Jonathon Capehart: Blacks and Gays: The Shared Struggle for Civil Rights

[Moonwalk]

1. The mistake many make when they hear the Black-Gay comparison...

...is to think that what's being said is that the Black experience (history and all the rest) regarding civil rights is the same as the current Gay experience (history and all the rest) regarding Civil rights.

The comparison isn't implying that at all, and it's a mistake to think it is. The comparison is simply pointing out that like blacks in America, like certain religious groups in America (Jews couldn't stay at certain hotels or get certain jobs) or like women come to that, the fight for civil rights by gays is about equality. The particulars of the inequality and the fight may be very different (blacks vs. women vs. gays) and not comparable, but what such group is after is very much the same: to have the rights they are entitled to as American citizens.

I think this very much has to be kept in mind, otherwise the discussion veers off (shamefully, I think) into a silly pissing contest about who has suffered more--the plantation comment being a prime example, or an irrational fear that the comparison will somehow cheapens the history of black civil rights. The comparison does no such thing. All it does is point out is that anyone can have their civil rights removed by the majority, not for any justifiable reason but simply because the majority doesn't want them to have those rights. In this, blacks, Jews, women and gays are all the same. They all have maintained, and continue to maintain that the majority can't be allowed, on a whim, to take away their rights.