Gays Worse Off Now Than African Americans Were?

Maura Dolan reports on the LATimes.com blog on the Proposition 8 trial.

Gary M. Segura, a Stanford professor of American political science, has testified that voters have supported 70% of ballot measures to strip gays of rights in elections across the U.S. during the last 15 years.

What does he mean by "rights" – entitlements? The voters restricted everyone with Prop 8.

He said there was no other group that has been so targeted by voters.

Hmmmm, I wonder what other behavioral minorities would say about that claim – minorities such as people with seven-figure incomes, smokers, drunk drivers, felons in general, and sex offenders? Usually, the voters are reacting to activism. In other words, we didn't pick this fight. Prop 8 wouldn't have been needed if we could have been confident that Prop 22 would be honored. Prop 22 wouldn't have been needed if we could have been confident that our representatives would maintain marriage, unless we asked for them to change the law.

Here comes what could be the most infuriating statement of the trial:

He further suggested that African Americans may have been less disadvantaged before civil rights laws than gays are today.

Are you kidding me? Hello... slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, lynchings with jury nullification? Attacks on homosexual people are justly prosecuted. Homosexual people, as a group, were not taken from their homes and shipped across the ocean, enslaved, and treated like animals. They have not been denied voting rights - though certain marriage neutering advocates are trying to deny voting rights now.

Constitutional protections existed back then to protect people from racial discrimination, even though laws weren't enforced, Segura said.

Homosexual people have the same Constitutional protections as everyone else – as they should.

Thompson also observed that 48% of people who never attend church supported Proposition 8, and that opponents of Proposition 8 raised more money than supporters.

Oh well – it is convenient to blame the Roman Catholic and LDS churches anyway.

From Lisa Leff's Associated Press coverage:

Segura replied that membership in pro-Proposition 8 churches accounts for 34 percent of the U.S. population, while churches that opposed the measure represent less than 2 percent.

So because the kind of churches that abandon Biblical teachings to promote the neutering of marriage are also the kind to be dying off... thriving churches aren't allowed to participate in society? Huh? This is getting more and more convoluted. We have the right to worship as we please, as do you. We have the right to vote as we please, as do you. We have freedom of association, as do you. We all have the same access to state marriage licensing, whether or not we want to exercise that access.