A straight man’s opinion on Gay rights

I have read comments and reports about how everyone is sick and tired of the same-sex marriage issue. Some call it boring or useless, they just want to move on. Things are fine enough as they are, just let it be.

Fifty years ago there was a similar movement by another group of people. It had been going on for years but really reached a head around the mid to late 50’s. People were tired of it before then. They just wanted it to go away. Things were fine the way they were so why not just leave things be? Were they?

If things were fine, then why was there an uproar in the first place? What drove these people to speak out and challenge not only the government but their own neighbors? What led one woman to sit in defiance and refuse to be moved because of the color of her skin? What led one man to stand before the personification of fear and hatred and state we are all equal? Wasn’t everyone just tired of hearing about it? Why didn’t it just go away?

The answer is both simple and complex. Civil rights in America are not reserved for a select few, or even a majority. It is not a right for some and a dream for others. It is a right to all in this country and as long as one individual does not have the equal respect and rights of his or her peers then there is an injustice which must be righted.

Dr. martin Luther King once said: “And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in new York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

At the time, the above statement was made regarding the color of a man’s skin, but the same can be applied today to gay and lesbian citizens of the United States. Gays have been beaten, by both the police and public, for the crime of being gay. They have been berated and denied basic constitutional rights because of the way they were born. Stolen from their homes and killed for what some demand is a “lifestyle choice”. Denied the opportunity to engage in harmonious matrimony with their loved one simply because they share the same gender, and unable to visit their dying love because of an unfair prejudice against them. Don’t get me wrong, the travesties which happened in America to the black population all those years ago are in no way equaled to the injustices being suffered upon gay and lesbian men and women today but there is one, clear similarity which brings the two together. One that, if Dr. King were alive today, he would not nor could not sit quietly for. A person’s civil rights are being refused to them because, and solely because, they are different from the rest of us.

It is your right to believe that being gay is a choice. It is your right to turn a blind eye to them. It is the right of the church to deny performing ceremonies for same-sex couples but it is no one’s right to deny the civil liberties shared by is all to a select few. No one has the ability or the power to take what is rightfully yours from you unless you allow them to. I am tired of it. I am weary from it. I wish it would all just go away but it won’t as long as one person demands to stand in the way of another’s civil liberties.

I know there is an argument stating there is nothing stopping gay couples from the same liberties of marriage by marrying someone of the opposite sex. That is not only a preposterous notion but one bred of a small and closed mind. If a man can not walk into a judges office or any city hall and legally marry the person they love, then they are not subject to equal rights.

Petition. Sing. March. Do what you can but never, never give up merely because someone says they are tired of it. When someone asks you, isn’t it enough, look them in the eye and says “No, it is not enough.”

One man may be able to make a change, but united you can move mountains.