Frederick Douglass delivered the speech in 1852 titled “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” The speech posed the question of what cause for celebration was there for slaves when they were not granted the freedoms given to most Americans.
So today I pose the question “What to Gays is Valentine’s Day?”
Currently in the United States only six states have completely legalized gay marriage: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. Other states grant access to civil unions and domestic partnerships, but those titles do not carry the same rights and privileges as marriage.
Although six states have moved in the right direction by allowing gay couples the right to validate their love by marrying, thirty states have a Constitutional ban on gay marriage, and six more states have taken legislative action to prohibit gay marriage.
Not only are gays not allowed to have their love recognized through marriage, lately it has become dangerous to express their love. On Feb. 12, 2008, Lawrence King, a 15-year-old student at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, Ca. was shot and killed by a fellow classmate.
Brandon McInerney, the assailant who killed King because he was gay, killed him because he had asked McInerney to be his Valentine.
Slaves had no reason to celebrate the Fourth of July in the 1800s, and I don’t see much reason for gays to celebrate Valentine’s Day at the moment. Gays still have the ability to hug and kiss on a park bench. But I am sure there is little solace in being able to love each other but not having others recognize the legitimacy of their love.
In California during the 2008 election cycle, people weren’t just voting on who would ascend to the presidency. A constitutional ban on gay marriage labeled Proposition 8 was also on the ballot. And the same African-Americans who came out in droves to support Barack Obama also voted for Proposition 8.
Seven in 10 African-Americans who went to the polls voted “yes” on Proposition 8 according to The Washington Post, which is extremely disheartening. In fact that’s more than disheartening, it’s a sad story about the oppressed becoming the oppressor.
The results should have been different. African-Americans, should have voted “no” without question. There is a reason that the fight for gay rights has been called the civil-rights challenge of our generation.
And make no mistake, the people who stand against gay marriage today are no different from the bigots who stood against interracial marriage in the 1960s.
As an African-American, and someone who gives all due deference to history, the similarities between the struggles of blacks and gays is too clear. It is astonishing that a large amount of the black community does not see what I see. One only has to take one of the speeches of Strom Thurmond or Jesse Helms, and replace the word Negro with the word gay to see.
And for those who think that their religious convictions excuse their beliefs towards gays, it makes their bigotry all the more hideous. The Bible was also used to justify the enslavement and mistreatment of blacks, much like it is used as an excuse to hate another group of people today.
“It’s like asking ‘Do I support black marriage or white marriage?’ … The inference of the question is that gays are not like other human beings,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said after being asked about the issue of gay marriage during his 2004 run for president.
By opposing gay marriage people assert that gays are inferior human beings, they are incapable of feeling like all other human beings, and they are incapable of loving like all other human beings.
If that is what a majority of Americans truly believe, that gays are inferior human beings, then I guess this will have been the second time that America didn’t really mean “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Frederick Douglass fought and waited for the day when the Fourth of July could truly mean something to the black community, and I await the day when Valentine’s Day has a stronger meaning to the gay community.
For a long time the black community complained about its struggle being ignored. It is now the one turning a blind eye to the plight of others.
I ask that everyone, especially the black community, remember that while they celebrate Valentine’s Day there are some who don’t have much to celebrate and it is their duty to empathize with and support those people.
