Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Why Gays Can't Wait - Gay Rights is Civil Rights
Gay rights is civil rights.
To be clear, President Obama did not exactly use those words. But about five minutes into his roughly 20-minute address, Obama echoed the sentiment at the black-tie, star-studded fundraising event hosted by the Human Rights Campaign, the country's largest gay advocacy group. Drawing a line between the long, painful struggle of black Americans to the festering frustration of gay Americans that his administration has not done enough for them, Obama said: "It's not for me to tell you to be patient, any more than it was for others to counsel patience to African Americans petioning for equal rights half a century ago."
The rhetoric was striking. The country's first minority president -- a son and student of the black civil rights movement -- making a historical connection, tying two groups who've been denied full citizenship.
The image was striking, too, as he told the crowd that "while some may wish to define you solely by your sexual orientation or gender identity alone, you know and I know that none of us wants to be defined by just one part of what makes us whole." In his books and in his speeches, the question of identity -- his father black, his mother white, his early life more transient than most -- has been at his core.
And all woven together, the rhetoric and the image, the moment and the man, gay Americans and those who support their cause increasingly wonder: If not now -- with a Democratic Congress in power, with a Democratic president who says directly to the audience and cameras that "I'm here with you in that fight" -- then when? If not now, right now, then when?
Expectations were high days before Obama said a word in what was called his "big gay rights speech." Big, it certainly was, aired live on C-SPAN and CNN, dissected and analyzed in real-time on various blogs and social networking sites. Another speech, more words, not enough actions -- read many of the comments before the speech. A quick survey of various gay blogs, including AMERICAblog and Pam's House Blend, indicated that the reaction was about the same afterwards.
Wrote AMERICAblog's John Arovosis:
What did President Obama say new tonight? Absolutely nothing. What did the Human Rights Campaign get in exchange for once again giving our president cover for all of his broken promises to our community? Absolutely nothing.
Wrote Pam's House Blend's Pam Spaulding:
If you're an activist or citizen looking for timelines, actions, use of the bully pulpit, ANYTHING that would indicate to the community that our President was serious about moving on the laundry list of LGBT issues any time soon, you would call it a fail.
As I watched the live stream of the speech online, I flipped through the pages "Why We Can't Wait," the impassioned, 166-page account of segregated Birmingham written by Martin Luther King, Jr., who, like Obama, was a recipient of the Noble Peace Prize. I combed through the chapters, re-reading some of the lines I had highlighted years ago while a student at San Francisco State University. The quote on the book cover read: "Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
Why gays can't wait is because 29 states ban same-sex marriages, while the Defense of Marriage Act waits to be repealed. Why gays can't wait is because gays and lesbians serving in the U.S. military, while being sent to fight wars, can't be open about who they are. Why gays can't wait is because people lose their jobs merely because they are gay. Why gays can't wait is because gay rights, after all, is civil rights.
Obama knows this. He's said as much. Now it's time for actions.
Everyone is watching.
- Posted in
27 Comments so far
Show AllTo people who claim that LGBT rights aren't a civil rights issue:
"Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood"
"We have a lot more work to do in our common struggle against bigotry and discrimination. I say 'common struggle' because I believe very strongly that all forms of bigotry and discrimination are equally wrong and should be opposed by right-thinking Americans everywhere. Freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation is surely a fundamental human right in any great democracy, as much as freedom from racial, religious, gender or ethnic discrimination."
"I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people. ... But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream, to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people."
-- Coretta Scott King
"I want to talk about "civil rights" because I believe "gay rights" are "civil rights."
" That is why, at its February Board meeting two years ago, the NAACP unanimously passed a resolution stating:
"[W]e shall pursue all legal and constitutional means to support non-discriminatory policies and practices against persons based on race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality or cultural background."
"
ich struck down anti-miscegenation laws and, many years later, allowed my wife and me to marry in the state that declares "Virginia is for lovers."
"Then, as now, proponents of marriage-as-is wanted to amend the United States Constitution. Introducing a Constitutional amendment in 1911 to ban interracial marriage, Rep. Seaborn Roddenberry of my former home state of Georgia argued:
"Intermarriage between whites and blacks is repulsive and averse to every sentiment of pure American spirit. It is abhorrent and repugnant. It is subversive to social peace. It is destructive of moral supremacy."
Sound familiar?
"
"Gay and lesbian rights are not "special rights" in any way. It isn't "special" to be free from discrimination - it is an ordinary, universal entitlement of citizenship. The right not to be discriminated against is a common-place claim we all expect to enjoy under our laws and our founding document, the Constitution. That many had to struggle to gain these rights makes them precious - it does not make them special, and it does not reserve them only for me or restrict them from others."
"No parallel between movements for rights is exact. African-Americans are the only Americans who were enslaved for more than two centuries, and people of color carry the badge of who we are on our faces. But we are far from the only people suffering discrimination - sadly, so do many others. They deserve the law's protections and civil rights, too. "
"Many gays and lesbians worked side by side with me in the '60s civil rights movement. Am I to now tell them "thanks" for risking life and limb helping me win my rights - but they are excluded because of a condition of their birth? That they cannot share now in the victories they helped to win? That having accepted and embraced them as partners in a common struggle, I can now turn my back on them and deny them the rights they helped me win, that I enjoy because of them?
Not a chance. "
"Marriage is a civil right. If you don't want gay people to marry in your church, all right. But you cannot say they can't be married in City Hall because of your religious beliefs.
Religious extremists want to install a Christian caliphate in America, replacing laws debated by men with laws dictated by religion. They are cafeteria Christians, picking a Biblical injunction from column A while ignoring those from columns B through Z.
Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. Does this apply to Mexicans or Canadians or both?
Exodus 21:7 sanctions selling my daughter into slavery. I have two very pretty daughters - what would be a fair price for the pair?
Leviticus 15:19-24 forbids me from having contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness. The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women seem to take offense. Are there any here? If so, should they be asked to leave?
My neighbors insist on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states they should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill them myself, or should I ask the police to do it?
Leviticus 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here? "
-- Julian Bond, NAACP chair
"
But I say tonight, to you as members of Equality Alabama, you must never ever give up. You must never ever give in. You must never ever give out. You must keep your faith and keep your eyes on the prize."
"
I thought about where I stood that day and when I spoke. And in that speech on August 28, 1963, one of the lines that I used, said "You tell us to wait, you tell us to be patient. We cannot wait; we cannot be patient."
And as a community you will send today, tonight, that you cannot wait; you cannot be patient. You want your freedom and you want it now."
"
A few years ago, in Alabama, in Georgia, in Virginia, and all across the South, whites and blacks could not fall in love and get married. Dr. King used to say, "Races don't fall in love and get married. individuals fall in love and get married. Two loving individuals want to get married, let them be, let it happen".
So our struggle is all one struggle. It is not a struggle that lasts just for one day, one week, or one month or one year. It is a struggle of a lifetime, to build a beloved community. A community at peace with itself, that recognizes dignity and the worth of every human being.
I come here tonight, to tell you to hang in there. To not to give up, to keep your faith, and to keep your eyes on the prize. That right here in Birmingham, right here in the state of Alabama, right here in the American South, the day will come, when we will look back on this period and laugh about ourselves. And say we were so silly; the stars didn't fall over Alabama, because people fell in love and got married. It's not gonna fall; the sky's not gonna fall.
So, be yourselves, be at peace with yourself. When you see something that is so dear and so necessary and so right, speak up, speak out.
When I growing up, only about 150 miles from here, in the feel of Troy, in the feel of Montgomery, feel of Tuskegee, and I saw those signs that said 'white men', 'colored men', 'white women', 'colored women', 'white waiting', 'color waiting' and I'd come home and ask my mother, ask my father, and my grandparents and my great-grandparents, why segregation? Why racial discrimination? And they would say, "That's the way it is. Don't get in the way. Don't get into trouble."
Well, one day I was inspired to get in trouble and get in the way, and for almost fifty years, I've been getting in the way and getting into trouble.
We must find a way to get in the way. Don't be intimidated. Be not afraid. Just go for it. Keep pulling and keep pushing. We're going to change, not just the South, but we're gonna change America. And our country is gonna be a much better country and as a people, we are gonna be a much better people. That day will come. It will come sooner than many of us think."
-- John Lewis
So gays can't wait to openly kill for American Imperialism? Such a pity. And this is human rights? Give me a break.
Obama has a demonstrated talent for suckering 'progressives' into belleving his BS
Keep the 'change'
I belong to a religion that maintains that homo-sexual relations are morally wrong. My religion also says that adullterous relations are morally wrong. I have no problems working with either.
As an employer, I have a different viewpoint on hiring and working with both adulterous and homosexual individuals. Adulterers generate a basic problem with trust and honesty. Someone who lies and maintains a lie with their avowed spouse is likely to be untrustworthy in other areas, including their work responsibilities. Additionally, such activity usually takes a lot of time and effort, much of it taken from their commitments to their employer. I don't long employ people I can't trust.
A quite different phenomenon occurs with a small percentage of gay employees. A relatively small number put their sexuality and personal relationships at the top of their priorities, even for the hours at work. Inevitably, their productivity, attendance, and quality of work suffers, because of the inattention given to it. This is a problem shared by a tiny number of straights with "complex" relationships, folks who have side-businesses, parents who make inadequate child-care provisions, and anyone who does not take their commitment to their employment seriously.
As I once told an staffing agency, "I don't care whether the candidate is a green hermaphrodite from Jupiter, as long as I can trust them to do the job."
Your employment application form must be a lot of fun. I presume if someone checks "no" to the "involved in adulterous relationship" or "queer" questions, you either investigate further, or fire them if you discover evidence that they lied.
I'm glad to hear that only a small number of wage slaves prove so treacherous as to put their actual messy lives ahead of their employment responsibilities.
It's a shame, though, how a few irresponsible adulterers and queers spoil it for the rest of us.
Somehow, I'm not surprised that staffing agencies are forced to scan the outer planets to find wage slaves free from distractions and "other priorities", as Deadeye Dick Cheney once said.
With luck, you'll hold out until the they finally produce a robot, cyborg, or android programmed to serve its employer to the exclusion of all else.
· Yr Obd't Servant
On the contrary, I presume that those who agree to trade their time and efforts for the money they are paid, will in fact do as they agree. Only when the agreement is broken does any question take place.
My point is that those who cheat on their life partners almost inevitably are found to be cheating everyone in their life, including their employer. And I really do care that adulterers are hurting their families. Gay folks are no more or less likely to cause problems at work than any other "group" you might name.
And I don't use employment application forms. An introductory letter and resume tell me that they can read and write, and a phone interview establishes whether I want to meet them. Face-to-face, I find out whether they will fit with the job and the people in the company. Everything else is OJT.
As to the "wage slave" question, I provide tremendous flexibility in work hours and environments, paid time off for vacations and sick leave and family needs, substantial profit-sharing bonuses, and bonuses for individual performance for everyone from the guy who packs boxes in the warehouse to the CFO. Everyone is on salary, as opposed to hourly wages, and are paid overtime unless they are in commissioned sales. Most of my senior sales execs make more money than I do, and the ones that don't get more training or a better territory. The junior account managers are on salary until their commissions outstrip their salary base. I also pay for personal and professional development classes for anyone who wants to take one and provide time off for them to do so. Would you trade your job for one like that?
"The business of America is business"
Calvin Coolidge
For better or for worse, the LBGT community will be accepted when they have demonstratd that they are "good for business" and not a monment sooner. The same with women, Muslims, African, Latino, or Asian Americans. It was in times past also true of Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Irish, Slavic, and Mediterranian Europeans.
The US (as measured by its actions and not the empty piety of its rhetoric) has been and remains chiefly interested in wealth accumulation whether by hook, crook, or honest effort.
Poet
It's the business of America that has to be changed, not more people to subscribe to theft, murder, rape, torture, promotion of starvation and grinding poverty.
THIS is the change we need Mr. Obama, NOW, DESPERATELY.
Did you know that Ronald Reagan, when he moved into the White House, took down a picture of Thomas Jefferson and put one in its place of Calvin Coolidge?
You are exactly right Poet, and I know stupidity when I see it. "We have given our hearts away---a sordid boon".
First and foremost, every gay should deplore the military, not look to serve it openly. Where's the honor of being an openly gay contract killer?
Second, marriage is a decadent, failed and reactionary human institution. Gays should reject it all together, not try to be part of it.
Gays should fight for peace, justice and equality for all, not just these two narrow-minded losing issues.
All true of course, but as long as a killing machine is a part of American culture, Gays should not be excluded. Marriage is, as you said a failed human institution. It is a cover for business arrangements, prostitution, and bettering one's social and economic status, and of course making hasty decisions because one wants frequent and if necessary, forcible sex.
I don't know of one happy marriage. I know a lot of people.
Gays are just like the rest of us, no better, no worse.
Anybody ever ask you when you first discovered you were heterosexual? Maybe you could be Gay if you tried? Heterosexuality is just a phase you are going through? How do you know you are heterosexual? Heterosexuality is disgusting.
For Christ's sake can't we all mind our own businesses unless someone is being hurt or forced to do something against her will, or abridging someone else's rights? It surely would solve a lot of problems.
Here are other rights gays don't have:
(1) They can be named an "enemy combatant" by the president and thrown in prison.
(2) They can be denied Habeas Corpus and kept in prison indefinitely.
(3) They can have their phone and email tapped without a court warrant.
(4) They can have their bank, medical and library records seized without proving probable cause to a judge.
In light of these facts I scratch my head in wonder why the gay community gets so upset that they can't serve openly in the military.
What am I missing here?
Now that Obama has learned that one can earn prestigious international awards simply by saying the right things, there's no stopping him!
From saying the right things, I mean.
· Yr Obd't Servant
As expected, we are greeted with comments showing a great deal of misunderstanding and thinly disguised homophobia.
Whether or not joining the military is a good or even sane idea is not the point. If joining up is a right to every other American citizen, it should be a right for Gays. What is so hard to understand about that?
As for Marriage–this may also be another institution of many failings which is an option being witheld from Gay citizens. Nevertheless, it is being witheld. Those of you who so smugly and patronizingly point out to us that marriage is not such a good deal and that we should be happy not to be a part of it, are in fact bigots who have not allowed yourselves to think about the problem in any depth. You're certainly not looking out for our best interest as your "advice" on the matter might imply.
It's rather like telling racial minorities they should be happy not to have the White mans burdens.
The "marriage" issue is not about romance, fussy and maudlin wedding, and a desire to mimic straight society. It is about kinship, equality, and respectful legal status. Why should any adult of sound mind (Straight,Gay, or whathaveyou) not be able to select his/her own next of kin? This is what Marriage does. To be able to become related to the one you love and spend your life with is the essence of Marriage. If it bothers your little heterosexual sensitivities to call it Marriage, call it a civil union if you want– just so long as you let us call it whatever we want and that it provides avery last benefit and bit of respect that all other marriages are given. Maybe you would prefer L.F.C. (Legalized Family Creation)
"As expected, we are greeted with comments showing a great deal of misunderstanding and thinly disguised homophobia."
Everyone who doesn't agree with or wish to support the homosexual agenda is labeled bigoted and/or homophobic. I respectfully submit that this kind of label-hurling is incendiary and promotes neither acceptance nor cooperation. Respect and acceptance is sought but not proffered in return. Instead, we see a kind of religious zeal replete with self-righteous indignation and condemnation. Even if gays achieve their objective under such auspices, it's likely to be a hollow victory at best.
I started to watch the speech online & then asked myself "Why would I listen to this?"
I have a problem with people who willingly misrepresent, or who indulge in outrageous non sequiturs. They are either stupid or dishonest. I tolerate the former but never the latter.
Homosexual activists are inherently dishonest when they claim 'marriage is a civil right'; implying this phrase sums it all up. It does not.
Marriage is primarily A NATURAL CONDITION and the fundamental HUMAN RIGHT OF CHILDREN TO BE LOVED, NURTURED AND PROTECTED BY A MOTHER AND FATHER, and extended family.
This is what nature intended, even if circumstances sometimes deny the full equation; and when this happens children's development is always delimited accordingly.
Homosexual relationships form no part of this equation at all and children require both parents as role models for their own future successful relationships. Social rules and laws are designed to reinforce the inviolate nature of marriage, even if crooked lawyers and politicians eternally try to make this a source of income.
A second feature of the so-called 'gay rights' cult, which in fact is more desperate than gay below the surface, is that it is not a natural element of all cultures, as claimed. There was most definitely no male homosexuality in Australian Aboriginal culture, a fact attested to by the Galiwin'ku community of Arnhem Land in 1976, and also by very angry elders in the Kimberly region a few years later.
Later research indicates that the behaviour was also absent from Kung and Inuit, and probably also Sami. The factor all cultures have in common is saturation love and affection for all children, both boys and girls, by all members of those communities, both men and women.
Homosexuality appears to occur most commonly in repressed societies; which are always hierarchical and pyramidal and militaristic. This is as opposed to flat power societies in which decisions are made as a product of total consensus. There were many such cultures and I have lived within one.
My own surveys suggest real homosexuality occurs in less than 1%, not the 15% or 30% claimed by many activists. But as I have noticed, having worked and lived with many homosexuals, lying comes naturally to most; and ethics are skewed or non-existent. To be fair, increasingly, this is becoming a characteristic of mainstream society. Rolling my eyes, I wonder why?
Finally, the various rights movements that occurred AFTER American black rights, can be traced to David Rockefeller, Rupert Murdoch and George Soros; and this includes the radical feminism that demanded power over men and other women, when it simultaneously thrust aside the 1960s feminists who simply wanted equal rights and equal opportunity. Rockefeller was not going to allow this.
As for Obama, even before he threw his hat in the presidential ring, his central adviser was (and is) Zbigniew Brzezinski, who created the military/industrial complex intelligence facility known as the Trilateral Commission, for its owner, surprise, David Rockefeller.
Be gay about that. This is your reward for being morally corrupt and stupid.
This pathetic homophobic rant from tonyryan shows one thing:hatred abound in all cultures. One has to pity the poor soul who is so mean spirited and so filled with hatred that he cannot see his own lies. This person is apparently so wracked with emotional pain that it is not likely any of logic or reason will bring him back to a sensible and loving relationship with his fellow humans. His is the kind of thinking that – if it were to prevail- would put people in death camps. Therefore he is dangerous.
You left out "obnoxious", Waldenfrosch.
His hyper-righteous screed marshals putative Scientific Proof that human homosexuality is incontrovertibly a pathology or aberration.
The rant is littered with appeals to scientific authority, as if the author has completed a deep and comprehensive study of biology, sociology, and anthropology to reach his conclusion.
He has very high intellectual standards, he lets us know as he uncoils his whip at the beginning of his attempted excoriation. He won't tolerate flawed thinking!
Yet below all the junk pseudo-science is simply his personal fantasy of how Mother Nature intended creatures to behave. Some intellectual rigor!
Methinks he doth protest too much, to say the least.
· Yr Obd't Servant
The Feminization and Masculinization of fetuses occurs across species, including homo sapians. It also occurs in plants and insects. Seems to me like it's pretty darned UNIVERSAL in the natural world. The increasing incidence of homosexuality is due to chemical pollutants throughout the ecosystem, just as are autism and many other birth defects. The culture to be condemned here is the Industrial Elite's culture of intolerance and indifference for the others they damage through their pollution in pursuit of avarice.
You might as well be watching paint dry if you are waiting for Obama to act. He is by far the biggest bull-shitter in the world today. The enormity of his BS is matched only by his lack of courage and wisdom. There, now don't you feel better?
"...the rhetoric and the image, the moment and the man, gay Americans and those who support their cause increasingly wonder: If not now -- with a Democratic Congress in power, with a Democratic president..."
JOSE ANTONIO VARGAS PAINTS AN ACCURATE PICTURE OF OBAMA:
"RHETORIC" AND "IMAGE".
OBAMA NEVER SUPPORTED GAY RIGHTS, NOT AS SENATOR AND NOT IN PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES.
OBAMA'S INTEREST IN GAYS IS SOLELY SELF-SERVING: MORE CANNON FODDER TO BENEFIT CORPORATIONS PROFITING FROM WAR.
DENNIS KUCINICH WILL PROVIDE FULL EQUAL RIGHTS TO GAYS INCLUDING MARRIAGE, NOT JUST CIVIL UNIONS.
I AM CURIOUS AS TO WHY GAYS HAVE NOT SUPPORTED DENNIS KUCINICH IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS.
Another stupid convoluted non-issue
Why can't people (on both sides) understand the difference between marriage and civil union.
All of these religions have a definition and recognition of marriage that doesn't include same-sex... which is the right of those religions and the people who belong to them
But... when the state gives special privileges and rights to only those married under those religions all of the sudden we have a problem don't we?
Why can't we get past this divisive sh*t on just one bloody issue for a change?!?
Why should an individual's sexual orientation matter one way or another, unless you are sexually interested in him/her as a partner? For the vast majority of workplaces, it shouldn't be a factor at all. Additionally, civil unions should be validated by federal law, and allow partners (whether male or female) who agree to share whatever financial arrangements they choose. Let each individual search his or her own heart for what's 'moral' and what isn't. Society as a whole has very little morality anyway; a lot of self-righteous hypocrisy perhaps, but very little morality. One's sexuality is only a fragment of the whole of their being.
Obama is a capitalist politician — he will say and do anything to remain in office, from appearing with a fundamentalist crackpot at his inauguration to promising limited reforms for LGBTs (though notably stopping short of "gay marriage).
True freedom for LGBTs will only come with the replacement of the bourgeois nuclear family — heteronormative, homophobic, aimed at transmitting property in the class that has it and obedience to authority in the class that doesn’t.
The struggle for gay equality is a minimalist demand, a petition which can be granted or refused, and which, even if granted, can be rescinded when it is expedient to do so. Equal rights within a flawed, unjust system is a wrongheaded concept, a call for parity on straight terms within a pre-¬existing framework of institutions and laws devised by and for the heterosexual majority. What I want is gay liberation — this requires a complete social transformation, integration based on demolishing existing straight culture and existing LGBT culture.
This means confronting the capitalist state and its minder, patriarchal religion in all its guises.