On Gay and Racial Civil Rights

Posted on | January 5, 2006

You just have to love it when homophobic black people get their panties in a twist over comparisons of the civil rights movement and the gay rights movement. They bluster, piss, moan and posture about how the two are nothing alike. The latest one is Jocelyn-Tandy Torkwase Adande at the Indy Star. Ms. Adande made a post on their “In Touch” blog detailing how she is insulted by the fact that gay rights activists used the civil rights movement to pass the anti-discrimination ordinance in Indianapolis.

Ms. Andande speaks of discrimination against homosexuals as if she knew what it was like first hand. As a white person, I do not have first hand experience with racial discrimination so I am not going to claim to know what it is like. Instead I have to go to civil rights leaders and I think one of the big ones would be Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King, Junior. During the earlier push for gay marriage, a group of black ministers banded together to denounce the comparisons to racial civil rights like Ms. Andande is doing in her column. However after that, Coretta Scott King fired back stating she was in complete agreement with the comparison. In fact, she told the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force at the group’s annual meeting in 1998:

“I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice,” she said. “But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’” “I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.“

Ms. Andande also seems to be one to hijack racial civil rights for “her race”. While it is without a doubt that blacks have had the shittiest lot in this nation’s history, the Japanese probably coming in second, the civil rights movement was not all about them. Unless I am mistaken, blacks are only one of the four macro racial groups that are minorities with the other three bing Asians, Latinos, and Native Americans. Ms. Andande insults them when she says the struggle for racial equality was just about “her race”.

So who am I going to listen to? On one side I have the widow of one of the racial civil rights movement’s greatest and most recognized leaders and on the other I have some no-name schmuck who looks more like a bad drag-queen version of Tyra Banks’ mom.

Blog Links:

Pam’s House Blend

External Links:

Filed Under Gay Rights |

Comments

One Response to “On Gay and Racial Civil Rights”

Chandira
January 5th, 2006 @ 6:26 pm

People are prone to be assholes regardless of race or sexual (non)preference.
I’ll stick with what MLK said. Intolerance of some of us does all of us no good. But maybe I’m a hypocrite, I have zero tolerance for some of those assholes.