And the Beat Goes On...

Not only have my posts gotten me called a liberal heterophobe, but now it is being implied that I believe that Gay people must prove we are people before we get rights. My comments on his blog attempt to explain my posting.

Clearly you didn't read my entire post on my blog. While did say that we should withdraw our focus on winning the right to marry in the courts, my argument was for our community to focus on real progress in Gay rights.

Specifically, I live in California where Gay people are legislatively equal to straight people (with the exception of the word marriage, alone). But there are too many places in our nation where that is not the case. In many states we can not adopt children, we have no form of domestic partnerships, and have no legal protections against hate crimes. These are real issues that need real progress.

The focus on forcing the courts to grant same-sex marriage is very much hurting our push for other, more important, equal rights. We should focus on true equality first!

In reality, what I was trying to explain with my most recent post is that while Gay people want the right to marry and deserve it, it should be placed lower on our list of priorities. The Queer community is being denied a great number of rights across this country because of our sexual orientation. Those rights are of immediate necessity to many Gays and Lesbians and should be fought for now. Marriage is of less immediate necessity but is known to infuriate many of those who oppose Gay people on even the slightest level. Instead of attempting to prevent our right to marry, they go further and attempt to withhold other rights from us.

As such, I firmly believe we should not back down from our fight to secure equal rights for all Gay men, women, and children. The word "marriage" should be a part of these rights because it is part of our equality to straight people. However, we should be smart about our struggle and fight for those things most necessary to us first.