Excellent article by Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby. He clearly shows the difference between what gays are fighting for compared to the bigotry experienced and fought by blacks during the civil rights era. He breaks it down showing examples of TRUE hatred compared to their forced cries of imagined bigotry from those against same-sex marriage.
My favorite part in his article is where he writes:
“Well, let’s see. The civil rights once denied to black Americans included the right to register as a voter, the right to cast a ballot, the right to use numerous public facilities, the right to get a fair hearing in court, the right to send their children to an integrated public school, and the right to equal opportunity in housing and employment. Have gay people been denied any of these rights? Have they been forced to sit in the back of buses? Confined to segregated neighborhoods? Barred from serving on juries? Subjected to systematic economic exploitation?”
Absolutely great writing with excellent points. The shame of gays becoming angry at blacks for not “understanding their plight” as if we share the same experiences of bigotry. We don’t and we need to get this message out to Governor Schwarzenegger and those activist judges: Gay Rights do not equal Black Civil Rights! Sexual preference is changeable but race is inherent and can never be changed.
Jacoby goes on to describe how ridiculous it is of gays trying to equate their rights to those civil rights of the past by saying:
“Plainly, declining to change the timeless definition of marriage deprives no one of “the civil rights once denied” to blacks, and it is an absurdity to claim otherwise. It is also a poisonous slur:”
He also makes the excellent point that if support of Prop 8 means we’re all bigots, then blacks are no better than the very racists who mistreated them in the past! We blacks overwhelmingly rejected same-sex marriage and why? Jeff Jacoby explains it best when he said this:
“. . . because they know only too well what real bigotry looks like.” (warning, very graphic image of lynching, something I’m sure no gay today has had to endure as a fact of life).
So the message to gays should be this: STOP PLAYING THE RACE CARD!
Please read the complete article here on the Boston Globe:
Playing the Race Card on Gay Marriage – Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe Columnist
ADDENDUM: See California’s Governor Schwarzenegger play the race card using interracial marriages: (more…)
