One of the pictures above is of slavery, a two-hundred-plus year old American institution with millions of casualties, and the other is of gay marriage. If you're Harvey Fierstein, you probably won't be able to tell the difference. Others won't have much a problem, since they don't have a whole lot in common. Fierstein writes today on The Huffington Post an open letter to President Obama, comparing his views on gay marriage to Abe Lincoln's (early) views on slavery.
Lincoln was always against slavery and was an early opponent of expansion into the western territories. The South feared he'd try to end slavery, which caused states to secede from the Union after his election. Although the Civil War was originally fought simply to preserve the Union, slavery wasn't far from anyone's mind.
Lincoln did become more progressive on his personal views of African-Americans during his Presidency, he hadn't known many before, becoming friendly with Frederick Douglass. He certainly evolved on the issue, but the quote that Fierstein picks at the beginning is cherry-picked and doesn't accurately reflect Lincoln's position on slavery at the time. Although he was a product of the culture, he always abhorred slavery.
Slavery and gay marriage are not similar issues. They don't carry equal moral weight and it's insulting to suggest that they do. Would Mr. Fierstein have used the Holocaust so casually in a weak analogy? Probably not. The gay rights struggle cannot be defined by looking at the end of the slave trade, or even the black civil rights movement. It's it's own movement, existing in it's own place in time. The sooner we stop trying to equate our movements with past ones the better.
President Obama should be for gay marriage. There isn't a single objective argument against it that isn't plain bigotry. We don't need Abe Lincoln to know that.
Crossposted on Ryan J. Davis Blogs. Follow Ryan on Twitter.
With his extremist comment comparing anti- gay marriage to slavery, Harvey Feirstein is also likely to become the next Sean Delonas. I agree totally with Mr. Ryan that: Slavery and gay marriage are not similar issues. They don't carry equal moral weight and it's insulting to suggest that they do.
Also, gay marriage advocates still fail to realize that their issue is an overwhelmingly a white gay issue. Black gays have many more urgent concerns than g.m.:
http://www.jasmynecannick.com/blog/?p=2860
If you want to make a comparison within living memory, you can compare the violent reaction against integration to the internment, castration, psychosurgery, and outright torture that gays were subjected to at the same time.
This is absurd! You obviously are not familiar with institutionalized racism in America. Whether you want to believe it or not, many African Americans are still enslaved in America. Wow. White privilege is a powerful thing!
And yes, that comparison has been made many times on this site.
WE do not have equal rights...and WE helped you get yours, you should be willing to allow us the same.... (SEE BAYARD RUSTIN)
Gays have been in concentration camps, burned at the stake, killed, imprisoned, denied rights, and discriminated against. Gays are the ONLY minority that is hated by their own family members. Gay teen suicide is 6 times higher than straight teens and it is all because of people like you seeing that our fight is not equal, thus doesn't deserve the respect that you expect.....
OUR FIGHT IS EQUAL TO YOURS...... and even MORE NOW....
WAKE UP, both groups still have prejudice and are fighting the same conservatives. Why be on their side in this fight? It is hypocritical.
Being gay is an innate, biological characteristic, like being black--or white. Or male or female.
You might not want to accept that reality, but it is a reality.
Discrimination against gay people is discrimination. You can say that the history is not equivalent, but the history of no two groups is. However, the discrimination is eerily familiar.
There are so many people who want to protect this president from criticism. I want to protect him from criticism, too--by encouraging him to do the right thing...
How is invoking the Holocaust any different from invoking slavery? The discrimination is nowhere familar. THERE ARE 100 MILLION AFRICAN BODIES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE ATLANTIC AS A RESULT OF THE SLAVE TRADE!!!!! The discrimination associated with over 400 years of oppression is in no way comparable.
Ryan, thank you so much for acknowledging this insane comparison and respecting our history. It is appreciated.
"Would Mr. Firestein have used the Holocaust so casually in a weak analogy?" First, I don't see Firestein's use of Lincoln's evolution from Abolitionist to chagrined champion to equal rights for all as casual. I can't speak for Firestein's thoughts on the Holocaust, but I will say that this is an old saw easily dismissed. The hatred and bigotry fomented against Jews as a hostile underpinning to German nationalism, and its eventual institutionalization under the Nazis is what made the holocaust possible. Only when vile bigotry is made the law of the land can such a horror occur. The issue is hatred and bigotry. We cannot eradicate it from society if we do not start by eradicating it from our laws. That's the path to the "better angels of our nature". That's the analogy to Lincoln.
During the late twentieth century, gay bashing was endorsed by Christian judges who read Leviticus from the bench as an indictment of the victim. In this sense the court system treated gays as badly in the late twentieth century as it had treated blacks in the early twentieth century.
.......no. What he's trying to do is to use the spectre and stigma of the brutality of the Slave era as an disingenuous guilt bully club to make a sophistic comparison and argument that he knows only too well is horribly fallacious on oh so many levels.
He obviously does it because it works on 2 levels. One; it blunts any dissension from white liberals using white liberal guilt from the slave era and segragation days. And Two; it's supposed to rile up blacks (and other minorities) by reminding them that they also suffered like this in their history. Of course all it does is annoy and anger blacks since the comparison is not only hollow but exploitative. Why else do you think he doesn't draw comparisons to the Holocaust? He knows he'll be called out by other Jewish bloggers on that.
Disingenuous deceptive argumentation and logic at its best. Only Republicans do it better.
And he's done it before during the whole Rick Warren controversy of the inauguration going as far as to make a tenuous comparison between Obama (for selecting Warren) to a KKK leader.
Because it didn't happen in the USA.
I agree we have merits to our struggles that make them stand on their own, but you missed the point of Harvey's post. An analogy doesn't have to be perfect to show that things need to change. Can we stop the infighting now and agree that people may strive for the same goals with different voices and messages?
Martin Luther King, Jr said it himself that when one person is oppressed, all are oppressed (my paraphrase). Even he didn't qualify one type being distinct from the other. Quite the contrary actually.
.....yes, but when it (the analogy) is so imperfect and invalid (such comparing, oh I don't know, slavery? to Gay marriage rights), it stands to insult and aggravate the ones to whom the analogy or comparison is being made.
There's such a thing as respecting other people's history even while seeking to make your case. Which is probably why you don't see Harvey making a lot of comparisons of the Gay civil rights movement to the Holocaust and Anti-Semitism. And him more than anyone else.
Have you ever asked yourself why you hardly ever hear of black people comparing their history in Slavery and the segregation era, to the Holocaust in Germany?
No, but the Holocaust happened in Europe and wasn't about slavery. It was about extermination. Why is that so difficult for you to understand? The US constitution guarantees equal rights and what happened in Germany really isn't relevant.
After all, I don't recall blacks ever having to recall the suffering of the Serfs in the Russian empire, or the Jewish slaves in ancient Egypt, to try to make their voices heard and struggles valid.
Why the need to make the easiest and most graphic (in our collective consciousness and memory) and frankly speaking, laziest comparison just so your struggle can be considered a valid struggle or so you can be taken seriously?
Ever consider the flip side of that coin where black people might actually begin to feel like their past and painful history is getting exploited by the likes of Fierstein to make their cases into trying to bully the president to do their biding? And people wonder why the black community and the Gay community seem to have such animosity between them.
A word to the wise: if you don't want to be called homophobic, don't act homophobic.