As years pass, historical figures start to get a little fuzzy around the edges. This is especially true of those men and women who loom large over public consciousness. Activist groups, eager to co-opt these important historical personages, start subtly rewriting history.

Martin Luther King is an example of this. Over the years, I’ve heard King’s name invoked at the Religious Right meetings I’ve attended. King is being pressed into the cause of social conservatism in an attempt to fundamentally change his legacy. Among those leading the charge is King’s niece, Alveda, a fundamentalist Christian minister and anti-abortion activist who is a popular figure on the far-right lecture circuit.

Alveda King was 17 when her famous uncle was assassinated. She would seem an unlikely person to inherit his work, and indeed she didn’t. King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, is widely recognized as the family member who carried forth MLK’s legacy.

More to the point, was Dr. King a social conservative? Does any evidence bear this out?

Consider two issues that are near and dear to the Religious Right these days: blocking access to birth control and opposing gay rights.

On the birth control issue, King’s views are very clear. He worked closely with Planned Parenthood to expand access to contraceptives. In fact, Planned Parenthood honored King with a special award in 1966 for his activism in favor of reproductive rights.

King was not able to attend the ceremony, but his wife read a speech he had written. King said in part, “For the Negro, therefore, intelligent guides of family planning are a profoundly important ingredient in his quest for security and a decent life. There are mountainous obstacles still separating Negroes from a normal existence. Yet one element in stabilizing his life would be an understanding of and easy access to the means to develop a family related in size to his community environment and to the income potential he can command.”

He added, “Negroes were once bred by slave owners to be sold as merchandise. They do not welcome any solution which involves population breeding as a weapon. They are instinctively sympathetic to all who offer methods that will improve their lives and offer them fair opportunity to develop and advance as all other people in our society. For these reasons we are natural allies of those who seek to inject any form of planning in our society that enriches life and guarantees the right to exist in freedom and dignity.”

King’s views on gay rights are a little more opaque. He apparently never addressed the issue in public. This is not unusual; in the early 1960s, very few people were openly advocating for LGBT rights.

Yet the evidence that does exist points toward tolerance. One of King’s top lieutenants, Bayard Rustin, was openly gay. King resisted calls to get rid of Rustin, and historians note that the civil-rights leader never gave an anti-gay sermon or made a public comment critical of gays. The FBI secretly recorded private telephone conservations of King’s. There is no anti-gay sentiment in these as well.

Coretta Scott King went on to become a strong champion of LGBT rights and has asserted that had her husband lived, he would have been supportive too.

(Nor did King support the Religious Right on school prayer. In a 1965 interview, he endorsed the Supreme Court rulings and noted that his nemesis, Gov. George Wallace of Alabama, stood on the other side. Observed King, “In a pluralistic society such as ours, who is to determine what prayer shall be spoken, and by whom? Legally, constitutionally or otherwise, the state certainly has no such right. I am strongly opposed to the efforts that have been made to nullify the decision. They have been motivated, I think, by little more than the wish to embarrass the Supreme Court. When I saw Brother Wallace going up to Washington to testify against the decision at the congressional hearings, it only strengthened my conviction that the decision was right.”)

But perhaps the best evidence against the “King-as-social-conservative” line is an honest appraisal of the man’s work and an examination of his character. King dedicated his life to expanding rights and opportunities for the oppressed. He challenged the privileged; he did not comfort them.

If King were alive today, I don't believe he would be standing alongside the likes of Tony Perkins, Ralph Reed, Jerry Falwell Jr., etc. Rather, I suspect he'd be opposing their religious supremacism, challenging their interpretation of the scriptures and rebuking everything they stand for.