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If you don't mind, can you give some examples of these citizen rights that are being denied. The gay marriage "right" being denied has been established, whether we agree if marriage is truly a right or not.
I'm trying to determine what other "rights" are being denied by law or by lack thereof.
People who were denying black people civil rights seem to always have a valid reason why an apartment or home was not available. Why a job or promotion was not available anymore. People seem to be Busy when you need service in a department store, Or the other extreme and you get followed. friends who houses you are not allowed in, or friends who turn down your invitations. I once had a security guard sneak up behind me a frisk me and said"Just Checking you boy" I'm sure New York Cabby's have a valid reason for not picking up Black people.
There are too many cases to mention here. But every one who IMO mistreated another American citizen was well with in his rights and the law. I see the same things happening our Latino and Hispanic population. Its not about laws and legality or what the courts allow you to do.
Except for the fact that gays were never enslaved, lynched, beaten by cops throughout the nation, denied access to education and the vote, forced to use seperate restaurant, transportation, and restroom faciities, and do not currently suffer from economic hardship and imprisonment at many times the rate of non-gays, and are in fact among the most wealthy and well-educated of our citizenry, the comparison with, and need for, a reprise of black civil rights activism is dead on.
I see where you're going with this, that the civil rights movement was borne out of the pervasive hardships suffered by African Americans specifically. They're entitled to rights because they've suffered for them.
There are other races in the United States than black Americans and white Americans, aren't there?
And those other races as a whole have not suffered slavery or segregation, at least nowhere near the extent to which African Americans have, right?
And some of those races are also "among the most wealthy and well-educated of our citizenry," aren't they?
Because these other races haven't suffered the oppression that black Americans have, does the logic behind civil rights not apply to them?
If your answer is "of course it applies" then how do you differentiate between gay rights and the rights of any race besides African Americans? Skin color versus sexual orientation? Or as some posters have so archaeically put it, "sexual disorder"?
I think that you're implying homosexuality should not be part of this list of things that are out of one's control (race, gender,etc.) because homosexuality is a choice.
Either way, Constitutional rights have nothing to do with a group's standing or history in society. It's about equality, because denying someone certain rights based on something they have no control over (skin color) offends our morals. You don't earn Constitutional rights, you either have them or you don't.
However, given the current infantile feeblemindedness and ignorance which characterizes the majority of Americans, spoon-fed as they are by a manipulative and mendacious mainstream media, the odious and palpably false analogy of the OP continues to gain credence and will probably end with a Matthew Shepard Day holiday. On the Fifth of July, perhaps.
Free at last. Free at last. Thank Brokeback Mountain, I'm Free at last.
What an insult to African-Americans. In some ways, it is perhaps the ultimate trivialization of their tragic past and troubled present, as they struggle with REAL poverty and injustice.
Again, it seems that your real argument turns on whether homosexuality is a conscious decision or an innate, unchangeable characteristic. And God forbid it be the latter, because that would mean being gay is no different that being of any other minority group, at least as far as Constitutional rights are concerned.
Either way, please don't try to shield that argument by bringing up the atrocities that black Americans have suffered. While that's certainly relevant to the historical and social differences between the civil rights and gay rights movement, it is not logically significant to whether someone is entitled to Constitutional rights, which is at the heart of both movements.
Yes, they can be compared as they both relate to human rights and equal treatment. However, the fight for black equality is easily the greater problem. Easily! If gays are serious about this cause, they need to show this in two ways:
1) Stop discriminating against black gays within their own community. What a bunch of hypocrites to scream like manics for their own civil rights while concurrently practicing discrimination against black gays.
2) Wholeheartedly support racial equality for black people. Gays should be as passionate about equality for blacks as they are for their own rights. You can't scream for your own civil rights yet pretend as though racial discrimination against blacks no longer occurs. Gays should be supporting affirmative action just as much as they champion gay rights.
Equality for blacks is a deeper problem that cripples this society. Gays cannot scream for equal rights, yet participate in discriminating againstblacks. How absurd.
Excellent observation mate!!!
Gay people also discriminate against other gay people...YET they advocate for "equal rights"?
Indeed, it is difficult to contextualise how they want society to transform a concept such as "equal rights" into practice when, in reality, they don't embody the true meaning of the term.
Perhaps, it's all relative (or when it's convenient)......
Speaking as a heterosexual, I can tell you that there is indeed an easier, better way.
Seriously, though, I understand your argument and have given it some consideration. Even though I agree with you that gayness may indeed be an inherited genetic trait, the point is that other than racial difference, there was/is nothing inherently unusual about African-Americans which would make their full acceptance by American society inimical to accepted standards of juriprudence or our sense of right and wrong.
It was obvious to all that African Americans had the same normal sexual urges, begat children, raised families, and understood on the same deep level as caucasians the importance of conjoining the two differing sexes to the benefit and for the propagation of our species. To deny this was to deny our common humanity. This was the core truth of the civil rights struggle.
I would posit, however, that no amount of political activism on the part of homosexuals and their allies is going to bring about an acceptance on the part of the overwhelming majority of human beings -- of all races -- that homosexual behavior is anything more than an abnormal expression of the deepest, most primal urge known to most terrestial life -- the sexual, reproductive urge, or that this abnormal expression is inexplicable and alien to the overwhelming majority of human beings.
Having said that, I hasten to add that homosexuals are deserving of the full human and civil rights which all people ought to enjoy.
My point, which continues to address the topic of the OP, is that any comparison of the black struggle for basic civil rights -- that is, for their very survival as human beings, grounded as that struggle for survival was in centuries of the most demeaning and horrific oppression -- with the homosexual campaign for (I assume) public acceptance of their erotic inclinations as an acceptable alternative consonant with normal human sexuality, must of necessity founder as a an essentially absurd comparison.
The former was a struggle to gain the rights of basic humanity and the concomitant need for men and women to be free to live, to work, to have children, to vote, to own property, and to realize their potential as citizens of a democratic nation and an enlightened society. The latter expresses the desire for gay people to live a semi-parodic existence, limited by their own self-defined proclivities, but benefitting from all of the legal rights which African Americans had to wait until 1964 to enjoy, and demonstrably superior levels of economic and educational status. This is not a struggle: it's more like light opera.
The facts are that gay people have always been able to live freely, to vote, to own property, to live with and love those whom they wish, while enjoying superior levels of income and education. When those rights have been limited, legal action was forthcoming which addressed those needs and provided relief and protections. Contrast that with the centuries of lynchings, the separation of families, the chattel status, the lack of enfranchisement, and the thousands of daily realities of cruelty, poverty, unequal imprisonment, lack of access to housing, education, and employment, which was the lot of African-Americans.
The comparison of struggles is absurd on its face. Indeed, as some of the comments in this thread attest, it may even be considered insulting...
People who were denying black people civil rights seem to always have a valid reason why an apartment or home was not available. Why a job or promotion was not available anymore. People seem to be Busy when you need service in a department store, Or the other extreme and you get followed. friends who houses you are not allowed in, or friends who turn down your invitations. I once had a security guard sneak up behind me a frisk me and said"Just Checking you boy" I'm sure New York Cabby's have a valid reason for not picking up Black people.
There are too many cases to mention here. But every one who IMO mistreated another American citizen was well with in his rights and the law. I see the same things happening our Latino and Hispanic population. Its not about laws and legality or what the courts allow you to do.
Good evening thriftylefty,
Thanks for sharing your examples. I see what you mean when you say citizen rights. I thought it was something that could be remedied by law, but I think only the housing and job ones can be. But from my experiences, it seems like gays aren't having trouble with housing or employment. I would even say they are doing better than Blacks in those categories. But that's just anecdotal from someone in the housing business who has been given insight from gay friends, I won't pretend to use it as statistics. The remainder of the examples are things Blacks claim to still deal with, so I'm not sure how to remedy those besides finding a way to force to public to accept gay relationships.
As I've said before, it will be a long time, if ever, for us to have a Utopian society where everyone accepts everything about everyone, no matter what the laws are. Once the gay rights agenda is passed and accepted, there's going to be some other group that isn't being accepted but wants to be.
"Speaking as a heterosexual, I can tell you that there is indeed an easier, better way.
I don't think anyone gay or straight would argue with that.
Seriously, though, I understand your argument and have given it some consideration. Even though I agree with you that gayness may indeed be an inherited genetic trait, the point is that other than racial difference, there was/is nothing inherently unusual about African-Americans which would make their full acceptance by American society inimical to accepted standards of juriprudence or our sense of right and wrong.
It was obvious to all that African Americans had the same normal sexual urges, begat children, raised families, and understood on the same deep level as caucasians the importance of conjoining the two differing sexes to the benefit and for the propagation of our species. To deny this was to deny our common humanity. This was the core truth of the civil rights struggle.
I would posit, however, that no amount of political activism on the part of homosexuals and their allies is going to bring about an acceptance on the part of the overwhelming majority of human beings -- of all races -- that homosexual behavior is anything more than an abnormal expression of the deepest, most primal urge known to most terrestial life -- the sexual, reproductive urge, or that this abnormal expression is inexplicable and alien to the overwhelming majority of human beings."
So let me make sure I understand your position first: you accept the possibility that homosexuality may be a genetic trait, but you don't think that modern society feels that it is normal to act on it?
How the world feels about gay people concerns issues of morality, religion, differing social norms, etc that we could go on for days about. But I'm sure that has all been hashed out many times in the religion and politics forums.
And as far as the propagation of our species go, that's based on a global presumption that human beings are entitled to multiply indefinitely and rape the world of its natural resources. To those who disagree with that presumption, gay people are at the very least the lesser of two evils. But that's a different forum's debate.
Anyway, marriage (which I assume is the "right" we are discussing) is not simply a vehicle for procreation. Maybe that was the original intent of whatever deity or entity invented the concept of marriage, but that is not the working definition in this country.
Marriage governs property distribution at death and divorce in most states. It governs hospital visitation rights. It has tax consequences. It doesn't exist in this moral vacuum, there are many factors involved.
Whether or not you feel that homosexuality is simply the acting out of an erotic desire, you can't discount the extreme legal importance of marriage when it comes to the rights of couples in this country.
"Having said that, I hasten to add that homosexuals are deserving of the full human and civil rights which all people ought to enjoy.
My point, which continues to address the topic of the OP, is that any comparison of the black struggle for basic civil rights -- that is, for their very survival as human beings, grounded as that struggle for survival was in centuries of the most demeaning and horrific oppression -- with the homosexual campaign for (I assume) public acceptance of their erotic inclinations as an acceptable alternative consonant with normal human sexuality, must of necessity founder as a an essentially absurd comparison.
The former was a struggle to gain the rights of basic humanity and the concomitant need for men and women to be free to live, to work, to have children, to vote, to own property, and to realize their potential as citizens of a democratic nation and an enlightened society. The latter expresses the desire for gay people to live a semi-parodic existence, limited by their own self-defined proclivities, but benefitting from all of the legal rights which African Americans had to wait until 1964 to enjoy, and demonstrably superior levels of economic and educational status. This is not a struggle: it's more like light opera.
The facts are that gay people have always been able to live freely, to vote, to own property, to live with and love those whom they wish, while enjoying superior levels of income and education.
When those rights have been limited, legal action was forthcoming which addressed those needs and provided relief and protections. Contrast that with the centuries of lynchings, the separation of families, the chattel status, the lack of enfranchisement, and the thousands of daily realities of cruelty, poverty, unequal imprisonment, lack of access to housing, education, and employment, which was the lot of African-Americans.
The comparison of struggles is absurd on its face. Indeed, as some of the comments in this thread attest, it may even be considered insulting..."
Again, from a socio-historical perspective I agree with you. Neither gays nor any other minority group have come close to what African Americans have dealt with. That's partially because gays come from every race, socioeconomic status, and gender. It's difficult to compare them to a homogenous ethnic group, some of which they are a part.
But logically...how is their struggle any different?
But if you take the arguments of same-sex marriage proponents at face value, just assume hypothetically that they ARE right, that they are a minority that wants a right(s) held by the majority, how is it logically any different than the civil rights stuggle?
The place for argument lies in whether the characteristics of the gay population are such that they qualify for the rights that are available to every other minority group. (Nature v. Nurture, blah blah blah) Logic doesn't care about what they've gone through in the past.
The struggle for civil rights is unique to each group that strives to achieve it.
African Americans do not "own" the concept of civil rights. The fact that they were taken away by force from their mother homelands in Africa and made into slaves and then endure the degradation of inequality and the "Jim Crow" laws even after emancipation is the very darkest page in American history.
Other groups too suffered the experience of discrimination, prejudice, injustice, exploitation, and bigotry. These include:
-- Native American Tribes people (stolen land, forced exile, even genocide)
-- the Irish in particular and Catholics in general in the first half of the 19th Century (remember the Know Nothing Party?);
-- the Acadians of Nova Scotia, who were forced into exile;
-- Jews, who came to America seeking freedom but also found discrimination and anti-semitism (remember the lynching of Leo Franks, and also the bombing of The Temple synagogue in Atlanta?);
-- Hispanics, who also endured stereotyping and limited opportunities;
-- the handicapped, who faced little access to jobs, public accommodations, diminished quality of life;
etc., etc.
So, from my perspective each group had to strive and struggle to claim their rightful place in society. Each of these struggles are unique and also have things in common with other struggles.
Here is something Coretta Scott King had to say about LGBT rights:
"Gays and Lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, in Selma, in Albany, Georgia, and St. Augustine, Florida and many other campaigns of The Civil Rights Movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices of their own, and I salute their contributions."
- from a speech given at a luncheon for The Lambda Legal Defense Fund, quoted in The Chicago Tribune, April 1, 1998.
\I haven't seen where marriage is seen as a right in the U.S. Constitution. If anything, it's currently under the 10th Amendment's jurisdiction, which allows the states to regulate it.
If gays can get marriage to be labeled as a true "right" under our laws, then I'll support your cause 100%.
Hi Freedom,
In Loving v Virginia:
The court ruled that Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute violated both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In its decision, the court wrote:
"Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State."
Since 1888, the U.S. Supreme Court has 14 times reiterated that marriage is a basic civil right.
The court ruled that Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute violated both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In its decision, the court wrote:
"Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State."
Since 1888, the U.S. Supreme Court has 14 times reiterated that marriage is a basic civil right.
Good morning, and thanks for the information. If this is the case, what is the reason these basic civil rights haven't been extended to gays, polygamists, etc in all this time? I'm more than sure someone has tried to litigate this angle by now. Did they define marriage as one man/ one woman only in these rulings? This is a sincere question, I'm really curious.
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