Wanda Sykes’s Stirring Call for Equal Civil Rights Across the USA

November 17th 2008 in activism, gay culture, video

Speaking to a protest crowd in Southern California, Wanda shares that she is gay, proud, married with her wife in the crowd, and pissed off at the wave of anti-gay civil marriage rights and anti-adoption laws by gay parents.

She said the some thing at the True Colors concert at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley in June. Loved her then, love her now. A stirring call for democratically guaranteed equal civil rights for gay people across America, for equality for all.

PROFILE Storyteller, musician, thinker, creative, and technopagan. Think of me as a hillbilly with a PhD, which is a fact.

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2 comments to...
“Wanda Sykes’s Stirring Call for Equal Civil Rights Across the USA”

Steve the Witch

wrote on November 18th, 2008

This seems relevant here. I just read this interview from CNN’s DL Hughley with Dan Savage. What a couple of assholes. Apparently neither of them think we’re fighting hard enough. I posted a response and encourage everyone to do the same anytime you see something worth speaking out against. I, for one, will never watch DL Hughley’s show and I’m sending CNN a note saying so. I’m sending a note to Dan Savage, too.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/17/hughley.savage.prop.8/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Excerpt from the interview that pissed me off:

Hughley: Here’s what I think. I’ve seen a lot of people, gay activists, make the comparison of basically equating their struggle with the struggle of black people throughout the civil rights era. And that hits me even me kind of wrong.

Savage: And me too.

Hughley: Because historically, millions of people died and they were disenfranchised. Some of them couldn’t have a name. This is about one segment, like to be married. And I think that that is none of my business. But I also think that what you asked — I’ve never met a black atheist. I never have, because we are so rooted in theology, we are so rooted in all these things, that even me, who — I’m not a regular churchgoer — had a hard time going, this is — this goes against what I was taught.

My post:
Mr. Hughley, millions of gays and lesbians have died because the government couldn’t be bothered to treat and stop the AIDS epidemic in the early 80’s. We have been disenfranchised, persecuted, hunted and killed. Do not marginalize our fight for the rights every American is guaranteed in our constitution - equal rights under the law. How dare you imply that we are not worthy or our rights because we have not fought hard enough. Shame on you.

James

wrote on November 18th, 2008

It is sad that Hughley thinks this way. People are angry and reactive with each other over this proposition. I see the entire gay community - in all our beautiful diversity - fed up with and protesting against the Christian religion for its apparently unwavering intolerance and recurring attempts to impose religious beliefs over others, all the while exploiting homophobia to gather and maintain political power. Since the Mormons and Catholics were largely responsible for the funding of the Yes on H8 proposition, civil society has the right to rise up and to challenge them in this attempt to write religious ideology into a secular constitution.
I don’t think it is one’s ethnic identity that determines how one votes or thinks, but that it is education and social class that largely influence one’s thinking and voting. It is the narrow Christian worldview, lack of education, and lack of a properly funded and executed No on 8 campaign that led to H8’s passage. However, the vote was really close and I think the California Supreme Court will annul the proposition, as it is a constitutional revision, which is not permitted through popular initiatives. As Irene Monroe says over at huffingtonpost.com, “…the blame should rightly be placed on the shoulders of our government. To have framed our civil rights as a ballot question for a popular vote was both wrong-hearted and wrong-headed. If my enslaved ancestors had waited for their slaveholders to free them predicated on a ballot vote we all wouldn’t be living in the America we know today. And Barack Obama would not be our president-elect.”

Our anger is just and our right to exist with full equality is our agenda, nothing more and nothing less. Check out the videos in the blog, Jimboland Jots, to see the diversity of the protesters in San Francisco.

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Prop 8 momentum could lead to local change

Andy Thayer has been working to secure marriage rights for gay couples in Chicago for more than 10 years.
But Thayer, one of the co-founders of the Gay Liberation Network, a local gay and lesbian action group, predicts equal rights will become a major issue in Illinois as more local voices join the fight spurred by the passage of Proposition 8 [...]

Prop 8 momentum could lead to local changePrevious Entry