When are equal rights equal? I say when they’re full and equal!

I quote a good friend of mine who happens to be Palm Springs Mayor Ron Oden (an openly gay African American) who says “There is no right time to move forward with equal rights.” Suppose Rosa Parks would have stopped her campaign for equal rights after she got to sit in the front of the bus. Or, maybe women should have stopped their quest for full equality after they were given the right to vote.

Change is always hard. Social differences and social changes through history have cost millions of lives – from the Middle East to Northern Ireland, from South America to South Africa, from Asia to Russia. And yes, here in the United States change has cost thousands of lives, from the American Revolution to the Civil War, and in our lifetime the civil rights movement that encompasses movements for women’s rights, senior’s rights, the disabled, African Americans and the GLBT community. Thank God we’ve become somewhat of a more civilized country where change can take place in a peaceful way through education and debate. That still doesn’t mean we haven’t had our tragedies. Should the GLBT community have stopped their desire for equal rights after the assassination of Harvey Milk? Should the African-American community have stopped their fight for equal rights after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.?

The Democrats lost the presidential election – which some say is partly the GLBT community’s fault for pushing for equal rights. Many even in the GLBT community are ready to stop pushing for full equal rights. Let’s face it – Kerry was a Northeastern, fairly liberal candidate that didn’t run a great campaign. It’s true we could have framed our fight for marriage equality differently, and I think the new Assembly bill in California (AB 19) is doing that by defining it as civil marriage. But let’s look at the last 40 years – there have been three Democratic presidents – all Southern, white, Christian men: Johnson, Carter and Clinton. And the only one that served two terms was the one that campaigned to lift the ban on gays in the military, go figure!

I say if even one of the reasons John Kerry lost this election is because of same-sex marriage – then that’s even more of a reason to keep fighting for marriage equality. To keep educating people, to keep explaining to people that to discriminate is wrong, no matter how uncomfortable it may make them feel. How comfortable do you think people in the South were when in 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all state laws banning interracial marriage? I went to college in South Carolina in the ’70s and lived in the South until 1989. Believe me when I tell you it was easier for a Southern boy to go home and tell his parents he was gay than to have to tell them guess who’s coming to dinner.

AB 205 may have given same-sex couples in California all the state rights afforded to married couples, but that still leaves out about 1,100 federal rights. I have friends who say that we should stop pushing this issue, it’s too volatile and “we’re doing pretty good here in California.” I wonder if that’s how people in California felt when, in 1948, the California Supreme Court struck down California’s law banning interracial marriage, while it remained illegal throughout the rest of the nation? It wasn’t until 19 years later that the U.S. Supreme Court agreed that those laws were unconstitutional. In fact, the wording the California Supreme Court used is as relevant today as it was 57 years ago. The court wrote, “marriage is… something more than a civil contract subject to regulation by the state; it is a fundamental right of free men…. Legislation infringing such rights must be based upon more than prejudice and must be free from oppressive discrimination to comply with the constitutional requirements of due process and equal protection of the laws.”

California is a leader for the rights of people – always has been. And civil marriage should be no different. What we have here in California (not taking into consideration the federal benefits) is separate but equal! Where is that in our constitution?

To those who say back down – I say it’s time to step it up! As Mayor Oden says, “There is no right time.” But the time is now, and California has to lead the way. Why? Because we can, we should and we owe it to all the GLBT heroes who have fought for decades for full civil rights that are no longer here to fight, and for our current and future young GLBT community. This is not a battle that we can pass on to others!