OPINION: Today's Civil Rights Movement

By Broadside Opinion Columnist Arthur Gailes

We rarely speak of the ’60s Civil Rights Movement as the “Black Rights Movement,” or the “Women’s Rights Movement.” The reason for this, among others, is that the fight for equal rights among different groups of people is a fight for the equal rights of all people. Every fight for equal rights is a fight for all of us, because for all of our differences, we are all created equal. As Americans, we hold that truth to be self-evident. So when the rights of any of us in this country are violated, it’s up to all of us to fight for them.

As most of us know, the people of California, Arkansas, Arizona and Florida all voted for measures that ban gay marriage on November 4. I’ve struggled to write about this, because honestly, I’m ashamed of it. No, I didn’t vote for the bans; I didn’t even vote in those states. But I sure didn’t help either. I honestly thought that this was a non-issue, especially in California and Florida, and so I just waited for people to take care of it. I’m not a powerful person, and I couldn’t have done much. But I could have donated, I could have gone to rallies, I could have written articles. I should have done something. Instead, while I was working to see the first black man elected president, I failed to do anything to stop the fight against the segregation of marriage.

English philosopher Edmund Burke once said that, “all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” If that’s true, then I and everybody like me are responsible for the evil that took place on November 4. Banning gay marriage isn’t the greatest evil in the world, or even this country, but it’s one of the most inexcusable.
Allowing gay marriage shouldn’t be debatable in this country. Make no mistake; our tolerance has come a long way in the past 40 years, let alone the past 300, but as long as we continue to suppress the rights of American citizens who have not committed any crime, and as long as we as a people continue to oppose gay marriage, we have no morals, we have no character, and we have no equality.

And for what? What does allowing gay couples to marry cost us? If two heterosexuals getting a divorce doesn’t hurt the sanctity of marriage, then neither does two gay people getting married. And just as we don’t dare to infringe on the rights of those people, we have no right to oppress homosexuals because we disagree with their lifestyles.
There is no threat from allowing homosexuals to marry. They aren’t going to invade our schools and sneak gay juice into our children’s milk. They’re not going to come knocking on our doors to try and convert us to their way of life. It’s already been allowed in some states, and the world didn’t explode, babies didn’t start dying, and there weren’t huge outbreaks of “gayness.” For most of us, the world stayed exactly the same as it always was, and surprisingly enough, allowing gay people to live like we do didn’t hurt anybody. This argument has nothing to do with the impact of homosexual marriages in our society—there is none.

This fight has everything to do with allowing people to enjoy the same rights and privileges that the rest of us take for granted as American citizens. Gay marriage has become the ultimate victimless crime in most of America. Not only does it not affect us, but how people want to express their love for each other is none of our business.

This fight has everything to do with not allowing bigotry to rule our public policy. Even if we are to acknowledge that gay marriage is somehow against the principles of our religion or philosophy, the purpose of our government is to prevent that moral judgment from oppressing its citizens. Beyond our responsibility as citizens to be good to one another, it’s the government’s duty to be impartial to be impartial in this fight.

This fight has everything to do with us. Who among us can’t relate to bigotry or oppression? If you’re Christian, your savior gave his life to show us the evil that our bigotry can visit upon each other. If you’re Muslim, you’ve seen what bigotry can visit upon the innocent since September 11, 2001. If you’re African-American, your ancestors probably had to fight against slavery and segregation. If you’re Jewish, your entire history is one of overcoming prejudice. Any of us who is part of a group of people, any of us who has ever been thought of as the “other” knows what it is to have prejudice visited upon us. To be gay isn’t to be different from us; it’s to be exactly the same.

America is the greatest country in the world because it’s a place where all races, ethnicities and religions can come and have completely equal rights. There’s no greater proof of this than seeing the son of a black Muslim from Africa become our president. It’s our duty to fight for gay marriage as a community. It’s our right to protest against its bans as citizens. But most importantly, it’s our responsibility as a people.