This drives me crazy
Found this in the Baltimore Sun today:
"No two civil rights struggles are ever exactly the same," said Dan Furmansky, executive director of Equality Maryland. "But there is certainly inspiration to be gained from the bravery and the heroism of African-Americans and the struggles they faced to be treated with dignity, respect and equality over generations."WTF, Delegate-or-is-it-Pastor Burns? (Pastor - I imagine that's key here.) The only people who have a civil rights problem are the people who can't hide - can't lie to fit in?
Del. Emmett C. Burns Jr., one of the Assembly's more outspoken opponents of same-sex marriage, rejects that view.
"I get really bent out of shape when you talk about gay and lesbian rights as a civil rights issue," said Burns, a Baltimore County Democrat and pastor at Rising Sun Baptist Church in Randallstown. "Whites can hide their gayness; I cannot hide my blackness."
You're saying blacks who can pass don't have a civil rights problem, is that it? You're saying that when people fire someone because he's gay, deny her child medical benefits because she's gay and not the biological mother, beat someone up for looking at them funny in a bar... When people want to string someone up on a fence and watch him die because he's gay, that's not a civil rights issue because he could lie about his gayness? That bends me out of shape.
Several things over the past few days have made me remember a line from an old Law & Order episode. Bigoted young detective Rey talking to his more world-weary and tolerant partner Lenny about gays:
Rey: I can't deal with the lifestyle but I can sympathize with the need to hide it.That's you, pastor-slash-delegate. The person who can't deal with it and wants it hidden.
Lenny: From the people who can't deal with it... yeah.
And that makes it a civil rights issue.
Sure, maybe not as huge as yours. Hank Greenberg once pointed out that his problems weren't much compared to Jackie Robinson's... but he never said they didn't exist.
(I'd also like to point out the homophobia inherent in his statement: "Whites can hide their gayness; I cannot hide my blackness." What? No black gays? But that's a digression...)
1 Comments:
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At 5:14 PM, October 25, 2007
incunabular had this to say...
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<-- Older Post ^ Home Newer Post -->One parallel that I see is the way in which people talk about homosexuals. I have been hearing more and more of the "I don't like 'the gay,' but that one lesbian at work is pretty cool. And the gay guy on the sitcom is hilarious. And my stylist Dan is fabulous!"
My father would talk about blacks in the same manner when I was younger. He would use the N-word quite a lot, but when I pressed him on it there was "a difference between blacks and N-words. Officer Jackson is black and a hard worker. The criminals shown on the evening news are stupid Ns."
Is that a breakthrough? I'm not sure. It was the last tidbit of open racism that I remember. After that, all similar rhetoric disappeared from my life. Maybe that was more related to whom I chose to hang out with, though.
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