Over the last year, the Gay & Lesbian Times has discussed the issue of extending full civil and marriage rights to same-sex couples. This week, as we head into the first full month under California’s most progressive domestic partnership ever, AB 205, we decided to take this very public – and at the same time very personal – issue and ask our readers how it is affecting their lives, and how they think gay rights and same-sex marriage fall into the context of the history of American civil rights.

For every person with whom we spoke, we found a different concern. Some are concerned about the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA). Others are concerned about the makeup of the Supreme Court and the implications of new appointments. Sill others fear what a Republican-controlled Congress and Oval Office may do. On the other hand, many are focused on more personal elements, such as what it means to be considered a fully accepted and participating member of society.

When most people think about gay rights, the current debate over same-sex marriage is what comes to mind first. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Valentine’s Day gift to several thousand same-sex couples created a national maelstrom of debate over same-sex marriage, likely giving Karl Rove just the ammunition he needed in the red states. Just a little over two months ago, 11 states were added to the list of those banning recognition of same-sex couples in the institution of marriage, bringing the country’s total to 37. President George W. Bush, whom CNN estimated received 23 percent of the gay vote in the election, continues to discuss the FMA.

“I really can’t believe that Bush got almost a quarter of the gay vote,” says Frank Levine, 37, of North Park. “I mean, really, what were those people thinking? That would be like 25 percent of African Americans in Louisiana voting for [former KKK member] David Duke.”

Several of the people we interviewed drew parallels between GLBT civil rights and the African-American civil rights movements. For most, the African-American civil rights movement implies the struggles of the African-American community led by heroes such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. from the 1950s and ‘60s. In fact, the struggle for civil rights for African Americans began much earlier. In 1838, Fredrick Douglass escaped slavery in the South and joined the abolitionist movement. This movement played a key role in the years running up to the Civil War of 1861-1865.

Almost 200,000 African Americans fought for the Union in the Civil War, and newly freed slaves pressed hard for full citizenship. In 1866, Congress passed the first-ever Civil Rights Act. While the legislation failed, the battle continued. It would be 100 years later before full rights were extended.

“I pray nightly that we are not doomed to repeat history in this regard,” says Phil Mitchell, 40, of University Heights. “I don’t really know when the gay rights movement began, maybe [the] Stonewall [riots] in 1969. Please don’t tell me we have to wait until 2069 for full rights.”

In fact, there were pioneers in the GLBT movement long before Stonewall. In 1924, The Society for Human Rights in Chicago became the country’s earliest known gay rights organization. Twenty-four years later, Alfred Kinsey published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, stating that his research found homosexuality far more prevalent than was commonly believed. In 1951, The Mattachine Society, the first national gay rights organization, was formed. Five years later, the Daughters of Bilitis, a pioneering lesbian organization, was founded. And in 1962, a full seven years before the Stonewall riots, Illinois became the first state in the U.S. to decriminalize homosexual acts between consenting adults in private.

“People simply don’t understand the history of the gay rights movements,” says Gerald Williams, 52, of Hillcrest. “I mean, to think that young people these days can walk hand in hand down University [Avenue] and not be beaten up is something I think they take for granted. My partner and I have been together since college – that’s over 30 years. Does anyone remember what it was like for gays 30 years ago? And frankly, I haven’t heard of a history textbook in school that is going to teach them [GLBT] history. History is written by the victors, they say. Well, if we aren’t winning, we aren’t part of that writing process.”

Others we spoke to drew comparisons based on sex and gender. When national efforts were made by various women’s rights groups to bring equality blind to gender, it was met with three primary areas of opposition, says Amanda Robinson, 27, of Hillcrest.

“Often times, we were our own worst enemies,” says Robinson, who is working toward a graduate degree in Women’s Studies. “It was widely opined that women feared there would be new responsibilities and situations that would make their future uncertain. Women would lose their exemption from compulsory military drafts and combat duty, as well as the support and privileges provided by husbands. It was, as my grandmother used to say, ‘hogwash.’ What we were allegedly giving up was replaced by the right to be a fully participating member of society.”

“That’s how it is with the GLBT community, too,” avers Robinson. “So many people sit back and say, ‘Why would I want the albatross of marriage? Why wouldn’t I want the freedoms of ending a relationships without all the legal stuff?’ Well, maybe because you want the rights of hospital visitation or immigration.”

“Women got the right to vote in 1920,” explains Julie Metzker, 26, a fellow graduate student in Women’s Studies and a resident of North Park. “But women were allowed to run for office as early as 1788. A full three years before women had the right to vote, Montana elected the first woman to Congress – but that was almost a 130 years after we had the right to be elected!”

The right to serve openly in the military has always been a goal of the GLBT movement in the U.S. The current policy “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has been a big concern for many soldiers who wish to serve bravely – and openly – in the military. Here, too, is a common thread with civil rights and women. Roe v. Wade was a critical milestone for women. In 1973, the Supreme Court determined that women had the right to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term.

However, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, “The U.S. Constitution protects the right of the individual – not government – to make decisions concerning his or her own body, including decisions as personal as whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term. Yet women who serve in the military and female dependents of men serving are being refused their constitutional right to an abortion in U.S. military hospitals, even if they use their own money to pay for the procedure.”

“This blows me away,” says Metzker, who is writing her thesis on the subject. “The idea that our military can violate the Supreme Court’s rulings is beyond me. So, does that mean if the Supreme Court grants the right for Amanda and I to marry that if she wants to run off and join the Air Force that we won’t have those protections? It’s totally conceivable under the current scenario.”

With the recent national elections, many in the GLBT community are concerned about the direction of GLBT civil rights, and specifically, the right for same-sex couples to be extended the full benefits accorded in marriage.

During the 2004 election campaign, President Bush emphasized his support for the FMA. The amendment states, quite simply, that marriage is to be defined between a man and a woman. By enacting a constitutional amendment, the federal government would then be able to effectively block any movements in the individual states to recognize marriage for same-sex couples.

Most constitutional scholars argue that the FMA is an uphill battle for conservatives, and many election pundits have argued that it was the carrot on the stick to get the Republican base out to vote in key swing states like Ohio, where defining marriage was, literally, “issue number one” on the ballot.

After all, it is intentionally very difficult to enact and ratify a constitutional amendment to the United States, and only once in America’s history has this process been used to limit rights (Prohibition) rather than extend them. A two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives and Senate must first be achieved. The Constitution must then be ratified by three-fourths of the 50 states. The magic number, then, is 38.

But some gay rights activists have noticed a frightening fact: 37 states already have laws on the books defining marriage between a man and a woman.

“Doesn’t anyone see what is happening here?” wonders Bill Fielding, 25, of Hillcrest. “If it only takes 38 states to approve an amendment and there are already 37 in place, does anyone really think it would be hard to get one more state to join them?”

Recent elections show that the issue of extending marriage to same-sex couples is one with which most Americans are not comfortable. In November’s elections, the margins of victory for the state measurements ranged from 57 percent in Oregon and 59 percent in Michigan respectively, but in states like Mississippi over 85 percent of the electorate voted against marriage for same-sex couples.

However, as Peter Rodriguez, 37, of North Park points out, the battle in the states may be just what the GLBT movement needs.

“Yes, we are a country based on the concept of a majority rule,” explains Rodriguez, “but we are a democracy based on the ideal of minority rights. What that means is that in a democracy like ours, the rights of the minority must be protected. The largest group, the majority, cannot take away the rights of any minority group. Look at the Jim Crowe laws. Don’t you think these outrageous violations of civil rights led to the courts taking action? That is why we have checks and balances.”

Rodriguez’s partner, Miguel Sanchez, 41, has a different take, though. “Checks and balances? Yeah, whoever has the biggest check can tip the balance!”

In fact, there have been four cases in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court dealing with GLBT rights.

In 1986, the Supreme Court heard a challenge to a Georgia law authorizing criminal penalties for persons found guilty of sodomy (Bowers v. Hardwick). The law applied both to heterosexual and homosexual sodomy. However, the court chose only to consider the constitutionality of the law as it applied to homosexual sodomy. The court ruled 5-4 in favor of the state. While charges against Michael Hardwick were later dropped, and the statute itself was struck down in 1999 by the Georgia Supreme Court, many believed things did not get off to a great start for GLBT rights and the court.

A decade after the Bowers v. Hardwick case, the Supreme Court heard the case of Romers v. Evans, a challenge to the provision in the Colorado Constitution that prohibited the state from adopting any laws that gave preferred or protected status to homosexuals. The court sided 6-3 against the provision, concluding that the amendment was “born of animosity” toward gays.

In 2000, the court heard the Boy Scouts of America v. Dale case, in which the organization argued that it has a constitutionally-protected First Amendment freedom of speech right to exclude members who might undermine the group’s goals or expressive purposes. The 5-4 decision shocked many in the GLBT community, including Anthony McCallum, 30, of Hillcrest.

“Can you imagine?” asks McCallum. “Here I am, an Eagle Scout and all, and I have just been told that even if I wanted to go help out a local troupe, I couldn’t. Why? Not because I don’t know the value of community service and good citizenship. But because I am in a monogamous and fulfilling relationship with – oh, the horror – another Eagle Scout!”

But in 2003, things looked up again. Voting 5-4, the court overruled its earlier Browers v. Hardwick decision and found that the state of Texas lacked a legitimate interest in regulating the private sexual conduct of consenting adults. The Texas law, however, applied solely to homosexual sodomy and not to heterosexual sodomy. The case, Lawrence v. Texas raised both substantive due process and equal protection issues. In the majority opinion, the court wrote: “Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.”

These are the words from the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s decision to grant full marital rights to same-sex couples.

Today, the issue of same-sex couples and the right to marry is frequently in the news. Again, a bit of history on the civil rights of various groups as it relates to the issue of marriage may help illuminate the direction of the GLBT struggle:

The first state marriage law of any kind to be invalidated by the Supreme Court was in 1967 in the Loving v. Virginia case. Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter, a black woman, had been found guilty of violating the Commonwealth of Virginia’s miscegenation law, a law banning interracial marriages. They were ordered to leave the state. The Supreme Court found Virginia’s law both in violation of the Equal Protection Clause because it classified on the basis of race and in violation of the Due Process Clause as an undue interference with “the fundamental freedom” of marriage.

Twelve years after the serendipitously-titled Loving case, the court struck down a Wisconsin law that required persons wishing to re-marry gain permission from a court stating that their new marriage would in no way financially impact their offspring from a previous marriage.

In 1987, the court heard the Turner v. Safley case, in which a Missouri prison prohibited inmates from marrying. The court found the regulation failed to even meet the standard of “reasonableness.”

“I hope people are seeing the connection,” says Amy Hudson, 39, of Mission Hills. “The Supreme Court cited due process and equal protection in the Texas case [Lawrence v. Texas], too. I think this is where we should take this. Put these three cases together, along with the whole argument of ‘separate but equal’ and go to the court. How can they say no?”

One problem may be the whole “separate but equal” concept.

In 1999, the Vermont Supreme Court in Baker v. State considered a challenge to its laws denying same-sex partners the benefits of marriage. Relying on the “Common Benefits” clause of its own constitution (a rough analogue to the federal Equal Protection Clause), the court found the laws denying equal benefits to committed same-sex partners unconstitutional, and ordered the state Legislature to respond within a reasonable time by adopting legislation meeting its constitutional mandate. Four months later, the Vermont Legislature responded by enacting the nation’s first law authorizing “civil unions” between same-sex partners that entitled those entering into such unions all the state benefits that would come from marriage.

Civil rights and equality has been one of the very foundations of American democracy. The catch, though, appears to be in defining who is entitled to which rights, and what groups are entitled to being treated equally. For many in the GLBT community, there are glimmers of hope to be found in history, through the struggles of African Americans and women’s rights battles, the victories of individuals in minority groups who have persevered through the legal system to gain the rights afforded to the majority, and the lessons learned from our brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents.

For many, though, time is of the essence and comparing the struggles to conquer homophobia, sexism and racism are not academic exercises. It is the very reality of their lives today. Michelle Fillmore, 63, of Mission Hills is a self-identified African-American lesbian.

“I think it is great that as a woman, I can vote. I think it is great that as an African American, I can drink at any water fountain in Balboa Park. But I am still a lesbian. And until my daughter can call my partner ‘mommy’ at school and I can call her ‘my wife’ at PTA meetings, I am not whole.”