Reply to What's with all the "gaytred" in the past couple of days?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous]Correcting typos of my previous post:

I agree with this paragraph and also agree that we [b]are[/b] pretty much on the same page. However, I don't think we're going to see fully eye-to-eye on this.

If it's not about history, why compare the two? If it's only about equal protection under the law for all humans, th[b]e[/b]n you could compare it to any previous legal inequality, including women formerly not having the right to vote.
The US Civil Rights Movement and the current gay rights movement are so often compared because of the similarities they share. However, because the comparisons being made are not just legal ones, but also social and historical ones, of course it's going to lead into comparisons of suffering and trivialization and hurt feelings. [/quote]

I don't have a lot of time at the moment, but I'll just throw a bomb out here and run away. One reason that gay rights supporters mention similarities to the civil rights movement is because of the perceived hostility of African Americans to gay rights. There is a feeling that having suffered discrimination, African Americans should be particularly sympathetic to ending discrimination against gay people. My understanding is that this perception regarding African American attitudes about gay rights may not be grounded in reality. But, either way, I think they key issue here is that people making this connection don't understand the resentment African Americans feel about having this expectation placed on them. I would be interested to hear if you think I am on the right track here, or full of it.

[/quote]

I think you’re right. I do believe that some gay people make the connection between the US Civil Rights Movement with the gay rights movement in an attempt to show a common ground.  I also think that some people are misguided in their attempts and use the comparisons to try to “shame” black people into support of gay rights, which doesn’t work.

I am AA, and while I of course can't speak for my entire ethnic group, I've seen three general reactions of black people to the comparison of the US CRM with the GRM. These are just generalizations and don't cover everyone, of course:

1. Very anti-gay people (who are also often very religious) who respond to the comparison with vitriol towards gay people. The comparison only serves to offend, although they wouldn’t be accepting of homosexuality even if the comparison were not made.

2. Pro-gay rights people who agree with the comparison, but they would be pro-gay rights even if there weren’t similarities to the CRM.

3. Pro-gay rights people who are offended by the comparison and/or the way some people go about making the comparison (and the latter is the issue most of the time). It doesn’t lessen their support for gay rights, but it does cause them to side-eye the “gay community.”  Also, as you can see from some of the PP’s posts, many people placed the blame for Prop 8 passing on the “black community.” It turned out later that reports of AA support for Prop 8 were greatly exaggerated (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/06/BANB154OS1.DTL), but it did stir up ugly racial sentiment within the gay community and the larger liberal community. It turned out that the gap between black support for Prop 8 and non-black support for Prop 8 was much smaller than was first (and widely) reported, and of course black people alone could not be responsible for its passage. The resentment towards blacks after the passage of Prop 8 served to make gay black people feel alienated within their own community. Additionally, pro-gay rights black people do not like their struggle for civil rights to be equated with the fight for gay rights [i]when they are also made the scapegoat.[/i] Basically, don't say "Hey, our struggle is the same!" AND "You're the reason for my oppression!"[/quote]

Well said! [/quote]

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