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"Who am I to say that you weren't born that way ... (but) sexual activity, what you do, who you sleep with, is your business," Rodriguez said. "That's between you, your lover, and the good God Almighty in heaven. I don't want to know. Let's leave sexual activity in the bedroom. The government shouldn't be legislating what we do behind closed doors between two consenting adults. And to compare it to the African-American struggle, to me that's an abomination." So is gay the new black, or did the election define a new and unique set of gay challenges? "The gay fight for marriage has its own integrity, its own background," said Andrew Cherlin, a professor of sociology and public policy at Johns Hopkins University. "The experience of blacks in the United States is very different. ... I don't think it helps the fight for equality to make that claim." Cherlin says that fight began in the 1980s when the AIDS epidemic unfolded. Gay partners had few rights to help their ailing loved ones, visit them in hospitals or inherit their property, which led to the push for civil unions. Today, only Connecticut and Massachusetts permit gay marriage, and a few states allow civil unions or domestic partnerships that grant some rights of marriage. Galvanized by the stinging Nov. 4 defeat in liberal California, the marriage movement is now as much symbolic as practical. "There was a shift in the '90s, from rights to the symbolism of being married," Cherlin said. "This is not primarily a battle about rights now. If it was, all you'd be hearing about is domestic partnerships. Now it's at two levels simultaneously. One is the level of rights; the second is the level of symbols." One symbol that some see missing from the gay rights movement is a figurehead. There are famous people who are out and proud, such as Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., or Ellen DeGeneres. But "we don't have our Martin Luther King or Malcolm X or Barack Obama," Wilbekin said. Yet the nature of activism has changed since the days when King proposed the idea of a mass march on Washington. The recent nationwide gay protests were instigated by a Seattle blogger who set up a Web page three days after the California vote. And in some ways, gays see Obama himself as a symbol of gay progress -- even though he opposes gay marriage. Obama is in favor of civil unions, and during his victory speech, when he included gays in his description of America, it made them feel part of the historic racial milestone. Solmonese said that the election defeats of Nov. 4 have inspired a level of gay activism not seen since the early days of the AIDS epidemic. "That is buoyed by equal parts anger and rage about Proposition 8," he said, "but also hope and inspiration about doing something that for a long time we didn't think possible
-- like electing Barack Obama as our president."
[Associated
Press;
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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