within extremely "religious" families. Much progress has been made in open acceptance of LBGT family members but a different side of this still exists in many churches. Thankfully, the generations of my grandchildren and great-grandchildren will have wiped all this away.

That is a pretty optimistic view. How have you come to be so confident?

The fault, dear Brutus, is in yourself.

The "might hurt the movement" mentality is alive and well, even in the minds of some so-called progressives who have insisted our LGBT brothers and sisters were asking for too much and that honoring their human rights would jeopardize Dems' chances of being elected.

"A right delayed is a right denied."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

didn't even have to leave DU to read those sentiments.

It was criminal during the Civil Rights era.

Fascinating interview with Bayard Rustin. Thank you, xchrom.

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A dozen states still have anti-sodomy laws on the books 10 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled they are unconstitutional.

One such state is Louisiana, where gay rights groups contend police have used anti-sodomy laws to target gay men. But state lawmakers sided with religious and conservative groups in refusing to repeal the law last week.

Of 14 states that had anti-sodomy laws, only Montana and Virginia have repealed theirs since the Supreme Court ruling, said Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights organization.

Warbelow says that in addition to Louisiana, anti-sodomy laws remain on the books in Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Utah.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/21/12-states-ban-sodomy-a-decade-after-court-ruling/7981025/

Those laws were being used in Virginia, for example, into the 1980s, and were a particular terror transgender people had to deal with. I think there was one day a year allowed where a man could dress as woman in the Old Dominion. It was New Years, I think.

Earlier on, in the '50s and '60s, I've been reading about ways a lot of gay couples would pass as straight in public. For example, one of them would dress as a female, so it would look to the untrained eye like a regular heterosexual couple. But it was just one more risk they had to take, along with being jailed or worse for any sexual act they might take with each other.

Religious groups are why these laws are still kept on the books. Yet we have separation of church and state. Or are supposed to.

DU, clean your own house.
"The openness and brazenness of the LBGT agenda and the media flaunting of gay marriages all across the country cost Dems dearly and threatens to do so in the future."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025764803#post45

To come to a thread such as this, about a man I admire greatly, whose friends I knew personally and see the first comment come for that posters is not at all acceptable to the memory of men such as Bayard Rustin. Stand up DU. Stop the hateful invective against your own neighbors. All of you who 'felt' for the poor insulted terrorists, this is what you allow to be done to others in your own house. Hypocrites.

I just can't look at Rustin's face and let that comment stand without comment. So sue me, straight folks, I do not give a fuck.

I hadn't seen the (deleted) OP you referenced, and I thank you for the illumination. There are many here who would insist that hate speech doesn't exist in "progressive" communities, but that post was pretty hateful.

B

Back in the 1980s there were a big coal miner strike in Great Britain. Of rather peculiar reasons this evolved in to full class struggle, where The Miners were to be deprived of all rights, and even respect. This prompted various gay and lesbian movements to see a clear link to this fight, and they went hard into support groups and fund raising. And something new and unexpected happened - they won respect among the miners.

Later the Miners Union marched up front with their music corps and union banners in a parade of support to sexual minorities - and got this written in as a natural part of the causes, the union was fighting for. Of course it was also a cultural clash of dimensions, and now there is a fine movie about it.