“No more Mr. Nice Gay”?!

That was on a sign at a demonstration at one of the nationwide protests launched over the weekend across the US over California’s Proposition 8 and the issue of same-sex marriage.

Let’s look at this honestly, seriously and respectfully. Call it a thought exercise.

Start with the lead…

In one of the nation’s largest displays of support for gay rights, tens of thousands of people in cities across the country turned out in support of same-sex marriage on Saturday, lending their voices to an issue that many gay men and lesbians consider a critical step to full equality.

This language is loaded, first of all. It leads the reader to form positive opinions about ‘rights’ and ‘equality’. After all, shame on those who don’t support human rights and equality. Right?

Question: What are ‘gay rights’? Something I’ve always wondered, especially since my hometown of Chicago hosted the ‘Gay Games’ a couple of years ago, is….why do some citizens demand to ‘lead’ with their sexuality instead of enjoying their rights and talents and skills and accomplishments as….human beings with dignity, in a civilization with diverse other human beings? Why lead with whatever your sexuality happens to be? You are not defined by that, my brother or sister. Who are you? You have dignity. Must you be identified first and foremost by how you experience your sex life?

Move on in this NYT piece…

“It’s not ‘Yes we can,’ ” said Tom Ammiano, a San Francisco city supervisor, referring to President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign mantra. “It’s ‘Yes we will.’ ”

Why the defiance, my friend? (Not to sound like McCain….but I want you to know that I hear you, without the edge in your tone.)

Carrying handmade signs with slogans like “No More Mr. Nice Gay” and “Straights Against Hate,” big crowds filled civic centers and streets in many cities. In New York, some 4,000 people gathered at City Hall, where speakers repeatedly called same-sex marriage “the greatest civil rights battle of our generation.”

Excuse me, but over the past year, I have used the term ‘the new civil rights movement’ on a radio show I host…and I do believe it. After all, the disabled, cognitively or physically impaired, or otherwise suffering patients who can’t speak for themselves, do constitute the new civil rights movement. When Terri Schiavo was suffering through the final days of her ordeal, Rev. Jesse Jackson went to stand at the side of her family to support them and bring public awareness to the cause of the vulnerable.

So….what civil rights are at issue in the ‘No More Mr. Gay’ demonstrations? Part of this experiment is thinking through the argument reasonably. As people, homosexuals are denied no civil rights whatsoever. Kevin McCullough made that point somewhere in a piece he did for Townhall.com on the Prop 8 reactions. See….when rights actually are denied classes of human beings based on their race, or gender, or ethnicity, or development along the human life continuum from conception to natural death……those are issues of civil rights. But this issue involves behaviors of human beings, choices certain persons make to interact with other persons. Correct? Seriously?

“Gay, straight, black, white; marriage is a civil right,” the marchers chanted.

Hold on…..black and white actually are civil rights. And furthermore, civil unions between same-sex partners are recognized all over the place. Which covers public property, joint ownership, hospital visitation rights, designated beneficiaries, inheritance rights, all sorts of civil laws. Why this agitation for changing the Judeo-Christian definition of marriage, as old as early civilization, certainly established by this country’s founding documents, and upheld as a constitutional amendment in the recent elections?

Back to the story…

“We just want our kids to know we’re O.K.,” said Mr. McMullin, who had come to a protest in front of the Georgia State Capitol. “We have rights as people even if we don’t have rights as citizens.”

See, that’s the question begging intellectual honesty. What human rights are being deprived here? These citizens have lost no human rights, but they are agitating for new laws to approve behaviors of human beings, laws that were put to a referendum.

Supporters of the proposition have repeatedly argued that Proposition 8 was not antigay, but merely pro-marriage.

“Marriage is between a man and a woman,” said Frank Schubert, the campaign manager for Protect Marriage, the leading group behind passing Proposition 8. “If they want to legalize same-sex marriage, they are gong to have to bring a proposal before the people of California. That’s how democracy works.”

It went through the democratic process and the results are what they are. Kevin McCullough addressed it in his column:

In California, the civil union law is one of the most liberal in the nation. But even if it were not the drawing up of a legally binding document insuring rights is now, and has been available since before the term “gay marriage” was even considered.

Choosing not to protest churches in–shall we say “economically challenged” neighborhoods like–Compton, they instead of made primarily white voters the victim of their hate-filled tirades. And while it was 1.6 million Barack Obama voters–many black and latino–that really served to make the win the decisive victory for marriage that it turned out to be, they have shied away from the churches attended by these same groups.

The Prop 8 H8ters lost for simple reasons, they do not recognize Constitutional authority, they do not respect the disagreement of their opponent, they are dishonest with the facts, and they are far less tolerant than what the majority have ever endured from the most homophobic person they’ve ever met in person.

That’s an important part of this thought exercise. Examine what ‘tolerance’ really means.

Since the election, there’s been a tremendous focus on the fact that 70 percent of African Americans voted to ban same-sex marriages in California.

The vote coincided with the overwhelming support among African Americans for a black presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama. In the aftermath, some Proposition 8 supporters are viewing the black vote as proof that same-sex marriage is a moral rather than a civil rights issue, while some Prop. 8 opponents tout it as evidence of one community’s particular homophobia.

“Homophobia” is the allegation immediately resorted to by the ‘gay activism’ community. Sadly, it distracts unnecessarily.

“It’s just a shame to see the sort of coalition that came out behind Obama, and then you come back to California and you see white gays say ‘black people cost us the election,’ ” said David Binder, a white gay San Franciscan and a polling expert who spent the past two years working for the Obama campaign. “It bothers me that people look at the race of the people involved rather than factors that are more explanatory.”

Like the moral beliefs of a civilization.

The focus on the black vote comes as two social movements came to a climax: the election of a black president and the vote on same-sex marriage in the nation’s most populous state. Those two events have unleashed social upheaval that people are still grappling with.