SCLC Update: Pro-Life and Pro Gay Candidates Top List to Lead SCLC

Bryon Clay the Interim President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference confirmed three of the five candidates seeking to become the group's seventh president were: Rev. Bernice King, SCLC Georgia State President Samuel Mosteller and activist Markel Hutchins, founder of the National Youth Connection.

Los Angeles State SCLC President the Rev. Eric Lee is said to be a candidate as well. However, Lee may have fallen out of favor with the SCLC because of his active opposition to Proposition 8.

Reverend Samuel Mosteller grew up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Georgia. He received a degree in political science from West Georgia College and served for 22 years in the U.S. Military from which he retired as Major. Mosteller is the assistant pastor at Good Shepherd Community Church and High School Administrator at the Green Pastures Christian School in Decatur, Georgia.

I am still looking into Mosteller’s views on LGBT issues but for those of us who are pro-life and support a woman's right to choose, and if the friends he keeps is any indication, we may be in trouble here too. Mosteller is Vice President of Pro-Life Unity, an organization whose members agree to the Life Principles, which urge the adoption of a Mandatory Human Life Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Markel Hutchins, founder of the National Youth Connection and one of Ebony’s 2008 Bachelors of the Year.

The Reverend Markel Hutchins is an associate minister at Philadelphia Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. Born Decatur, Ga., Markel is Chairman and CEO of Markel Hutchins Ministries and Managing Principal of MRH, LLC. In 1997 he established the Atlanta-based National Youth Connection. He Attended Morehouse College and received an Honorary Doctorate of Divinity degree. Markel ran as a pro-LGBT candidate in a three-way race against civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, he was second.

Clay has been quoted as saying that the “SCLC has never had the conversation about gay rights,” stressing the organization’s neutral position California’s Proposition 8.