Can you compare the black civil rights movement to the LGBT rights movement?

Of course. It used to be illegal to marry interracially, and it's just like that, too.

 

Despite the best efforts of the right wing radicals, being gay is definitely not a chosen lifestyle. People don't wake up and think 'how can I get beat up more'? Therefore there are a great many similarities between any civil rights movement and the LGBT rights movement. No one chooses their sexuality just as no one chooses their race.

 

Bottom line is that both are minority groups that have been and continue to be discriminated against on the basis of something that they didn't choose and can't change.

 

I don't really like the comparison, because often it assumes that the black civil rights movement is over which is far from the case.

 

I've seen it used continually by white LGBTQs to claim we live in a 'post-racial' society, outright denying their white privilege.

---------- Post added 7th May 2013 at 03:19 PM ----------

^^^

 

And of course, it also erases the existence of black queers. Not to mention that they're two totally different struggles, with different needs and goals, so comparing them seems pretty stupid to me.

 

NO, you can't compare the black civil rights movement to the LGBT rights movement.

Thank you! Unfortunately we don't live in a post-racial society. White privilege is still HUGE...

---------- Post added 7th May 2013 at 02:43 PM ----------

^And this as well.

 

It erases their existence because the very comparison creates a false dichotomy of 'this movement of that movement'. And that's pretty bad, especially when it was queer POC who started the queer rights movement in the Stonewall riots.

Sure they have the same goals of liberation for their respective people. But the methodology in creating that has been pretty different. However, I'm no expert on the history of either movement, so I can't really make an in depth analysis.

 

The African-American community, including GSM African-Americans, have asked us not to make the comparison, so I don't.

 

I wouldn't put money on that, unfortunately. :dry:


"The only way I know how to live my life is to be responsible for what I do. I don't know how to be responsible for what every black male did. I don't know. Yes, I am going to say that I'm a thug. That's because I came from the gutter and I'm still here." -Tupac Shakur

This hits the nail on the head for one aspect of the experience.

 

This should be more than reason enough to not make it.

 

Tbh I just don't see why it's necessary to compare the two. I do see the similarities, but there are major differences. And different types of discrimination effect people in different ways (and they often overlap).

 

”Homosexuality cannot be elevated to the civil rights issue. The civil rights movement was born from the Bible. God hates homosexuality.” - Activist: Alveda King, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece.

Gee, I wonder why.

 

Yes, but it's extremely insensitive to do so and politically damages the LGBT movement as a whole. I advise strenuously against it. There is a considerable difference in the degree of oppression for the most part that really removes the LGBT movement from comparability.

To wit, white queers never suffered from slavery and generations of economic discrimination that prevented them as a class from developing opportunity and access through accumulated wealth the way queer and straight black folks have.

While there are commonalities, I think they are oversold, and the only reasoning for trying to advance the proposition that LGBT struggles can be compared to the civil rights movement is to gain control of and appropriate the power and acceptance that movement already enjoys, rather than developing the power of our own movement on its own merits.

As a practical matter, white folks talking about the civil rights movement and any possible comparability to the LGBT movement will be viewed with distrust by conservative communities of color whose favor we need to be trying to curry, not alienate ourselves from wholesale.

 

Just because an opinion comes from a douchebag doesn't mean the idea is douchey. It isn't just conservatives like Alveda King who have asked us not to make the comparison, plenty of queer and queer-allied African Americans have also made the request. I'm posting from my Nook or I'd give examples, but they aren't hard to find.

 

Why is it that so many people forget that the African American civil rights movement goes as far back as slavery.


Do we recognize that? Because it seems to me that since African Americans have suffered over so many centuries, we have forgotten that their plight didn't begin in the 1950s.

I have no intention of being rude and this is not directed at the OP or anyone else in this thread. However, this desire to compare the struggles and suffering of various groups of people is by far one the most idiotic, insensitive, and egotistical statements that you could throw out there. I cannot seem to grasp why the suffering on African Americans and the Jews has become such a novelty for comparison. Millions of people have died. Lost everything. Spent all of their years in horrific conditions. Women mutilated and raped. Children brutally murdered. Yet we stand here acting as if we have a right to stand up and claim "We've felt that pain".

What would you like? A cookie?

You don't get a gold star for suffering the most. There is no justification in acting as though you have been dealt the toughest card. On an ethical level, the struggles of one group of people should never be compared to another. On a historical level, the LGBT rights movements haven't even come marginally close.

 

Of course not. Each movement is infinitely complex in its own way. The LGBTQ does not face mass segregation, and outside marriage laws, we share all of the same rights. African Americans cannot hide the fact that they are black, whereas the majority of the members of the LGBTQ community can hide their sexuality to avoid prejudice.

 

I think this is a very complicated subject as many of those opposed to gay rights deny that people are born gay as their bible beliefs would no longer be valid. It hard to deny someone is black. I was going to an all-black school when Martin Luther King was killed and leaned about guilt by association which left me tainted in regard to the civil rights movement. I do equate what I felt in that school to how gays are mistreated even today. On a gun forum I belong to there is a thread about gay marriage vs gun rights and all but two of those oppose to it kept quoting the bible as the reason for their beliefs and tried to call marriage a privilege rather than a right, and that the definition of marriage is between a woman and man. When I posted that the definition has changed to include gay marriage that shut them up for a little bit. In some ways gay rights is a harder fight than the civil rights movement as you have so many insisting being gay is a choice as they fear the bible will be proven wrong if the truth became the norm.

It is hard to fight someone’s own personal denial. I think it is best to not make comparisons to other fights as it misses the personal struggle of each involved but being discriminated against contains the same hurt no matter the reason. Being black doesn't have the added issue of trying to be accepted by your own family.