My Generation's Civil Rights Movement

I attended Portland's Proposition 8 protest this morning at Portland State University. Our weather took a break from the normal dark gloom of the rainy season and instead gave us sun and was a beautiful day. Also beautiful was the large group that gathered in downtown Portland in solidarity against the politics of hate and discrimination that has prevailed in this country.

This is history. This is the civil rights movement of my generation. Someday in the hopefully not-too-distant future, people will shake their heads in disbelief that our government ever stifled the rights of law-abiding Americans and mandated who we could marry or not marry. It was not that long ago that some states forbade blacks from marrying whites. Today we look back on that past with disgust and embarrassment. Someday we will look back on the prohibition of same-sex marriage with the same disgust and embarrassment.

Today Portland Mayor Sam Adams called the crowd to come to service: to mobilize against this force and work for equality. It's a fight for equal rights. It's a fight for peace. It's a fight for simple human decency. In my own family, I struggle against those members who feel that for religious reasons or their own uneasiness with homosexuality, that this is not a right worth fighting for, and in fact same-sex partners should not have the right to marry. Within my own friends, I see the same sentiments expressed by otherwise intelligent, open-minded people.

I think all of us who understand this fight for equality, and how important it is, should work together to push those other people to understand how their position cultivates hate and discrimination. Not giving a group of people a right because of a common trait held by that group is discrimination. This is not a religious argument. Whatever your church says about homosexuality should not matter. Allowing same-sex couples to marry would not force any church to administer or recognize those unions.

So I guess the real question you have to ask yourself is, what side of history do you want to be on?