What the man said, in 1978, not long before his assasination [with some gratuitous modern editorializing]:
Without hope, not only [white] gays, but those [nongay] Blacks, and the Asians, and the disabled, the seniors — the “us’s — the “us’s” — without hope, the us’s give up. I know that you cannot live on hope alone. But without it, life is not worth living. And you, and you, and you have got to give ’em hope.
Thanks to Sara at Suburban Lesbian Housewife for my first viewing of this.
And, in related news, we also have her to thank for alerting me to a link to an amicus brief to the California Supreme Court in defense of Prop 8 by a woman who’s an “heiress of The Almighty Eternal Creator,” on behalf of the almighty G_d him/herself. Not kidding here. Read it and weep. And then don’t loose grip on that hope that Brother Harvey just instilled in you.
Because the California Council of Churches, along with the Episcopal Bishops of California & Los Angeles, the United Church of Christ’s Northern & Southern California and Nevada Synods, the Progressive Jewish Alliance, and the Unitarian Univeralist congregations and legislative ministries constitute one of the six parties or groups of parties named in the case against Prop 8. While none of them would likely say they exclusively speak for G_d almighty, I’ll bet most of them would say they try hard to speak to her/him. And inspire others to pause and give her/him a good deal of thought. Letters in support of the suit have also been filed by:
The Bar Association of San Francisco et al., along with:
Forty-Four Members of the State Legislature
Anti-Defamation League et al.
Beverly Hills Bar Association et al.
Los Angeles County Bar Association
Sacramento Lawyers for Equality of Gays and Lesbians et al.
Manning & Marder, Kass, Ellrod, Ramirez
Constitutional Law Center (Monterey College of Law)
Hastings College of the Law
Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein
Richards, Watson, & Gershon
The Ecumenical Catholic Church
Donna M. Ryu (Hastings College of the Law)
CA Supreme Court page on the case here.
And while you’re in a juridical frame of mind, why not take a stroll down memory lane ( the secular social scientific alley thereof) and read even just the Table of Contents of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s 37-page amicus curiae for the original In re: marriages case. Every subsection title is a sock in the gut. And true (all bullet points below directly from their brief):
- • Under California law, domestic partnership is not equal to marriage
- • The different requirements for the formation and dissolution of domestic partnerships and marriages reflect a dramatically different attitude of the state toward the underlying relationships
- • California courts continue to deny domestic partners legal rights and obligations that are routinely given to married people
- • Domestic partners have a reduced ability to obtain equal rights and benefits that might otherwise be available under other laws, including those of other states, other countries, and the federal government
- • The separation of domestic partnership and marriage negatively affects the hearts and mids of same-sex couples and their children and fosters discrimination against them
- • The segregation of same-sex couples into a separate legal institution creates inherent inequalities
- • The state’s segregation of same-sex couples into a separate institution of domestic partnership inherently stigmatizes their relationship as inferior
- • The government’s choice of labels conveys substantive meaning
- • The stigma created by the state’s differential treatment of gay men and women has severe psychological and social impacts
- • The separation of domestic partnership and marriage fuels public prejudice against gay men and women and invites the public to discriminate against them
- • Depriving same-sex couples of the ability to marry has adverse effects on their children [not looking forward to reading this section]
- • The state offers no substantive justification for the segregation of same-sex couples into a distinct and inferior institution.
Well then. Court adjourned.
Whoa. Thanks for sharing that video.
I read part of wikipedia’s Harvey Milk article and I found this gem that reminded me of Prop 8:
“**Even if gays lose in these initiatives, people are still being educated.** Because of Anita Bryant and Dade County, the entire country was educated about homosexuality to a greater extent than ever before. The first step is always hostility, and after that you can sit down and talk about it.”
It’s easy to imagine the words “amor vincit omnia” coming out of Milk’s mouth.
Okay, I tried to read it, honest I did. I even made it to the 2nd page before I thought to myself “Are these people for real?”. Then about mid page three I answered that question inside my head. Unfortunately not only are they real, they are many. They are the ones backing these hate-filled laws nation wide with their time and money. They are intent on keeping us, the LGBT population of the world, from obtaining equality because they honestly believe that their Almighty Diety wants it that way. Sacry stuff!
Yeah, Shane, I read this piece, “The Enlightened vs. The Ignorant,” by Frank, the straight twin of Fritz, a gay man who’s a diarist at Pam’s House Blend. The nice couple Frank writes about seems in absolutely no way interested in (or in his view even capable of) breaking from their view that (a) the state is an arm of the church, and (b) homosexuals have no place in any institutions of that state. Or certainly this one. Misguided sinners that we be. Yet pretty much everyone agrees that one of the most critical dialogs, from those who care about this issue, will have to be with both faith leaders and congregants in those faiths that preach heterosexist views of the civil sphere (across multiple faiths and races). Churchgoing rates were — I believe — the number one determinant of how one would vote on Prop 8 in CA, next after that age.
I am not affiliated with a community active in this dialog (my spiritual community is essentially constructed around belief rather than faith, and its political branch seems to be focussed on global peace issues — though at least I found a statement) but I’m very impressed by the California Council of Churches’ writings on the matter. Don’t know their work. Many more have been doing a lot of work in recent months and years — Soulforce springs immediately to mind, and the Interfaith Alliance; a ton of faith-based organizations actively (often feverishly) supported the No on 8 work in CA — and I hope they find interest and support from a lot more of us in this next education/outreach phase of the civil equality battle.
Genderkid, thank you for finding us these words of Milk’s. Wow. (Would that I actually knew Latin enough to quip “You gotta give ’em hope” in that language.)
“Spem ei dare debes.”
(That better be right, or my Latin teacher will kill me. I just finished my fourth year in secondary-school Latin.)
I don’t know how to accurately portray “gotta” or ” ’em”, though. Ok, enough nerdiness; I like the way Harvey put it the best 🙂