Jonathon Capehart: Blacks and Gays: The Shared Struggle for Civil Rights

[RyanPsych]

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.


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[Moonwalk]

1. The mistake many make when they hear the Black-Gay comparison...

...is to think that what's being said is that the Black experience (history and all the rest) regarding civil rights is the same as the current Gay experience (history and all the rest) regarding Civil rights.

The comparison isn't implying that at all, and it's a mistake to think it is. The comparison is simply pointing out that like blacks in America, like certain religious groups in America (Jews couldn't stay at certain hotels or get certain jobs) or like women come to that, the fight for civil rights by gays is about equality. The particulars of the inequality and the fight may be very different (blacks vs. women vs. gays) and not comparable, but what such group is after is very much the same: to have the rights they are entitled to as American citizens.

I think this very much has to be kept in mind, otherwise the discussion veers off (shamefully, I think) into a silly pissing contest about who has suffered more--the plantation comment being a prime example, or an irrational fear that the comparison will somehow cheapens the history of black civil rights. The comparison does no such thing. All it does is point out is that anyone can have their civil rights removed by the majority, not for any justifiable reason but simply because the majority doesn't want them to have those rights. In this, blacks, Jews, women and gays are all the same. They all have maintained, and continue to maintain that the majority can't be allowed, on a whim, to take away their rights.

[Mr.Liberty]

2. Here's the problem with your analysis

While it may be true all oppressed groups may share some vague commonality in that they all were held down to certain extents, the fact of the matter is not all struggles are the same. You can't simply ignore things like brutality, systematic generational oppression, etc because you want to make put your movement on the same level as the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s-60s; an apple and an orange may both be round, but they're still two different fruit. I don't understand the purpose of trying to tie Gay Right to Civil Rights, what are activists supposed to garner from that? I think there is a growing numbness to the realities of pre-Civil Rights America where too many people are beginning to think "it wasn't THAT bad."

[RyanPsych]

3. Both movements started around the same time. The Gay Rights Movement began around 1969.

Are you implying that LGBTs have been systematically oppressed and brutalized? Maybe I should start listing off the increasing hate crimes statistics of LGBTs. Or recount brutal murders. Or maybe how LGBTs are still denied many basic rights in several states. Don't pretend that LGBTs arent or havent been oppressed and brutalized as well.

"Gay Rights" ARE Civil Rights. That's the point of the article, as well as to draw comparisons to the struggles of the two groups. What I don't understand is why people are trying to draw these two movements apart. Civil Rights are about Civil Rights regardless of gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. The individual struggles of these two groups (race and sexual orientation) are smaller pieces of the overall movement.

[EFerrari]

4. Bayard Rustin had no problem with that analysis.

Human rights: Gay rights

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Rustin worked as a human rights and election monitor for Freedom House.[22] He also testified on behalf of New York State's Gay Rights Bill. In 1986, he gave a speech "The New Niggers Are Gays," in which he asserted,

Today, blacks are no longer the litmus paper or the barometer of social change. Blacks are in every segment of society and there are laws that help to protect them from racial discrimination. The new "niggers" are gays. . . . It is in this sense that gay people are the new barometer for social change. . . . The question of social change should be framed with the most vulnerable group in mind: gay people.[23]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rustin,_Bayard#Human_rights:_Gay_rights

[Moonwalk]

5. My analysis hasn't got any such problem--your reply is simply doing what my analysis said...

you should not do: turn this into a pissing contest about who has suffered more. Or a pissing contest about who has struggled harder or been braver. The comparison is and has always been about the fact that both groups are struggling to gain civil rights. Comparison to the black civil rights movement is not going to somehow cheapen, lessen or erase the black civil rights movement. The LGBT fight has had more than its share of tragedies and martyrs and heroes. It doesn't need to steal from blacks to gain respect. But it does need to make those on the fence change their perspective of what a gay person is.

This is WHY the comparison is being made. Because it helps people see gays as an oppressed group robbed of civil rights not--as homophobes would have it--a group of people having deviant sex who are demanding special treatment. If, for example, one compares the laws against gay marriage to past laws against black/white marriage, the view changes from "we can't let men have sex with men!" to "we're not letting people marry the one they love." Two men who love each other both have penises and that is not something they can easily change--nor should be asked to change if they want to marry. This is better understood if one points out the black/white couple in the past who couldn't change color and legally marry.

If you like, you can bemoan the fact that the black civil rights movement is the most potent example in the U.S. of civil rights wrongly denied--certainly the LGBT movement could as easily compare themselves to women's right or equal rights denied to certain religious minorities. But if one is trying to get people--including homophobic blacks--to understand that this is about civil rights, about people being seen for the content of their character, not for how they have sex, then comparisons to the black civil rights is the quickest and clearest way to do it. And NOT wrong. They are comparable.

The black civil rights movement is best remembered, and best understood by Americans. That's why it is used as a comparison. It's not, as you imply, because of any attempt to steal anything away from blacks.

[RyanPsych]

6. I wasn't trying to turn this into a pissing contest

Simply making comparisons.

Quite frankly- I'm confused to as to what kind of point you're trying to make