Over 50 years ago, America entered a New era. It started with a lady who did an act of true public disobedience. And it steam rolled into 40 years ago when a President and most members of the opposition party, came together in a spirit of fairness and true equality to pass an Act that to this day is still one of our most guiding principles.
The fight is not over, but it is being won. And the laws passed are used to marginalize and compartmentalize the remaining Racial bigots we have. At least most of them.
But seeing that struggle, others got ideas. They saw the purity of the fight, how people would do peaceful protests, even tho the authorities were less than peaceful, and they decided that they would "tag-a-long". Today we had one such reminder (http://gideon-macleish.joeuser.com/index.asp?aid=97602), but we have seen others. PETA, Feminist Supremacists, and now Gay Right advocates.
Who else? Who else is going to denigrate what a nation did, and what some simple folks, not media hounds like Jackson and Sharpton, did? For they do denigrate that which Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King Jr did. Oh, we can dig up the old J. Edgar Hoover files and find out that neither was a saint! No, they were mortal humans, with mortal human weaknesses that they sometimes fell into. No one is perfect. But they sacrificed so we could look at our fellow man and see Ted and Craig, and James, and Steve. Not a black, white, Puerto Rican, and Jew. Today I see Ted, Craig, James, and Steve. And I will celebrate this Monday for BOTH King and Parks for allowing me to see my friends, and not "those races".
But I will not Celebrate PETA, NOW, NAMBLA, or the Gay Alliance on that day. Your fight, indeed your travails are not the same, and to try to piggy back on them is a disservice to the fight we went through to have equality. You HAVE equality (except for the Ox and Lamb and ass), and you always have! What you don't have is any kind of right to compare yourself to the struggle for real equality. Women were treated differently in the past. No constitutional amendment was needed to correct that. Gays were ostracized, but then that was not because anyone could see you as gay passing you on the street. And animals? Thank god we have not given them the right to vote yet! (oh wait! PETA does have that right - my bad!).
Simply put, it is not the same and to equate it as the same is a disservice to all who have tried to and continue to try to make this a color blind society. I don't want to know your race. I want to know the character of your self. I do not make friends based upon skin color, but upon character. We are getting there, and I hope before I die, we will be there! But god help us if the leeches bleed this for their own petty agendas.
Don't piggy back! make your own case!