In the wake of the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling favoring gay marriage, black leaders in the United States have decried the connection between civil rights for blacks and civil rights for homosexuals.

The Rev. Talbert Swan II said the two struggles are not similar because blacks were lynched, denied property rights and declared inhuman. “But homosexuals have only been lynched, denied property rights, and declared inhuman because they are also black.”

According to Swan, Matthew Shepard was not killed because he was gay, but because he was black. “All so-called ‘gays’ who are beaten and killed around the world are not being lynched because they’re gay, but because they’re black,” said Swan.

Swan said that when gays are denied communal and property rights, such as adoptions, health care, mortgages, inheritance, visitation, insurance, and gun permits, that “this is all about keeping the black man down. When you read about gays denied rights, you should just replace that with blacks denied rights,” said Swan, “because that’s what it is all really about.”

“Those who were forced to wear pink triangles in Nazi Germany, they were black too,” added Swan. “They were considered the most inhuman of the inhuman degenerates in Germany’s concentration camps, because they were black, not because they were gay.”

He also attributed statements by political leaders around the world calling gays “not human” to rampant anti-black racism. Swan explained that “All prejudice stems from anti-black racism. We’re all black inside. Deep inside, our blackness wants to come out. When you hear anyone cry out against gays, when you hear about gays killed, denied rights, it’s really all about black racism.”