It's fine to scream and vent here but

[cali]

if you think that works out in the real world, forget it. I may be straight, but I've been working on marriage equality here in Vermont for over a decade. I got involved in it in 1998 because of a lesbian friend of mine, an attny who was deeply involved in the issue. She's a hard ass no compromise person, but she definitely knows that working the system, educating legislators and outreach to potential allies are vital to change the system.

I know no one wants to hear it, but changing the system is a long slog. That's NOT saying that's the way things should be, it's simply recognizing the reality of it. 20 years ago or so, marriage equality was barely a blip on the national screen. The first gov't recognized same sex union was in 1989 in Denmark. Yes, same sex unions have a varied and long history in culture throughout the world, but that's not what we're talking about when we're talking about marriage equality in this country at this time.

I'm presuming that most of the people who actually are activists know that what I'm saying is true. It's all very well to scream about kicking bigots to the curb, but that's not effective strategy. And calling anyone who doesn't march in absolute lockstep with you- right down to a specified degree of outrage, a bigot, isn't going to help either. Nor is insisting that the GLBT community here and now is as endangered as gays and jews in Nazi Germany.

So call me a bigot for writing this, but it won't change a damn thing. It won't win one advance in the struggle for full civil rights.

[saracat]

1. There is some truth to what you say but OTOH, just quietly accepting bigotry being given

approbation doesn't work either. And recent events concerning not only GBTL Rights but reproductive rights for women have caused many to realize that such rights are in danger. These rights have been repealed in several states and the evangelicals continue to preach hate and gather numbers.

No matter what the reason, they still have sufficient clout to demand a seat at the table, and we still pander to then no matter what the result of an election. It is a sad state of affairs when winning an election becomes only about winning and not about results.

[cali]

5. Obviously, that is not what I'm advocating.

And what's the untrue part of my OP?

[saracat]

13. For one thing " working within the system" hasn't been working. Both the

Women's rights movement and the gay rights Movement are in the worst shape they have been in for years. Both reproductive rights and Gay marriage were not long ago on the verge ot total acceptance , only to see a resurgence in opposition to both.
The "new" generation of evangelicals is rapid and totally unreasonable. They cannot be "reached out to" and as for gay marriage not being a "blip" tell that to the voters in CA. and AZ.

In AZ we were projecting that we were going to turn almost completely "blue" till our prop 102 drove the Evangelicals to the polls! We had Dem Governor( till she has been appointed to the Cabinet and we have, a Dem Attorney General, and dominate the Congressional delegation. We hoped to pick up the State House and legislature but gay marriage became such an issue the fundies came out in droves for 102 , voted stayed to vote R and instead of picking up seats we lost them and every single County and local seat! We also didn't really narrow the gap for Obama because the R's and Indies who were going to stay home ,stayed and voted R when they turned out for the Gay marriage Amendment.

Gay Marriage is certainly more than a "Blip " in Ca and Az as well as many states.

Reproductive rights are also at stake and all the pro lifers are geared up and ready to go.

And now, these folks think they are validated, and we are set back years in our efforts. Placating them does nothing to help our position and a great deal to harm it.

I am not yet sure what the answer is, but I am sure "respecting" their position or trying to work with them won't work. Historicall, it hasn't worked and if we don't learn from history we are doomed to repeat it.

And if you don't believe me, I will direct you top some of our government officials who have tried.

[Warren Stupidity]

2. How was it that women and blacks won civil rights?

Did they just sit down and shut up and then the benevolent white men finally noticed how nice and properly behaved they were and gave them some rights? Or did they act like that uppity Rosa Parks and plunk their tired working asses rudely down in the front of the bus? I forget. Was it bringing George Wallace and Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms into the party, or was it kicking them to the curb that was effective? I forget. Was it Selma where the leadership of the civil rights movement sat down and negotiated with the White Leadership Council, and that was what finally spurred congress on to pass the Voting Rights Act, or was it Selma where the leadership and the rank and file people of the civil rights movement stood up to the full brutality of the segregationist state of Alabama, rudely refusing to let their rights be denied? I forget. I wasn't alive at the time, but I seem to dimly recall that women were just handed the right to vote without any actual struggle, or perhaps it was that they battled for many years to achieve partial equality, at great personal risk, and struggled again decades later for full equality, a battle not yet won in this country. I forget which it was.

We should never forget.

[dmallind]

4. Ermm.. NOT by insisting that MLK never dealt with racists. NT

[mondo joe]

19. When did MLK invite a racist to a special honor?

To deliver an invocation?

Thanks.

[Warren Stupidity]

32. Well he did negotiate how best to not get beaten or killed

I think that is what constitutes the essence of the argument here.

[mondo joe]

33. Warren is being honored, not negotiated with.

I think they're different things.

[Warren Stupidity]

34. that was my point

it is completely different. Sorry if I wasn't clear. The civil rights movement of course interacted with bigots, and sometimes even negotiated with them. What they didn't do is honor them.

[mondo joe]

35. You are right, of course. Sorry for my end of the miscommunication.

:fistbump:

[cali]

6. or for pete's sake. I know you're smarter than that.

Please point out where in my OP I said that people should sit down and shut up? Oh that's right, I never said anything fucking remotely close to that. And Rosa Parks acted with great dignity. I'm all for acts of civil disobedience. That's more than just running around screaming. That's action. And you fucking bet that MLK reached out to people and encouraged dialogue.

[Number23]

37. Exactly. MLK got his ass beaten by racists

He was thrown in jail by racists. Just about every person affiliated with the civil rights movement was beaten and/or jailed. Lots were killed. This stupid idea that MLK did not interact with bigots by "inviting them to an invocation" is idiotic to the point of madness. No matter how much he was beaten or locked up, MLK and his supporters took every opportunity they could to work with or communicate with whites because they knew nothing could be done without them. And that often included the most virulent, racist whites in the bunch.

I don't remember a time on DU when I've been this angry. Even during the stage when many were blaming blacks for the passage of Prop 8, I wasn't angry because I could feel the pain and I empathized. I actually wished I could have helped in some way. But this idea that a two-minute invocation from Rick Warren is comparable to the civil rights movement or suggests that Obama must be a homophobe or be in agreement with denying gay rights makes me want to scream and weep.

I believe two things in all of this: 1) that gay rights are a huge and important civil rights issue and 2) that Obama is NOT a homophobe. He is the first black president of this country. The fact that he got the job is historic, but I honestly believe that he will be judged in a way that no previous presidents have been. I think alot of the hysteria and rage over his birth certificate, his alleged "terrorist/Muslim" ties, his cabinet picks and now Rick Warren are MASSIVE indicators of just that. EVERY SINGLE THING the man has done since the election has been beaten to death. Obama knows that he has got to reach out to the 57 million people who did not vote for him and may even be questioning his legitimacy as president. This is one small step. God... I would not want to be in his shoes.

[Kahuna]

8. Lyndon Johnson, himself was a racist. What if MLK had refused to

deal with him because of that?

[noiretextatique]

14. don't forget that those struggles took hundreds of years either

it didn't start with rosa parks or strom thurmond. likewise with suffrage...it didn't magically happen over night.

[saracat]

15. Womens' Rights are still in question and folks like Warren advocate repudiating them.

[HamdenRice]

16. This kind of historical ignorance in infuriating

Why do you think Malcolm X called Martin Luther King insults like a "house negro" and "uncle tom so called civil rights leader"?

The ignorance about what the fuck actually happened from 1945 to 1975 is abso-fucking-lutely mind boggling and infuriating!

Do you know how often Thurgood Marshall, James Forman, Martin Luther King, Bayard Rustin and countless other leaders compromised strategically and tactically? Do you know what their timeline was, when Marshall began litigating segregation cases almost exclusively over Blacks' admission to white law schools, because that was the only crack in the fortress they could find?

Jesus, Joseph and Mary, people are dumb, dumb, dumb! And then they use ultra dumb, absence-of-historical-knowledge metaphors not only to argue dumb things, but to trash in incoming Democratic administration before it's ever done anything.

You write some illiterate shit like, "Was it Selma where the leadership of the civil rights movement sat down and negotiated with the White Leadership Council,..."

Fucking Jesus, Joseph and Mary! WTF???

Do you even have a fucking clue about what actually happened? Will you fucking read a book already?

Martin Luther King did sit down and negotiate with white leaders in city after city. That's how the Civil Rights Movement won. That's why Hillary's comment about King "only" marching and Johnson enacting civil rights legislation was so infuriating -- it represented an abject ignorance of what happened and an attempt to send reality down the memory hole. The entire point of the movement was provoking the knuckle dragging cops to react, which in turn disrupted business, which caused the real racist powers in the business community of those southern town to sit down with King and negotiate. Negotiate actual written contracts. People think King was a "marcher" when in fact, much of the most important work he did was when he was acting much more like a settlement lawyer. It was his backroom deals with racists that ended segregation more than any legislation.

Brown was decided in 1954. I was born in 1959. I saw Colored and White signs in Virginia till 1970 -- at least. Recognizing that there is a time line does not make anyone a homophobe. Thank God! the childish bullshit on this forum is not representative of the strategy adopted by the grownups who actually run the GLBT rights organizations!

[Warren Stupidity]

17. Actually you are right, here are some photos of those negotiations in Selma

I was born in '51 sonny, I remember this crap quite well.

[HamdenRice]

18. Sadly, you never read a book that would tell you what happened besides ...

what you saw on the TV.

I saw Bush land on an aircraft carrier, with a sign that said "Mission Accomplished," but guess what? the mission wasn't accomplished.

Read a book, already, for chrissake. You lived through it and managed to remain clueless? How sad! Of course, if you weren't drinking from the Colored fountain, the entire movement probably didn't mean much to you till it became a fashionable talking point circa 2008.

[Warren Stupidity]

23. Right again - I now remember how Martin was asked

to give the invocation at LBJ's inauguration, oh wait...

Yeah, I got all my information from tv and inviting homophobic bigots to give the invocation at the inauguration is going to advance equal rights for the GLBT community.

[noiretextatique]

21. there is also ignorance about the hundreds of years before MLK

CNN Student News) -- Use the following timeline to learn about some of the key events in civil rights history.

1783 Massachusetts outlaws slavery within its borders.

1808 The importation of slaves is banned in the U.S., though illegal slave trade continues.

1820 The Missouri Compromise to maintain a balance of 12 slave and 12 free states.

1831 In Virginia, Nat Turner leads a slave rebellion during which 57 whites are killed. U.S. troops kill 100 slaves. Turner is caught and hanged.

1850 In the Compromise of 1850, California is admitted into the union as a Fugitive Slave Laws are strengthened and slave trade ends in Washington, D.C.

1857 The Supreme Court rules in the Dred Scott case that slaves do not become free when taken into a free state, that Congress cannot bar slavery from a territory and that blacks cannot become citizens.

1861 Southern states secede and form the Confederate States of America; Civil War begins.

1863 President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation freeing "all slaves in areas still in rebellion."

1865

# The Civil War ends.

# The 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, is ratified.

1868 The 14th Amendment, which requires equal protection under the law to all persons, is ratified.

1870 The 15th Amendment, which bans racial discrimination in voting, is ratified.

1896 The Supreme Court approves the "separate but equal" segregation doctrine.

1909 The National Negro Committee convenes. This leads to the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

1925 In its first national demonstration the Ku Klux Klan marches on Washington, D.C.

1948 President Truman issues an executive order outlawing segregation in the U.S

http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/01/31/extra.civil.rights.timeline/index.html

[Egnever]

30. Wow that post rocked!

you restore some of my faith in this place.

[dmallind]

3. Nice try. Won't work, but A for effort and a solid attempt

Anything other than unattainable, self-defeating calls for purity is just not acceptable to some.

[Kahuna]

7. Baby steps and outreach to potential allies, even if they aren't

allies right now. For those who like to liken the civil rights struggles for blacks and women to those for GLBT, you must realize that their struggle were not won by being "radical." The "in your face" approach does not work.

[cali]

9. I'm not at all a proponent of baby steps. you misinterpret what I'm saying

and I'm not saying confrontation and plain speaking doesn't have its place either. I'm simply pointing out that strategizing and outreach are vital parts of the struggle for equality under the law. And all those involved in past civil rights struggles were indeed considered radicals.

[Kahuna]

11. I never said you were. I am. I also think of how many steps closer

we'd all be to our goals and agendas had it not been for Al Gore being deprived his rightful office.

Getting back to "baby steps," though. I recall the images of Dr. King's marches and sit ins. People put on their Sunday best and behaved in a very dignified manner. They basically SHAMED people of conscience into supporting their struggle. Confrontation just makes people more resistant. I'm mindful of the Vietnam war protests and the '68 Dem Convention protests. We lost that election by a landslide because of the ugly behavior of the activists. We didn't lose because they were wrong. We lost because they acted out of control.

[eridani]

38. Yes it does. No one in power paid attention to the very proper Mattachine Society

They started paying attention to LGBT issues after the Stonewall riots, though.

[Speck Tater]

10. Very rational, but it won't touch the "I want it ALL and I want it RIGHT NOW" crowd.

Today's generation, raised on instant gratification and high-speed Internet, has no concept of "patience".

[Gregorian]

12. I agree with your perspective.

And yet what is happening is that we have a new tool. The internet. So even though this is a process that requires time and energy, that is rapidly speeding up. I think the phenomenon we are seeing is that people have this new found hammer, and we're using on everything we can. It will speed up the process. And perhaps even more importantly it will reveal the truth of the situation. And that being, I believe, that people in general are far more tolerant and caring than it appears.

So patience with that new hammer. Because I see the emergence of the one human mind as the fruition of our labors. But not without battles. Even so, this is an uphill journey.

[Kahuna]

31. Bravo!!! Fast progress is being made during the last decade..Now is not

the time to blow it with emotional outbursts. Now is the time to continue to show people that GLBT folks are the same as the rest of us. Unfortunately, centuries of the negative stigma of homosexuality cannot be eradicated over night. That may take another ten years. But I believe it will happen. And, it will only happen when more GLBT come out of the closet and live their lives in the open.

[Sebastian Doyle]

20. With all due respect, how is Vermont "the real world"?

You live in a state where a self proclaimed socialist can get elected to the Senate, and his predecessor willingly walked away from a Republican party because the neocon agenda disgusted him.

That is the polar opposite of the world most of us have been forced to live in under the sellout triangulation of the DLC.

We should all be so lucky as to have the "real world" of Vermont.

[cali]

22. aaargh. of course Vermont's the real world.

I can't even begin to tell you what it was like here in 1999 at the open hearings on gay marriage/civil unions. If I heard one more quote out of Leviticus, I think I would have lost it.

Yes, Vermont's more progressive than many places, but it's not some snowy utopia.

[Sebastian Doyle]

26. Thankfully, you had a wise man for a governor, who didn't give in to the right wing

That guy would have made a great President. What was his name again........ ;)

[mmonk]

24. Sorry, but the silent don't have a history of getting what they want or need.

[cali]

25. sorry, but I never said one word advocating silence. not even close.

please learn to read with comprehension. your "interpretation{" of my OP is simply ridiculously inapt.

[Egnever]

27. Cali you are a gem

Well said.

Gay marriage will be a reality or at least civil unions before the end of this administration. I truely believe it. Our kids dont have the prejudices many of us grew up with and mostly the ones who have their feet stuck in the sand are dying off quickly. We pushed a black man into the presidency despite the racism that still exists (anyone who pretends mcsame did as well as he did for anything other than racism is fooling themselves in my opinion.) it will not be long before we are numerous enough to push gay mariage through. Its happening already in a few places and people like you are working to ensure it happens in many more.

I inderstand the objection to warren hell I dont like his stances on teh gay but I dont see how so many are willing to ascribe the idea that because rick warren is giving a speach somehow obama is a homophobe. Fortunately Obama will take office on Jan 20 despite all the caterwalling and I am convinced his administration will do amazing things.

Thanks for the honest post I dont always agree with you but you never duck and I admire ya for it.

[Egnever]

28. Meh double post

[SidneyCarton]

29. Thank you Cali.

[firedupdem]

36. Agree n/t

[Hannah Bell]

39. Warren opposes the very concept of DEMOCRACY.

Deal-breaker. No platform & honors for folks who are actively working to undermine the whole enchilada.