Julie Mae, how many times do I have to tell you this is not a civil rights issue. It may be a benefits issue, but it has no resemblance to the civil rights struggle of the 20th century.
This is stunning to me. I would ask how old you are or what cave you were hiding in for the last 50 years, but it would seem rude and break my policy of no personal questions. So, let’s see:
Let’s compare this to the Gay movement with the Civil Rights Movement of the 20th century.
**1) Are gays secure in their homes? **
*Yes, and if not I will personally fight for that right. *
NO! If they are more secure now, as black Americans are more secure now, it’s because we have been fighting this battle for decades. And, it’s way easier to hide gayness from your neighbors than blackness.
They are also not secure on the street. Not from “straight” thugs or bully cops.
Have their homes been attacked? yes Have they been vandalized? yes
**2) Have gays been denied the right to vote? **
No
I have no idea if some gay person somewhere was turned away from a polling place because they were gay. Probably. But not in wholesale numbers because you usually can’t identify them on sight. However:
Have they been lynched, beaten, tied to fences and clubbed to death?
YES. YES,YES,YES,YES .
**3) Have gays been restricted on where they can live? **
No.
YES. In the City and County of Denver until sometime in the 1980s, very recently, two unmarried or unrelated in the first degree persons could not purchase a residential property or occupy one as tenants. That’s just one case, there were laws like this all over the country right up to the 80s.
Those are laws, not just people who wouldn’t rent to them. And there were plenty, so, gays in most urban areas ended up having to live in the more blighted areas of town in substandard housing far below what they could afford. Probably those neighborhoods contributed to some of the problems their children had which their nicer suburbanite counterparts didn’t have to contend with.
OTOH, marginal neighborhoods where gays bought homes saw a decrease in crime and a rise in property values as they spent their incomes restoring the homes and landscaping properties.
4) Have gays been denied access to education?
No.
Yes, when they were identified as gay, or even suspected of it, many boys were ejected from private schools and in particular Catholic schools.
5) Have gays been denied employment?
No.
I swear, you just made this up as a joke or something. Yes, of course they have, as is seen in court cases they filed over it which finally got the Court to say you cannot discriminate against a person on the basis of their sexual orientation? OF COURSE there were. Gay teachers? Omigosh, tarred and feathered for life. Did you not ever watch Madmen where the art director was fired for being gay? Do you think that was just made up? Then there is the military, you do remember you couldn’t get a job in the military if you were gay?
Where do you think that famous “closet” came from? You think gay folks aren’t
still losing jobs for being gay? Or hiding the fact to keep jobs? You think Rock Hudson would have been hired as a movie hunk if anyone knew he was gay? There’s a thread here on CAF where a woman just told me she couldn’t cut her hair too short as a form of penance because people whould think she was a lesbian, which happened in highschool and she was badly harrassed over it.
No discrimination against gays? There hasn’t been anything else.
**
The fight for Civil Rights has been for Inalienable rights (natural rights-granted by the Creator).
In contrast, the Gay cause is for social acceptance.
*
You know, if you aren’t old enough to know how much discrimination and violence has been directed at gay people, you sure aren’t old enough to have marched and sat in with us for black Americans, so I think maybe you don’t have a clue what the Civil Rights movement was about. Guess what?
*
It was for social acceptance. Know how you get that? By passing laws against discrimination so that the people become integrated into the society that marginalized them. Then, familiarity and time cause the hate and fear to dissipate. And anew generation thins the bizarre notions of their parents and grandparents are embarrassing to them.
Some of us are still fighting the same fight for freedom in this country. For everyone. Gay marriage is here to stay, so maybe we should start exploring the topic of the thread: the social issues that surround it, because those are what you will have to deal with.
