Pray the Hate Away

While I’ve spent much more time in the blogosphere in the last few months than I have in my entire life due to this class, and am beginning to feel more comfortable with the dos and don’ts of the class blog, I still feel that this post may be incorrectly formatted for receiving a “good grade” but nevertheless have a question to pose; a question that has been eating away at me since reading Dr. King’s Letters from a Birmingham Jail for Monday’s reading, and an early post entitled, “Throwing like a Gay” by Schrammooo (which I would definitely suggest you read, in fact, here is the link), I was left to ponder a few things; the primary being this:  How long will it take before the LGBT movement will be looked upon similarly to how we look back on the civil rights movement, or the women’s rights movements?  For the purpose of a grade, I would like to consider the LGBT rights movement as a current event, and Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail and its views on justice as the political theory we are discussing in class.

Marting Luther King Jr.

I guess my question could really be phrased more appropriately by saying this:  How long will it take before we as a country look back and say, “Wow, what we were thinking by not giving the LGBT community more rights?”  I also feel inclined to add that personally, I am an extremely conservative, straight individual, and religiously, do not see eye to eye with the LGBT agenda.  That being said, I don’t understand why American’s make such a big deal out of the issue.  I would like to tastefully compare the LGBT movement to that of the civil rights movements in the 1950’s and 1960’s and also the women’s rights movements that took place from the late 1800’s through the mid 1900’s. 

Let’s start with the woman’s rights movement, since chronologically it occurred first.  At the time, relinquishing rights to the women of this country was a tough thing for many Americans to mentally grasp.  Those that were against woman’s suffrage claimed that women's suffrage would lead to the breakdown of the family and the country, that it would feminize men and masculinize women.  Sound familiar?  It should.  That is the basis for counter argument against the LGBT community.  And I ask you; do we currently believe that giving the women of America the right to vote was a bad thing?  Of course not!  Furthermore, how long has it taken us to move past those times of questioning women’s suffrage, and into an age where women’s rights are encouraged, if not celebrated?  Please don’t think that I’m insinuating that we live in a perfectly un-sexist (if I may) world, but come on people, as a whole compared to the past, we truly celebrate a woman’s right to vote, work, and do anything that a male can do.  How long will it be before we look back, and wonder why the LGBT community didn’t have the same rights?

Next, lets look at the civil rights movement, headed by 20^th century greats like Martin Luther King Junior, Rosa Parks, and Malcolm X.  I want you to understand how controversial giving a colored man equal rights was in this time period.  I would argue that the civil rights movement in its time was one hundred times more heated than that of the LGBT movement of today.  Richard B. Russell, a United States Senator repeatedly opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, saying, “We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our states”.  You know the story; groups such as the KKK, the Nation of Islam and The Black Panthers arose from this time period, as powerhouses among the world of hate groups conducting some of the most heinous crimes known to man, all under the guise of gaining or suppressing civil rights.  I would argue that while the LGBT movement is heated, it has not yet (and hopefully will not have to) reach the level of violence that inundated the civil rights movement of the 1960s.            

My point is this, are we as a country able to look back at this, and say, “What we were we thinking not giving these groups rights?”  I truly believe that America as a whole IS at this point.  How long will it be before we can say the same about the LGBT movement?