“He said their is “no parallel” …”

Umm, that should be “there” not “their.”

And after three (3) days, the paper and its reader haven’t noticed the grammatical error. It still hasn’t been corrected on the paper’s website.

Been know about Ratliff’s antics for a long time

http://rodonline.typepad.com/rodonline/2009/04/antigay-black-iowa-pastor-seeks-marriage-ban-after-historic-ruling.html#comments

And he considers himself a civil rights activist? Yeah, right, civil rights for my group but not for yours.

Otherwise, henceforth I will be known as “his holiness, the most high archimandrate of Thog”. And will have about as much substance….

2. Or speak to a gay person as if I know more about being gay than they do.

Straight people that do that are an embarrassment.

But in the case of other black men like Ratliff, he is also an ingrate. There are gay soldiers who have risked life and limb to preserve his freedoms, while not enjoying the same at home.
Similar to black soldiers who did so, yet faced Jim Crow at home.
This is no different.

He’s an ingrate to all the gays and lesbians who took risks here at home during the Civil Rights Movement and did so with no recognition for doing so at the time.
Most prominent among them, Bayard Rustin.

I’ve made quite a list of such black people who are like this. I have names, phone numbers and emails. I pick a certain moment, I don’t reveal at first that I’m an equality activist, but I do give them background as a black woman, a person in law enforcement and someone in a mixed marriage.
And then what the differences between me and an ignorant ungrateful black person and how they resemble segregationists and do they really WANT to behave like a segregationist?
Who is, after all, someone who wants to separate someone from the rest of society for being different, yet are not excluded from social responsibility and accountability.
Something that gay people DO know as well as black people do.

I have a debt to pay to what’s right. After all, there are people who fought for me to be here free and mostly without challenge.
What would I look like not fighting for someone in turn?
It’s a moral impossibility to benefit from the very people you vilify.
A decent Christian wouldn’t behave that way. And Ratliff, as a man of the cloth, has an obligation to know better.

And, he will. :0 P

Obviously the discrimination of racial minorities vs. LGBTs is not really directly comparable in a simple or universal “Which is worse?” sort of way. Being black is usually obvious, whereas being gay can be kept in the closet. Being gay often gets condemnation directly from one’s family, church, or social circles, whereas most black people experience prejudice mainly from people they know less well or in public settings. Being black is in some ways a hereditary economic disability, whereas gay people do not take such a big hit in terms of education or income. Homophobia is much more socially acceptable than racism.

However, we can compare the legal statuses of the two groups directly, and LGBT rights is easily far behind in that respect. Our marriage status is over 40 years behind, and our status in terms of federal discrimination is over 45 years behind. Even sodomy laws only disappeared 8 years ago; while Brown v. Board was being decided, Congress was passing laws forbidding homosexuals from entering the country (as they were considered “psychopathic”).

We can also compare hate crimes, in which case it is currently significantly safer to be black than LGBT.

It’s easy to claim that the two situations are different; they are. It’s hard to claim that one group has it better in some generic, universal way. It’s flatly wrong to say that somehow gay people have it so good that we have nothing to complain about.