What’s your logic?
May 1954: The doctrine of ’separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.
February 2004: The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal. . . .
I just saw a woman on n e w s 2 2 who I used to work with on a few initiatives through the ex-job. She is an African-American woman who is prominent in the city of Springfield. I always respected her, but I just saw her on the telly telling the n e w s 2 2 audience that “there’s nothing in the scripture that supports the gay lifestyle.” It just goes to show that good people can be so misguided. She’s a great woman who mostly holds very lucid opinions and always made the most solid arguments in meetings when I worked with her, but when it comes to gay marriage, she says something silly about the scriptures? Most of these yahoos who oppose gay marriage have no logic to back up anything they say. This otherwise intelligent woman is no exception.
I had to tear up on my way home tonight, while listening to NPR. Various voices read from letters from citizens to President Eisenhower as they reacted to the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka decision on May 17, 1954. If you haven’t had a lump in your throat all day thinking about the reality that gay marriages are legal in Massachusetts today (you heartless wench), then listening to these letters will probably not tug at your heartstrings either. For me, the floodgates opened up for the third time as I made my way home. It’s amazing that just 50 years ago, ‘negros’ were dirty, filthy, vile, diseased according to some people who wrote these letters; not only that, these white people felt completely comfortable signing their names to these letters. There were some positive letters, too — the last one, from a ten-year-old boy who seemed pleased with the decision, but wanted to know what exactly the differences were between whites and blacks. I sensed from his letter that he really wasn’t sure what they could be. Kids say the darnedest things, don’t they?
Isn’t it sad that white supremacists rallied in Kansas just yesterday? Relics. Freaks. Burn in hell.
My one hope is that in fewer than fifty years the anti-gay-marriage rhetoric will go the way of the Eisenhower letters — anyone who says “Marriage = 1 Man 1 Woman” will be considered a relic of a different time. I recognize the simplicity of this statement, but do hopes need to be complicated?
daily life | sighclub May 17, 2004