Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but haven’t groups like GLAD always been more concerned about Eminem than George W. Bush? I think that article brought up a very good point, which is that within any group in American culture, responsibility for civil rights rests upon its members more than upon outsiders. Reprioritizing is in order if gay Americans want to be aknowledged in holy matrimony by the state. THAT is what “freedom isn’t free” means, no matter what those chest-thumping jingoistic cocksuckers with the bumper stickers tell you.

As far as separate but equal and tradition goes, I guess that’s why most women still prefer to use a washroom dedicated to females. Or do you mind taking a piss with a room full of truckers?

Further, minority groups, and indeed most of the public, were rightfully confused about why a class of people that enjoy all the legal protections and benefits of marriage – civil unions – want to impose their own personal views on tradition that runs back thousands of years.

Um, maybe because they’re not the same. And maybe because that “tradition” — the one by which, using your standard of keeping things as they’ve been for thousands of years, my husband owns me — affects how seriously people take the union and whether or not it’s easy to apply your rights in a do or die situation like an emergency room.

So I’m not bothering to address the rest of your comment; come back when you get your basic facts straight. Separate but equal isn’t equal; if it was, we wouldn’t have two different names for the two different things.

The will-of-the-people and democracy-in-action arguments flouted by the right, and correctly vilified by the left, will be tested in court. That’s how a constitutional democracy works, which we are. Short of a constitutional amendment, Prop 8 will and should be overturned. But, to the strategy side of what happened, what I find utterly appalling by the left is their manifest hypocrisy when it comes employing this same tactic to causes dear to their ideology.

For example, think of the movement sponsored by the left to require that pharmacists provide birth control even under claims that it violates their religious beliefs. We heard these same will-of-the-people and democracy-in-action arguments flouted by the left when it came to requiring pharmacists to dispense birth control. The regulations were tested in court and compromise was reached based on constitutional grounds, not democratic grounds. What’s truly amazing is that most Americans seem to have such short attention spans, which is why entering politics is a growth industry.

In any event, marriage is not a civil right in the sense of skin color or some other latent genetic attribute. The No on 8 strategy failed by attempting to equate gay marriage as being a civil rights. Minority groups, rightly, saw this fallacious logic, independent of what they may have been spoon-fed by the Moron church and their money.

Further, minority groups, and indeed most of the public, were rightfully confused about why a class of people that enjoy all the legal protections and benefits of marriage – civil unions – want to impose their own personal views on tradition that runs back thousands of years. What’s even more interesting is how the liberal faction – the militantly secular faction – is now so keenly interested in what has been, recently at least, a religious ceremony. It’s USA: why not start your own church or religion instead of demanding others to conform to your own views. One wonders who’s really bigoted here?

If gays want to marry, they should be able to, but change requires patience, nuance, and grand strategy. Choosing the nuclear option, and a sorry attempt at civil rights relativism, set the movement back years. Indeed , the tremendous knackering the gay class took by minorities showed either just how little they understand minorities or how much of a self-inflated sense of civil-rights relativism they attach to gay marriage.

Some of us were going door-to-door, some of us were making calls, some of us were trying to organize. And queers were the ones telling us we were wasting our time.

If I were talking about the major political parties and presidencies, I would not have given a list any more friendly to feminism. That Black parties were just as sexist as their white counterparts, more or less, is stipulated. I was not talking about people who acted on their own behalf, nor was I talking about people who were a critical part of the machinery.

I was talking about political bosses who had substantial sway over a big chunck of the African American population. That there had been very few such women who had even a glimmer of access, and Mary Bethune came in at the edges of such power, judging by the wiki. Women weren’t even allowed to vote until 8/26/1920!

I find professions of amazement absurd, since it’s tantamount to wishing Henry Clay voted in skirts or that Nat Turner was the 9th president of the United States. Or a closer analogy–to consider the likes of Davy Crockett a figure of political significance. It has nothing to do with the inherent value of people like Tubman, who believe me, I read a number of books about, and everything to do with the fact that she was a woman of action and not an organizing political animal.

WHUT? Are you kidding me? Rosa Parks was not a relevant player?!

“Even now, you see someone like Cornel West being the representative political figure, and not Lani Guineer even though she is a materially more active figure.”

…And have you ever considered why this is? Your attitude is one reason of many.