeria, who has supported some of the world’s most restrictive laws targeting gays. One measure he supports bars gays in Nigeria from dining in public together.

When the U.S. church was debating the ordination of Gene Robinson, who is gay, as a bishop, Akinola said, “I cannot think of how a man in his senses would be having a sexual relationship with another man. Even in the world of animals, dogs, cows, lions, we don’t hear of such things.”

Of course, we do hear of “such things” in the animal kingdom, but Akinola will be happy to learn that researchers are working hard at “curing” homosexuality in animals. (See story on Page 14.)

It’s astonishing that in 2007, churchgoers who are otherwise bright and accomplished people — including the nation’s attorney general! — would break with hundreds of years of tradition and opt to support an African religious zealot.

Good riddance to the Virginia churches. The U.S. Episcopal Church is better off without such backward-looking members.

AKINOLA, OWENS, LONG, along with all the Christian hate-mongers on the right, would be wise to reconsider their narrow-minded and hurtful opinions as we prepare to commemorate the King holiday.

King’s son, Martin Luther King III, has said his father would have supported gay civil rights.

“People criticized my father back in 1963 for allowing [openly gay activist] Bayard Rustin to organize the March on Washington, but my father was outspoken in his support,” King III told Southern Voice, which is affiliated with the Blade, in a 2001 interview.

Coretta Scott King’s support for gay rights extended even to the hot button issue of marriage.

“Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union,” she said during a speech in March 2004.

But she put it best in remarks she made in 1998.

“I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice,” she said. “But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King, Jr., said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ … I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”

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