Sheryl McCarthy is pretty close to my own feelings about "Gay Marriage" in this article:
Gay Marriage Adds One More Civil Right
Quite a few Americans are up in arms about recent steps in Vermont and Massachusetts toward legalizing homosexual unions. That's why Massachusetts lawmakers are trying to amend the state constitution to ban homosexual marriage outright. Many other states have passed pre-emptive laws, and a growing movement that seems to have the Bush administration's support wants to insert a ban in the federal Constitution.
Which is why I loved the Massachusetts' courts' comparison to Brown. "For the first time a court explained with such clarity why a lesser status for committed gay couples can never be acceptable," says David Buckel, director of the marriage project of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. "It's essentially a governmentally affixed badge of inferiority."
So many parallels exist between what's happening in the gay-rights movement and what occurred in previous civil-rights movements. The same angry and emotional arguments being made against homosexuals who want the right to marry were made against blacks who wanted to attend the same schools, eat in the same restaurants, hold the same kinds of jobs and live in the same neighborhoods as whites, and against women who wanted to vote, serve on juries, attend medical school, and be hired for the same jobs as men: "It's not natural. It will upset the social order, and destroy our way of life. It's against religious teachings."
When blacks and women won their respective rights, however, the prediction that civilization would crumble didn't come to pass. And, while it's true that marriage is often consecrated by religion, it's essentially a function of the civil law. It's ironic that some members of the very groups that fought so long and hard for their own rights are now using the same arguments against homosexuals that were used against them.
All emphasis mine. I'm glad there are POC who fight for equality and balance out the Black bigots on the wrong side of justice.
Posted by ronn at February 16, 2004 07:28 PM