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The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network -- the national "watchdog and policy organization dedicated to ending discrimination against and harassment of military personnel affected by "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" -- issued the following statement upon the death of Coretta Scott King:
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Washington, DC - Coretta Scott King, the widow of civil rights legend Martin Luther King Jr., died this morning in Atlanta. She was 78.
“All of us who aspire to live without prejudice or limits owe a very large debt to Mrs. King,” said C. Dixon Osburn, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN). “She was what Virginia Woolf once called that rare combination of ‘granite and rainbow,’ at once an immovable legacy on which we all stood and a luminous reminder of the arc waiting just behind the rain. A tireless advocate for equality, she leaves us both her own work and the work we must all yet do.”
Coretta Scott King was a tireless advocate for African Americans, women and gays and lesbians. In 1998 she said that “I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people . . . 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 brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”
