How does one learn who among people who lived long ago was gay? That investigating our history, determining who in the past was queer is hardly an e...
I ask you with tears in my eyes, with pain in my heart and with a mother's enduring love for her dear children, please bring equality, true full equality to my son and to all in the gay community.
Originally published on Youthradio.org, the premier source for youth generated news throughout the globe. By: Mark Anthony Waters I've been an outc...
I hate to be the one to explain this struggle to the first black president, but the equality movement is not a grab bag of rights. You don't get to reach in and see which prize you've won.
Carrie Prejean made her comments while holding the title of Miss California. California is a state that keeps voting for Proposition 8. So really, everyone is criticizing her for doing her job and worse, for being a Californian.
We have obtained exclusive footage of Carrie talking about that very subject with News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch. Take a look.
Real social change happens on the streets, by the people. Hopefully we have civic leaders who are brave enough to stand with us.
Wait is a solution seldom supported by those toiling in the pain of second-class citizenship.
When I was finally pronounced legally married, I wasn't in a church, nor a garden, nor at City Hall. I wasn't with any of my loved ones. In fact, I wasn't even with my wife.
It was the Catholic Church that stepped forward to successfully challenge anti-miscegenation law. How much longer before the law of the land applies to all its citizens, gay and straight alike?
Young, black, gay: in Akron, Ohio, what a lifeline learning from books, by Faith Berry, David Levering Lewis, and Jervis Anderson, that Langston Hu...
With Obama having stated he supports civil unions over gay marriage, the grassroots seems to be pretty far ahead of elected officials on this issue.
Leave it to Michael Eric Dyson to connect the dots between Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Ghandi, James Baldwin and Martin Luther King.
Years from now, Proposition 8 is going to be thought of as the tragedy that sparked a revolution. Gays and lesbians might find the pattern familiar: ...
Honestly, this should be a no-brainer. My home state of New York has the opportunity to provide equal protection for same-sex couples and some state s...
Today the Californian Supreme Court of CA birthed new classifications of people, the Gays & the Super-Gay; and a new legal doctrine, Almost-Equal Protection.
Stop debating whether or not gay marriage will open the door to polygamy and bestiality, and understand that marriage is an ever-changing arrangement to meet individual, social, cultural, and religious needs.
The abortion debate, I can understand. Gun control controversy: I get it. But arguing against gay marriage? No, I don't get that one at all.
The opposition may never change their minds. But their children will, and if not them then their grandchildren.
The bottom line? California can do better -- and ought to -- especially now that Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts and Iowa have given same-sex marriages an official green light.
The situation is really about whether the goal of marriage equality is seen as an incremental process leading to a positive resolution or, as with prior civil rights movements, seen as a fundamental constitutional issue.
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Prop 8 is the perfect case study for taxing churches. If you want to be a player in politics, that is your right. And if you're going to act like a Political Action Committee, you should be treated like one.
That means no more tax-free status. And an end to government handouts and the extraordinary boondoggle that goes by the name, "Faith-based initiatives."
Christopher St. John
christopherstjohnblog.com
I am a heterosexual female hispanic residing in california.I will never understand how any minority can vote to strip the rights of another individual. if it was not for the minorities that came before them and fought against discrimination and for civil rights, they would not be as comfortable in society as they are now. The minorities would not even be welcome in the camp of the white americans if not for the minorities that came before them. The minorities are only tolerated because the white voters need their vote. This win for prop 8 supporters only gives power to these intolerant people. When they feel they have power they may just begin to focus on the very minorities who helped them. I sure hope if you are a minority that you are never ganged up on and stripped of any freedoms you enjoy. And when society begins to go backwards like this, anything is possible.......
blame is being placed with the black community, because that is exactly where it belongs. Pulling up the ladder when you've climbed a little higher is very common. Not all black people voted for it, but they did by a 70-30% margin...it makes me sick to my stomach when I think about it. We gays really are the untouchables in this country, and I for one am beyond fed up, beyond disapointed. There are other places to live where one isn't made to feel like pond scum for just existing, so babies, time to pack it up and go to one of them.
I agree with you completely. I am a heterosexual hispanic female residing in california. The minorities can not even think about making this a better place for their kids There is still discrimination in this country. They should try go living in a part of the country in a state known for being racist , in an all white neighborhood and see what kind of welcome they get. They will most certainly get a reality check. I just do not know how they think. I live very close to the Mexican border and you still here people telling the hispanics to go back to their country, and they say it in a very durogatory way. They still want to close the border so my kind can not come over here anymore. I am just so baffled, I can not imagine what they were thinking. California is a very tolerant state, I just don't know how this could have happened.. I am very frustrated with this outcome of prop 8.
That's exactly right. The hypocrisy of the African American community is sickening, but I can only suspect that religion is to blame. To argue that the African American vote would not have been enough to make a difference on Prop 8 is to not hold the 70% of that community accountable for their decision to stomp on the civil rights of another minority group. California voters elected Obama by an overwhelming majority and yet these same voters still passed Prop 8 while celebrating the watershed moment of electing the first African American president. I'm disgusted. The rights of a minority should never be determined in a vote by the majority.
The problem is gay people just expected that black people would be on their side because of the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement, as well as the black community was and is based in religion, which tends to be anti-gay. To be honest the "mainstream" gay community did little if any to reach out to black voters like the religious groups did.
I can't compare interracial marriage or civil rights to gay rights. The gay community is made up of white men and white women who benefit from white privilege, and I am not saying this is right, but they have the privilege of choosing whether or not to disclose their sexuality to the world. My skin gives away my blackness. It isn't a choice I can choose to disclose or not. Gay people were never enslaved or suffered from Jim Crow laws.
It was said that in many of the protest rallies after election day many black gays felt threatened by their own white gay counterparts, which makes me think, that the gay community fails to reach out to their minority brethren.
Religion is the main cause of why Prop. 8 passed, not race.
With all that being said,I was against Prop. 8, and do believe gay people should have the right to legally marry, but I also find it insulting that blacks are expected to vote in favor of "gay rights" and liken their struggle to ours.
No one in the Gay community needs to do any "outreach". Civil rights are just that...rights!
We don't need to beg anyone for the rights we are entitled to. As a gay man I don't need your understanding and I don't care what your opinion is. I don't remember anyone asking me my opinion about your rights.
I'm ashamed today to be a Californian and I'm ashamed to be an American.
I would believe you shouldn't have to beg for rights you are entitled to as an American citizen, but blacks had to protest, get arrested, and die for our civil rights.
Mikey to be honest it seems you wouldn't care about my rights anyway, in your mind they don't affect you, and in your mind the gay world I guess is all white and all those blacks, asians, and hispanics in your community are insignificant and their struggles outside of being gay have nothing to do with you.
It's time for gay people to force their leadership to take responsibility for the rcism within their ranks and within their major organizations. Until they do they have no moral standing to lecture black people on intolerance.
Makes sense.... and since it seems that there is massive evidence of homophobia in the African American community then no one in that community has the moral standing to lecture anyone else on intolerance.
Wow I love how being black and being gay are two separate things within the minds of many gay people. That really is sad to me. Last I checked, you could be gay and black.
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