You may recall that last month Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) and I
sparred over same-sex marriage
on “Morning Joe.” You may also recall that at the end of the interview,
the show’s anchor, Joe Scarborough, asked me, “[W]ould you compare the
civil rights struggles of African Americans over 300 years in America to
marriage equity?” Without hesitation, I said, “Yes.”
“It’s an issue of civil rights, as you said. It’s an issue of
equality. It’s an issue of equal treatment under the law,” I said. “No
one is asking for special rights. No one is asking for any kind of
special favors. We’re just looking for the same rights and
responsibilities that come with marriage and also the protections that
are provided under marriage. In that regard overall we’re talking about a
civil rights issue and what African Americans continue to struggle with
is exactly what lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are
struggling with today.”
That didn’t go over so well with more than a few African Americans.
They don’t see the struggles as comparable, equivalent or even related.
Last Wednesday, @Brokenb4God tweeted to me, “@CapehartJ still can’t
believe u think the choice of being gay is congruent to the struggle of
blacks. Ain’t never seen no gay plantations!”
Clearly, she’s from the misguided
pray-the-gay-away
cabal, so no need to address that. I’ll leave the cheap and provocative
“gay plantations” stink bomb alone, too, and get to my main point. What
links the two struggles is the quest for equality, dignity and equal
protection under the law. In short, gay rights are civil rights. It’s
that simple.
Bullying and murder
Both African Americans and gays have been targeted because of who they are.
Tyler Clementi
jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge after discovering
his roommate allegedly using a webcam to livestream his sexual
encounter with another man.
The trial of that roommate, Dharun Ravi, is going on right now in New Jersey.
Clementi’s September 2010 suicide drew national attention to bullying
of young people, particularly gay teens. Back then I wrote about the
harrowing week that month when there were
five reports of suicides
of young men and boys who felt they had no other way to end the
bullying, harassment or invasion of privacy they endured because they
were gay or perceived to be gay.
Seth Walsh,
13, hanged himself in his California back yard on Sept. 19. Rutgers
University freshman Tyler Clementi, 18, jumped off the George Washington
Bridge on Sept. 22. Asher Brown,13, from Houston shot himself in the head on Sept. 23. Raymond Chase,
19, from New York hanged himself in his dorm room at Johnson &
Wales University in Rhode Island on Sept. 29. The circumstances
surrounding the Sept. 30 death of a 14-year-old Indiana boy remain
unclear, but he has been included in reports on this sad issue.
There have been many more, too many more, since then.
Their deaths came 12 years after the
horrific murder
of gay college student Matthew Shepard. At a bar in Laramie, Wyo., in
October 1998, Shepard met two men who said they were also gay. They
kidnapped, robbed and pistol-whipped him before tying him to a fence. He
died five days later. Shepard’s shocking killing came four months after
another murder that shook the national conscience. A black man named
James Byrd
was kidnapped by three white men, chained to the back of a pick-up
truck and dragged more than three miles in June 1998. His decapitated
body was found outside the small town of Jasper, Tex. According to the
Jasper district attorney at the time, two of Byrd’s killers had racist
tattoos and were supporters of the Ku Klux Klan.
Both murders sparked a national debate on hate crimes that culminated in passage of the
Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act,
which President Obama signed into law in October 2009. The bullying
that has gained national attention of late has the attention of
the Obamas and
the administration and pop icon
Lady Gaga.
VIDEO INTERVIEW: John Lewis - You Cannot Tell People They Cannot Fall In Love
Rep. John Lewis from Georgia argues passionately against DOMA in the
debate over the legislation in 1996, as shown in the documentary "Tying
the Knot". Highly recommended.
Denied equal protection: the right to marry
Both African Americans and gays have been denied equal access to the
rights, responsibilities and protections the Constitution provides. Just
last week,
Maryland became the eighth state in the country to legalize same-sex marriage.
Washington State
joined the club on Feb. 13. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) vetoed a
marriage equality bill last month and called for a public referendum.
Putting the rights of a minority up to a popular vote is wrong,
un-American and immoral. And yet voters in New Jersey and Maryland very
well may do just that in November.
Meanwhile, in lawsuits across the country, lesbians and gay men are
fighting for legal recognition of their relationships by challenging
state laws that deny it and the so-called Defense of Marriage Act
(DOMA). Same-sex marriage was legal in California until voters passed
Proposition 8 in 2008. A challenge to that ban is wending its way
through the federal court system and is getting knocked as
unconstitutional at every turn.
And those who are already legally married are demanding equal rights.
Karen Golinski
was legally married to her partner of more than 20 years in California
in 2008. But when the federal employee applied for health benefits for
her spouse, she was denied thanks to DOMA. Last week, the U.S. District
Court for the Northern District of California
ruled in
Golinski v. Office of Personnel Management
that Section 3 of the statute was unconstitutional because it violated her equal protection rights under the Constitution.
In this matter, the Court finds that DOMA, as applied to Ms.
Golinski, violates her right to equal protection of the law under the
Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution by, without
substantial justification or rational basis, refusing to recognize her
lawful marriage to prevent provision of health insurance coverage to her
spouse.
That’s a narrowly tailored argument the judge is making there. But
“as applied to Ms. Golinski” could be replaced by millions of other
names and “to prevent provision of health insurance coverage to her
spouse” could be replaced by any number of the
1,138 rights and benefits
denied to same-sex couples because of DOMA. And as I wrote last month,
the inability to file joint federal tax returns, and avail themselves of
Social Security survivor benefits or child tax credits compounds the
income inequality and
financial insecurity
of gay and lesbian families. All because the person they love is of the
same gender. This insecurity is exacerbated by the fact that you can
still be fired because of your sexual orientation in
29 states. That number goes up to 34 if you’re transgender.
VIDEO INTERVIEW: A Conversation With... Jonathan Capehart & Julian Bond
Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart speaks with former
NAACP chairman Julian Bond about the intersection of gay rights and
civil rights.
WATCH: http://youtu.be/6Exu6dG1E_Q
Black leaders
African American
resistance to same-sex marriage and
linking the quest
for it to the black civil rights movement emerged again in the push for
marriage equality in Maryland. But an excellent counter to that are
three black leaders who have been unashamed and vocal in their support
of gay rights and who see the struggle of lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender Americans as part of what they’ve fought for their entire
lives: equality.
Rev. Al Sharpton,
long a proponent of marriage equality,
lent his voice to the successful effort in Maryland.
All of us must fight for what’s fair and for what’s right....Maryland, the time is now. Let’s be fair. Let’s do the right thing.
When DOMA came up for a vote in 1996,
civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) delivered an impassioned speech on the House floor before voting against the measure.
You cannot tell people they cannot fall in love. Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. used to say when people talked about interracial
marriages, and I quote, ‘Races do not fall in love and get married.
Individuals fall in love and get married.’ Why don’t you want your
fellow men and women, your fellow Americans to be happy? Why do you
attack them? Why do you want to destroy the love they hold in their
hearts? Why do you want to crush their hopes, their dreams, their
longings, their aspirations? We are talking about human beings, people
like you, people who want to get married, buy a house, and spend their
lives with the one they love. They have done no wrong.
VIDEO: The Reverand Al Sharpton supports Marriage Equality.
In a
2003 opinion piece
for the Boston Globe, Lewis wrote, “I have fought too hard and too long
against discrimination based on race and color not to stand up against
discrimination based on sexual orientation. I’ve heard the reasons for
opposing civil marriage for same-sex couples. Cut through the
distractions, and they stink of the same fear, hatred, and intolerance I
have known in racism and in bigotry.”
Civil rights icon Julian Bond told me during
an interview
for the PBS program “In The Life” in 2008, “Black people, of all
people, should not oppose equality. It does not matter the rationale –
religious, cultural, pseudo-scientific. No people of good will should
oppose marriage equality. And they should not think civil unions are a
substitute. At best, civil unions are separate but equal. And we all
know separate is never equal.”
When I asked Bond what is the connection between the black civil
rights movement and its gay counterpart, he said it was the immutable
characteristics of the individuals involved. “You are what you are,” he
said, “and you cannot be discriminated against in this country for what
you are.
“And the fact that the black civil rights movement came to public attention before the gay civil rights movement, which is
existing at the same time but I don’t think well known to people
. . .
These draw from each other. And the gay movement draws tactics and
techniques and songs and slogans. As did the Hispanic movement, as did
the women’s movement.”
Men and women picket the White House on May 29, 1965, in a protest organized by the Mattachine Society of Washington
(
File photo - United Press International
)
The hard work of the late
Frank Kameny and the late
Barbara Gittings attest to Bond’s remarks.
“It’s not that these movements are taking from us because the black
movement took from other movements before us,” Bond continued. “We took
from the labor movement. And I never heard anyone from the labor
movement complaining about this. We ought to be proud of this and say,
‘Look what we did. We created a model that other people have
followed.’ ”
Black people led the way to this nation being more fair and
equitable. That some vigorously oppose LGBT Americans following in their
footsteps, seeing kinship in their cause, is dreadful. As Bond said,
“Black people, of all people, should not oppose equality.” And he’s
right.
