William Douglas with the Herald's Washington Bureau:

They love President Barack Obama. But when it comes to his support for same-sex marriage, some of the nation’s leading African-American clergy are divided, sometimes passionately.

... But most of the ministers, pastors and theological scholars expressed firm positions on marrying same-sex couples.

"I love all homosexual brothers and sisters, but my discipline says I can’t marry them," said Bishop John Adams, an African Methodist Episcopal minister and former conference chairman. "Same-sex marriages are not being approved by the Christian community because it is a contradiction of creation. . . . The species continues by the procreation of male and female."

Michael Eric Dyson, a Georgetown University sociology professor, scolded African-American clergy members who rail against gay marriage and homosexuals yet take donations from them and allow them to be church ushers and to sing in or direct church choirs.

"Some of the most homophobic preachers there are probably gay themselves," Dyson told the group. "I’m not saying you must be secretly gay. My point is that the gay self has been so constructed and demonized that even the gay person, as a rite of passage, hate(s) the gay self . . . in order to gain legitimacy in black church circles."