However the numbers flesh out on California's Prop H8, whether African-American were the cause of it's passage or if it was religious bigotry or maybe it was the Mormon's penance for past subjugation and bundling of women. There is no doubt, after the election of Barack Obama as our first African-American and 44th President of the United States, That we of the Gay and Lesbian community should congratulate our Black brothers and Sisters for there rapid accention to equality. In just 400 year African American have risen from the chains of slavery to the highest office in the land.I guess this isn't the first or will be the last time gays and Lesbians have been left behind. We've always been there in the struggle for civil rights when a community was unjustly oppressed. As Coretta Scott King said "Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Ga. and St. Augustine, Fla., and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement." and some have argued that we should not be forgotten when the freedom train leaves the station. Rep. John Lewis a 60's Freedom Rider has said "We cannot keep turning our backs on gay and lesbian Americans. 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."
Today, unfortunately, there are many in the African-American community who claim that the comparison of civil rights for gays and lesbians and those of the Civil Right struggle of the 60's are an insult to those who gave blood and treasure in the battles for black equality. Some argue that four hundred years of bondage gives them soul proprietorship of the term "Civil Rights"
But from the dawn of man when the most primitive understanding of cause and effect taught early man that gay sex didn't make the tribe bigger, guarantying security and prosperity, to biblical "abomination" and to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. The gay and lesbian community has suffered thousands of years of brutal repressions. We have been stoned, murdered, thrown into prisons and mental institutions. We have suffered torture in the search for a cure.
I don't want to get into an argument about who has suffered more or longer at the hands of bigots and zealots or whose blood has created a bigger stain on Human History. But there is little doubt that once again as great advances in equality are made, gays and lesbians are being left behind.
