Posted on 06/29/2009 6:01:01 PM PDT by presidio9
Today, gay activists visit President Obama and the nation marks 40 years since the watershed event that is usually referred to as the Stonewall Rebellion: After police raided New York's most popular gay bar, gay people resisted for six consecutive days - ushering in the gay liberation phase of the gay civil rights movement and fixing the issue of gay civil rights on America's political map for all time.
That Stonewall has hit its fourth decade is only part of the reason that the media are giving this anniversary attention. The other reason is that there is a sense of excitement that, with the spread of gay marriage to more states, the struggle for gay rights may be about to reach a new high-water mark.
But all this excitement glosses over a critical fact: Gay people have the same federal protections against discrimination in terms of the most basic civil rights that we had at the time of Stonewall.
And that is exactly: zero.
If a lesbian is denied credit because she is a lesbian and wants to file a civil rights suit based on federal law, she cannot. If a bisexual man is thrown out of his apartment because he dates other men, he needn't bother to call Uncle Sam: He won't even pick up the phone. If a gay man is told he can't buy a ticket at a movie theater because "his kind aren't welcome," the U.S. government will neither investigate nor prosecute.
Why? Because no federal statute outlaws discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the realms of employment, housing, credit or public accommodations.
But what about the gay rights laws and protections we hear about in news stories? Well, 20 states have outlawed discrimination, as have many cities and counties. But if a gay or lesbian citizen doesn't live in a state or other jurisdiction with such a law, as millions of Americans do not, he or she is out of luck.
Besides, these state and local laws offer an uneven patchwork of protection. Some, for example, protect citizens in terms of employment discrimination but not against other forms of discrimination. Add to this the question of enforcement. A law that does not have a serious enforcement mechanism behind it might sound good on paper while offering little meaningful protection, and a number of the state laws have inadequate remedies.
How is this state of affairs possible in 2009, when the majority of Americans has long supported the idea that same-sex attraction should not be a bar to the basics of living, and we are constantly reminded of how far the "gay agenda" has advanced?
Thank the culture wars. The first federal bill to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation was introduced in 1974. That was a robust bill, outlawing discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations. The following year an even stronger bill was introduced, which would have added gay people as a protected class to all existing federal civil rights laws. By 1977 that bill had 39 co-sponsors. By 1984 Democratic presidential hopefuls Fritz Hollings, Walter Mondale and Gary Hart had all endorsed it.
But by the mid-1980s, the gay civil rights movement was suddenly losing ground. AIDS had stirred up latent homophobia and the right wing had made gay people their favorite whipping boys. And so, in 1994, the weaker Employment Non-Discrimination Act replaced the more comprehensive House gay civil rights omnibus bill. That bill had 107 cosponsors, a strong base of support.
Then the Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich, took over Congress. Congress found time to pass the Defense of Marriage Act - but shot down ENDA. Meantime, a 2005 Gallup Poll showed that 90% of Americans support equal rights for gay people in employment.
It is time that gay and lesbian Americans and our supporters tell the President and Congress to get back to basics. Gay marriage is nice, but basic protections are even more overdue. The perception of landmark progress is illusory. Forty years is a long enough wait.
“Condone our perversion or be branded a hater.”
Guess what...
I don’t want to discriminate against anyone. But can I ask some basic questions. How many lesbians are denied credit because of being lesbian?
If there is really housing discrimination, that could be worth looking into. But from what I know of that, it seems to be a “don’t ask don’t tell” situation. Roommates sign leases, and two men or two women living together is not going to cause a landlord to not rent to someone.
How many gay men are denied entry to a movie theater? That sounds like an absurd example of discrimination.
In the year 2009, there has never been more openness or tolerance of homosexuality in America than there is right now. Yet this guy would have us believe that nothing has changed, and that gays are summarily fired from jobs, denied public services, etc.
The concept that the so-called “Gay-movemtent” is missing is that civilized society has always enforced an unwritten “don’t ask, don’t tell policy” about all things that take place in the bedroom? You and you’re wife like to swing? Fine, as long as I don’t have to hear about it. Or the trapeeze above your bed. So me one gay person who was ever fired for putting his head down and doing the job he was hired to do. Black people are always black when they go to work. Gay people are relatively indistinguishable unless they feel compelled to share the details of their sex lives with their normal coworkers.
What I do and whom I do it with are none of the government’s damn business. By making sexual preference an element of the law, the government makes it their business.
Roommates sign leases, and two men or two women living together is not going to cause a landlord to not rent to someone.
Some landlords are more involved in the day-to-day lives of their tennants than others.
In that case however, the tenant actually had to pretend to be gay to avoid heterosexual discrimination from the landlord.
I think that gays have jumped the shark.
I’ve been branded “hater” along with “right-wing extremist”?
Randy Shilts’ “And the Band Played On” provides an excellent history of AIDS.
But aside from that, no, I say it is time that moral society put shame back on sexual deviancy and especially being proud of sexual deviancy.
That the destruction of the traditional family was merely one rung on the ladder down into the pit of communism is very well documented.
To protect our liberty, we must re-establish our traditional American values. Celebrating decadence is not one of them.
More like the homo movement had become brazen enough so that most people realized that they didn't just "want to be left alone," they wanted a special protected victim classification and the ability to punish those who called their behavior immoral and disgusting.
Another screed by a screamer.
Time to sick a pin in one of the left's favorite myths.
Care to name a single piece of Republican-sponsored anti-gay legislation that emerged from the 80's or 90's?
Gay Pride demonizes the right mostly because of the misconception that the right "didn't do enough" to confront the AIDS crises. This is hypocritical because the gays frequently admit that they didn't do enough themselves to avoid contracting AIDS. It is lame, because nobody was aware of the extent of the "epidemic" until the mid to late 80's. And it is asinine because AIDS has never been one of the top twenty killers of the population in general, but advocates constantly demanded it be the number one source of federal funding for diseases.
It was a special cause for gay men, because it killed a terrible percentage of them, but not for the population in general. To this day I am suprised to see how many guys my age don't know that it is virtually impossible for a man (without an open wound on his penis) to contract AIDS from an infected woman. Condom or no condom.
Uh, could you clarify that .....? lol
You mean the right to rage at and punish Christians for following their God's absolute interdict against you? To drive them out of society, lock them in their churches? How about following them into their churches and pulling them down and arresting them for preaching undiluted Genesis and Leviticus? Your maggoty friends in Canada have already pulled that one.
Gays snark about "hypocrisy", but they bathe in it every time they open their mouths.
Sees like not a year goes by here in NYC without some confused homosexual walking into St. Patrick’s Cathedral naked, or throwing the Sacrament on the floor and stomping on it, or taking a dump on the statue of the Blessed Mother.
If I walked into a gay bar (their place of worship) and said “You’re all a bunch of disgusting perverts and your lifestyle makes me sick,” I would very likely be arrested and then put in jail for a hate crime. Then I would be subject to further deprogramming upon release.
Quick question:
Has anyone filled out ANY forms in the last 40 years that asked what their sexual orientation was?
Didn’t think so.
I have every right to say a sodomite is a mentally ill person and refuse to associate with them.
God hates sin.
David Carter, writer, gay activist, and historian
I attended college at Emory University, where I majored in religion while also taking many French courses. In my junior year I studied in Paris at the Sorbonne.
soon after moving to Wisconsin, I had become a gay activist and spent more time on activism than I did on my studies.
The reason for this was because of Anita Bryant’s success in repealing gay civil rights ordinances: I felt that all the progress the gay rights movement (as it was then called) had made was in danger of being swept away.
I founded the Madison Committee for Gay Rights and cofounded The United and served as one of their spokespersons. Two friends and I started what was apparently the nation’s second gay television series, Glad To Be Gay, and, for a spin-off of that program, Nothing To Hide, I interviewed one of my favorite writers, Allen Ginsberg. Through the activism of this period, a grass roots movement was created that resulted in Wisconsin passing the first statewide gay rights law.
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