Because this montage from Erwin Gonzalez (a person of color!), which he put together after yesterday’s failed DADT repeal vote, takes things all the way back to slavery times and throws in some AIDS for good measure. Buckle up!
consecutive order
If You’re Sick Of The ‘Gay Is The New Black’ Argument, Don’t Watch This Video
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Matthew
Truly inspirational!
Dewey Lightfoot
Gay was never the new black – it was the tragic mulatto that could pass.
SteveC
And it looks like violent civil unrest and court action is the only way we will achieve equality.
Politics has failed.
F*ck the Senate
F*ck Obama.
Bigotted assholes
Time to take to the streets.
gregger
Twenty years ago when I worked at the King Center in Atlanta Coretta Scott King was talking with a group of us and she made the comment that
Homosexual men and women are engaged in the same fight today as Dr King and his colleagues fought
Andrew
Simply amazing!
Ronbo
God bless all those persons responsible for the inherent strength of this message. We can not sit idle as bigots and blind minions move the goal posts once again. Equality is within our grasp.
Obama is wrong – the courts are where we will gain equality. If it was good enough for him, then why are we children of a lesser God?
James Davis
@gregger: Coretta Scott King on numerous occasions supported the LGBT community, and what is so sad is she was unable to pass that same value on to her bigoted daughter Bernice.
Simon
This reduced me to tears. Mostly because it is inspirational. It shows that while we might lose today, this year, in the end, we will win this fight. Because we know it is a just cause.
Keep the faith.
SteveAtlanta
I’m black…gay…and was born in the late 60s (child of the 70s). I saw the grievences of my family during that time of hardship we faced strictly for who we inherently were. Was is “worse” than societal gay injustices today? Sure. Was it different? Yes. Does that matter? Absolutely not. I had this very exact conversation with my (very loving) aunt around the dinner table last weekend.
WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE WHO HAD IT WORSE? Should gay folks not be entitled to fairness in their livelihood due to our struggles not being as tumultous as my parents? Certainly not. Injustice, is injustice and the *entire* battlecry of the civil rights era was equality for all in the law of the land. If you’re so busy drawing the line in the sand between distinguishing who “had it worse”….you completely, utterly missed the entire purpose & drive of the civil rights movements. The civil rights movement was NOT just for us black folks getting our rights and respect, then kicking rocks and calling it a day, every unsung hero at the time had a purpose in mind for every person to attain equal rights and respect, if nowhere else, under the eyes of the government. That means chicano, that means woman, that means minorities, that includes gays.
Using staples of history to ensure history does not repeat itself *is* why those whom fought with honor fought in the first place. They fought the good fight so that we can all live in a world where our inherent differences would not be used as a handicap to disable us for our civil rights. I hope the next demographic in decades to come who is the new flavor of the week to burden “uses” any and all anecdotes in the gay rights movement to further help their plight for freedom. THAT is what I as an active volunteer am fighting for. Not just to ensure the safety, respect and rights of my fellow LGBT brothers and sisters but the next generation of “differences”
I’m a black gay man who cannot serve openly in the military, get married to my commited partner of years, donate blood to a charitable alliance, AND in my prolific Southern state I can be fired for my sexual orientation without so much a rebuttal. Those injustices may not be due to my skin color, but I’ll be damned to come from a long line of injustice for one part of me, to clash the two and further set back injustices for the other part of me. Black gay individuals like myself have more reason than anyone to be livid over abrupt hate and lack of rights. It’s a well oiled machine with the common denominator being ignorance. No matter how that ignorance manifests itself, and who took the worst brunt of it, my community…the gay community is facing it’s own unjust ignorance TODAY.
Instead of highlighting our differences, I’d ask our community to come together as one voice and stop with the petty side divisiveness. This is a sensitive time for us as we were afforded to carry that equality torch, let’s not spend it fighting but being a united front realizing we are experiencing what we should not be for who we are.
Avenger
Stop comparing being black to being gay. Totally different.
Queer Supremacist
@Avenger: You’re right. Blacks have only been oppressed for 400 years. Gays have been oppressed for over 2000. Gay isn’t the new black; black is the new gay.
Heterosexual is the new whitey. And I say without irony or non-sequitur: Kill whitey!
Queer Supremacist
And furthermore, blacks could always serve in the armed forces. They couldn’t serve with whites, but never had to lie about what they were.
RollsEyes
Gay and Black are totally different. Gays actually renovate houses.
Kev
@RollsEyes:
That was completely uncalled for.
The moral of the story is … these are 2 completely different issues. The only thing they share is that there is a need for equality for all.
RollsEyes
Kev : Okay. I do agree with that, of course.
prohomo
Both black and gay are immutible.@Avenger:
Max Campbell
Why so many black people have voted against same-sex marriages in California? They know that such injustice and discrimination!
Jim in St Louis
*snicker…..worried about the troops are ya? phoney-baloney issue designed to raise a few bucks for HRC.
TIcreolinc
@Jim in St Louis: Closet case troll. Go back to being a thug in St. Louis. Murder capitol of America, and clearly your uneducated low life self is a product of it 😉
Lovealways
Equality for ALL! Love everyone, and promote more love and we will see to it that all people are indeed created equally.
DMWN
Blacks had it worse and their struggle was more significant. Gays have closets to not only hide in to COMPLETELY avert their minority status if they wish. Blacks don’t. So don’t parallel the two. It’s not the same. It’s not kinda sorta the same. It’s completely different.
Jim in St Louis
@TIcreolinc: Very nice, you managed to cram in half a dozen insults in two lines of text. The anti-bully police will be at your door today to arrest you. Don’t commit your hate crimes around here.
Do you REALLY think that black = gay ? C’mon dude…not the same at all.
Kev C
@DMWN:
In my lifetime, blacks have been one of the biggest violators of gay civil rights. If you’re openly gay, or apparently queer, living in a black neighborhood in the inner cities or housing projects, life is hell for them. My house was firebombed, the windows were always being broken. The verbal harrassment and the violent attacks were non-stop. You think blacks have it tough in the ghetto? KMA.
DMWN
Kev C., I don’t believe your claims for a second. I think you’re telling a tall tale for the sake of adding something incendiary about black people to this conversation. If by chance you’re not full of shit with these claims…and your house was firebombed, you windows were broken and you were verbally harassed…maybe it wasn’t because you were gay. Maybe it was because your personality is simply annoying to other people.
Hmmm.
Kev C
@DMWN: Nah, it’s the truth and everyone knows it’s the truth. Why do you think EVERYONE avoids going into these neighborhoods? Police hate going into these hoods. The military doesn’t build bases in these hoods. They avoid them. Everyone does.
And it didn’t just happen to me, so yeah, KMA.
IanPolloss
Stupid video!
IonMusic
It’s true..black and gay are not the same. Blacks have it FAR easier today, are behind the homophobia today, and a black man is the President of the free world today. Meanwhile, gay rights are at an all time worst, gay people are being murdered, shot, beat up, fired, asked to leave proms, restuarants, kicked out of their homes, and bullied to a point where a 12 year old would blow his own brains out. You can’t so much criticize a black person with out being fired in this day and age, gay people? you get hired for bashing them.
Being black and being gay is nowhere near the same struggles in 2010. Gays endure FAR more. Period.
Kyle M.
I’m sick of hearing how bad blacks have it when they’ve shown their asses during OUR civil rights. they only hurt our cause, and even reading the comments sections here, blacks have created a competition on who’s rights are more worthy and just because they assume their rights to be more significant they’ve hijacked ours. if anything, this has made me realize how incredibly self fish, hateful, and backward BLACKS are. And the blacks crying, and moaning, and groaning today didn’t even experience this racism. they don’t even know what racism is. they’re riding on the racism bandwagon to milk it for all it’s worth. They create fabrications of racism to cut ahead in line and play victim, all while stripping rights away from gays and Latinos. so sick of hearing about racism from 40 years ago brought up every single day in 2010, considering the true last frontier in our time is GAY rights. that’s what needs to be addressed, not the idea of another unqualified black “politician” getting elected to office or stautus simply due to their color.
JDE97
@Kyle M.: And I’m sick of hearing white gays acting as if the black community owes them any support whatsoever, and I’m also tired of seeing the gay community CONTINUOUSLY attempt to EXPLOIT the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s for their own personal gain – simply because it was the most recent and arguably the most significant.
Maybe if you handled your own civil rights struggle and quit being so fucking shocked when the black community shows no indication of personally relating to your struggle or interest in singing backup to your tacky cover of “We Shall Overcome” as you fight for marriage and military service rights, the black community wouldn’t have such a standoffish attitude about the whole thing.
If you want allies so damn bad to help you fight for your rights, make them. Don’t expect anything from anyone you don’t know, and you sir don’t know any black people. So shut the fuck up and handle your own business. We owe you nothing. We ask you nothing. We don’t try and parallel (exploit) your struggle to ours for our own benefit. Nor do we gluttonously assume that because you’re a minority too, you’d automatically relate to us. Please return in kind. Thanks.
Guyinhur
@JDE97: Get off the food stamps, and stop ruining our neighborhoods. Stay in your own, and don’t leave.
Blacks= Most demographic in prisons
Blacks= Demographic with most children out of wedlock
Blacks= Most drop out rates
Black areas= Consistently the least safe in every corner of the country
You contribute so little but use and abuse so much from our society, and that’s why everyone is sick of the whole lot of you, and most gays don’t want to be associated to those statistics. We actually pride ourselves in being educated, well rounded, and contributing to society.
B. Hill
Guyinhur = Jason
ewe
The NAACP somewhat agrees that gay is the new black. They essentially said exactly that in a past remark that stated “our experiences may be different but the principles remain the same.”
ewe
Let’s all keep it in the courts thank you very much.
numol
Late, I know, but this thread is a cesspool of racism. I’m neither black nor gay, so I won’t weigh in on whether or not I think “gay is the new black”, but I see the theme (or at least subtext) of “no, see, black people are not REALLY oppressed” in a lot of these comments and that’s really messed up. And I think that bringing up the topic in the post and then doing such a lousy job of moderating comments is unforgivable.
I know racism when I see it — and Guyinhur, Kyle M., Kev C, IonMusic: you are racist! The “black people are all homophobes” meme is bigoted and untrue and doesn’t help anyone (@Max Campbell: I see you used that meme, too). And don’t go around saying that the racism black people experience isn’t real — that’s white supremacist bulls**t, and if you payed attention to anything aside from mainstream white-centric news, you’d know that.
Kev C
@numol: Sorry you don’t like hearing the truth. The fact that I’ve helped more blacks than you ever have or ever will obviously means I’m a racist.
numol
@Kev C: No, what you SAID was racist, and not helpful to anyone except other racists. End of discussion.
Kev C
@numol: How about this .. what you said wasn’t helpful. I’ll bet you’ve never helped anyone but your self-righteous self. While I was raising unwanted black children, helping black friends and saving black lives, I didn’t see you in my hood. I didn’t see any white liberals doing squat for anyone, so fuck off ya fukkin white homophobe.
Erwin Gonzalez
As the creator of the video, I never thought going into it Gay is the New Black.
All I wanted to do was trace the history of intolerance in America and the various movements that parallel present day struggles. I appreciate the dialogue it stirred but please know if we start fighting race issues amongst ourselves, we will be defeated. There is a larger imperative at stake. Equal RIghts for All. Let’s all hash this out after the laws are changed.