Sunday, January 16, 2011

Whether 'gay rights' or 'civil rights,' it's all about 'human rights'

David Badash of the blog The New Civil Rights Movement just sent out a tweet asking for folks to respond to a piece on Examiner.com (Cincinnati version). The piece is entitled The difference between gay rights and civil rights and it is written by one Ricky Johnson.

In case you haven't figured it out, it's one of those "lgbts can't compare their struggle for equality to that of the African-American civil rights struggle because you can hide your sexual orientation but not your race and the Bible says that homosexuality is a sin" pieces that always serves to mentally exhaust me for its lack of basic logic and desire to ignore the empathy that one group who has dealt with inequality should have for another group having the same problems.

Rather than go over it, I would rather show the response I wrote. It's short and to the point:

Rick, whether someone can or cannot hide their homosexuality is irrelevant. You forget that some blacks tried to pass as white. Also, please bear in mind that before you refer to the Bible, it was the Bible which was used to justify slavery and segregation. Lastly, your diatribe forgets the basic existence of black lgbts - which I am one. Really there is no difference between "gay rights" and "civil rights" because they are all human rights. And when a group of people are denied their due, whether it be on the basis of discrimination on the basis of race, religion, or sexual orientation, we all suffer.



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4 comments:

  1. Blacks are Gay Rights Leaders6:20 PM

    I just wanted to let you know that Ricky Johnson has begun censoring the comments on his post at the Examiner.

    After his response to me (under same name I use here), I wrote a response back to him that I would like to reproduce here if you don't mind. It went:
    ----
    "I never meant to imply it was easy to be gay or hide that you are gay"

    Well, you did imply that. I quoted the part of your text where you did just that.

    "one cannot hide the fact that they are black (unless they are passable with light skin)"

    I think you just negated your own assertion. How would you define "Black" as in "a Black person"?

    And like I said, Black men and women have always been leaders in the part of the civil rights movement concerned with equal rights for gays. You probably don't know this because of the racism and homophobia in the media in the USA that silences the voices of gay or gay-supporting Black men and women.
    ----
    It is strange that Ricky Johnson would want to take the debate to email as he stated to every single commenter. I wonder why that is?

    Ricky Johnson also deleted a comment below mine from someone named "London" that wasn't very nice, but still.

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  2. Figures that he would censor. He probably didn't expect such a blowback or that the comments would be rational - but they were. I read that nonsense from him about emailing him and I'm not about to. I will not give him the courtesy of going into a long and boring diatribe.

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  3. Anonymous9:31 PM

    A mid/late nineteenth century word did not and could not appear in the Judeo Christian Bible to begin with. There are copious volumes written on that subject and other translation errors in that and other narratives considered sacred. We now know many of the other and older mythologies that were borrowed or stolen from. Tomes written by contemporary spiritual authors are every bit as valid.

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  4. I like the fact that he won't debate you in the open, he has the same answer for every post, e-mail me, and ask me questions there. Are you e-mailing him? will he agree for you to post those conversations?

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