Gays need heterosexuals to oppose 'Queer Crow' laws [View All]

[davidinalameda]

http://www.detnews.com/2005/editorial/0510/24/A09-358448.htm

Leslie Thompson recalls waking up to wave after wave of painful emotions -- disbelief, anger, fear -- last Nov. 3, the morning after Michigan voters passed a state constitutional ban on gay marriage.

In 10 other states, gay Americans awoke in similar agony, realizing that they, too, lived in a place where a majority of voters wanted the state constitution to deny their gay neighbors' basic rights that heterosexuals take for granted.

And gay Americans everywhere awoke to the dawning of a terrifying new era of "Queer Crow" laws, which attempt to reverse gay progress. The laws are horribly reminiscent of segregationist Jim Crow laws -- passed in reaction to advances toward racial equality -- that long locked the South's black Americans into second-class citizenship.