Picapp mislabled this photo: Diane Olson is on the left, Robin Tyler at center.
John Aravosis posts this email on Americablog Gay from his friend, longtime activist Robin Tyler. She and her wife Diane were the first gay couple married in Los Angeles when same-sex marriage was legalized in California in 2008. I hope neither of them mind my republishing this quote, it's so pithy and to the point - and reflects my own view of things so well.
Should we give up on fighting for marriage equality, because the Democratic Party has broken their word to us? Never.Amen to every word of that. Couldn't have said it better myself.
No civil rights movement has ever said 'give us less, and we will be satisfied.' No civil rights movement has ever won without the strength to keep fighting no matter what the loss or setback was at the time. The LGBT community has survived mental institutions, penal institutions, science calling us sick, and religion calling us sinful. We have survived been thrown out of our homes, our schools, and rejected by everyone we knew. But we found each other. And we loved each other. And we supported each other through AIDS, when no one gave a damn. And we refused to be victims. We became survivors, and now, our resilience has made us tougher, stronger, smarter. No, we will not back down from the losses around marriage equality, or any other civil right issue. We deserve it all, and we will not rest until we have it all. That is what a movement is. We keep moving, forward. No retreat, not now, not ever.
3 comments:
Right on! Thanks Russ for posting that!
Great post Russ! I can't improve on this..!
I wonder how many civil rights issues in the past have been so dependent on public vote. This is the element that confuses and angers me....
Many Civil Rights measures that passed in the previous decades would not have been passed if left to voters on a state by state basis...
Dave - glad you liked, it's a great one-paragraph summary of where we've been, isn't it.
Tom - Well as I've written before numerous times, I grew up in the segregated South - and I can tell you for a certain fact that segregation, like sodomy laws, would still be going strong today if left up to the voters in these red states.
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