black face

B. Day comments on my post " We are, We are, We are but your children".

"Going all rogue, are we?
In this day and age, when what the world really needs is more civility?
Civil rights movements need both good cops and bad. Think Andy and Hosea. Cobb Citizens Coalition and Olympics out of Cobb.
This happened in “the” civil rights movement, too. It was called Black Power. Stokey Carmichael, in fact, got his start with SNCC right here in Atlanta. Those students were too young to see that the old guard was beginning to realize its efforts to register voters and elect blacks to office -- working through (rather than despite) the system for change. The younger activists wanted what was right and they wanted it right then. The old guard was afraid all this noise would blow it and they’d never have a seat at the table.
Is that similar to what’s happening now? more established gay rights groups, with millions invested in lobbying all these years, have worked long and hard to gain access to the sausage factory.
Younger activists may not understand how long it takes to make sausage. To stretch this porky metaphor further than it should go, it follows that if the old guard doesn’t bring home some bacon soon, they’re going to lose their youthful constituency – and lose control of it, too.
Which, if they’d play it right, could be powerful motivation for change. "

I started to respond to this in the comments section of my blog, but I wanted to flesh it out here, share it with everyone, plus there is not spell check in the comments section .

My thoughts on this are changing. For so long, I believed that my movement was almost completely analogous with the African American civil rights movement of the mid 20th century. " We Shall Overcome"... like I have said, with a disco beat. I was wrong. Maine changed everything. Just like Maggie and her evil flying Catholic and Mormon monkeys are screaming from every roof top, " if they can not win in New England, they can not win anywhere".

The State of Alabama did not get to vote on desegregation. Millions and millions of dollars were not spent to overturn Brown v Board, it WAS the law. The state of Mississippi did not put Loving v Virginia to a popular vote. If they had, if the process that Gay Americans are going through now were in place for these laws, the South would still be a completely segregated place. My fellow Georgians were not inflamed to go to the polls with creepy " they are coming for your children " ads to overturn Heart of Atlanta Motel v The United States.

In the sixties, SNCC and the NAACP were both working to have the laws of the land UPHELD, they were in the streets and sitting down at the Woolworth's to enforce the 14th amendment of the Constitution, NOT for the freaking hearts and minds of the people. So where there were definite disagreements within THE Civil Rights Movement, the goals were the same.

The slow and steady state by state way of getting Marriage Equality seemed to me to be the way to go in a pre Prop 8 world. Maine looks like it may have been a nail in the coffin. I do think that an equal marriage bill would pass in New York State, but there is no mechanism to put it on the ballot here in New York. I think this because Eliot Spitzer ran on full out marriage in 2006 and won overwhelmingly, 69% of the vote.

This is one of the reasons that the total ineffectiveness of the New York legislature is so frustrating. Here , unlike most places, it does appear to be the will of the people.

The " good cops and bad cops" are not so defined for us. Is it a good cop move to sit happily back in states that have no chance for any sort of progressive movement and hope that the HRC can keep marriage alive in New England? Is it bad cop to firmly hold President Obama's feet to the fire on the promises that he KEEPS making? ( pardon the pun here) Our long march for equality is not so black and white. Old guard complacency will not work for us, because the anti gay movement is far from complacent, and they hold those weekly meetings, and have LOTS of money. The voters in California and Maine have just shown us that, the rights of the minority are ripe for the picking.

As I rapidly approach my dotage, am I becoming more rougish? I don't know, maybe. Or maybe it is just time to break out an oldie but goodie from our past:

With some big right wing/ theocratic guns pointed at us, silence, or "good copness" may be a luxury that we can just no longer afford.