Day after storm yields good discussion on race and sexual orientation

First about President Obama picking Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court - may I never get picked for anything by any sitting president. Folks go through all of your business. I'm not sure I can destroy all of those pictures and videos before they fall into the wrong hands.

Seriously, we are one day removed from the Prop 8 decision and other than a little circular firing, the community seems to be more geared to action. We are galvanized and that ain't a bad thing.

One thing I noticed is how quickly some of us want to get into the intense discussions on the things that hinder our struggle. While I believe that these discussions should take place before something seemingly negative happens, it's still good to have them.

I'm following one on Pam's House Blend that speaks to a problem I know so well:

As someone who is black and lesbian, it's tiring and absurd to encounter the argument that the black civil rights movement somehow exclusively owns the ability to use "civil rights." And the result of that is any challenge to this thinking amounts to stepping on the third rail.

There is no Oppression Olympics that requires a certain level of historic suffering by a group of people to be able to use those words. I refuse to cede them to anyone.

In the Bay State Banner, there is an article by Talia Whyte, "Black gay couples in Mass. mark marriage anniversary," that shows just how black gays, even prominent ones, have had to deal with the issue of being rendered invisible -- but how marriage equality in the state has begun to crack through the wall of homophobia within the black community there.

I've come to the conclusion that any discussions comparing the black civil rights movement and the gay civil rights movement is a distractive argument, i.e. an argument that solves nothing and exists only to make the participants mad at each other.

The problem is that no one is personalizing the lgbt equality struggle in the black community. African-Americans should not support gay civil rights because Dr. King would or Coretta Scott Kng would. And they shouldn't support gay civil rights because Julian Bond and John Lewis would.

African-Americans should support gay civil rights because they have friends and family who would benefit from gay civil rights. Gay rights are a black issue but one would never know that due to the images put out in the media and by our spokespeople.

The gay rights movement is homogenized (i.e. too damn white). Our public image does not speak to the true diversity or the needs of the lgbt community and until someone steps up to change this, we are going to continue to have problems with race in the lgbt community.