"Progress will not happen on its own"

[justin899]

Some are claiming we’ve pushed too hard, too fast for equality. Progress will not happen on its own.

By CHERYL JACQUES
Friday, January 14, 2005

THE STRUGGLE FOR gay civil rights is at a crossroads in America, and even within the GLBT community there are differences of opinion about how the struggle for equality should proceed.

While many committed leaders are continuing the long march toward full equality, including equal marriage rights, others are arguing that we have gone too far, too fast, and that we should wait for society to catch up.

In determining our path going forward, we should learn from the leaders of the civil rights battles that have come before us.

Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” in 1963, that white moderates were “arguing that civil rights needed to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’”

“Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely rational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills,” King wrote.

Suffragist Susan B. Anthony said, “Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation or social standards never can bring about reform.”

SOME HAVE INTERPRETED the 2004 election results as a backlash against gay marriage. Thirty-nine years ago Dr. King dismissed the notion of “backlash” against the black civil rights movement “because that gives the impression that the nation had decided it was going to solve this problem and then there was a step back because of development in the civil rights movement.”

The lessons of history are clear: Equality cannot wait for a convenient time; society only moves toward equality when challenged to do so.

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