Civil Rights

WASHINGTON — Tens of thousands of people marched to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and down the National Mall on Saturday, commemorating the 50th anniversary of King’s famous speech and pledging that his dream includes equality for gays, Latinos, the poor and the disabled.

The chief strategist for the 1963 March on Washington was gay in an era when same-sex relations were widely reviled in American society.

Today is “Harvey Milk Day,” a day of honor for the slain gay rights activist, which is officially recognized by the State of California and celebrated worldwide.

A new poll finds that the majority of Americans believe that marriage equality is a civil rights issue, and that it will inevitably become legal – whether they support it or not.

FRANKFORT, Ky. — LGBT advocates and civil rights groups have joined with the American Civil Liberities Union (ACLU) in calling on Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear to veto a religious freedom bill approved in the state Senate last week.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday that marriage equality for gays and lesbians is the next big civil rights issue.

A Wyoming lawmaker on Monday testified that she is tired of hearing gays and lesbians equate their struggle for civil rights to the efforts of mixed-race couples to secure the legal right to marry in the late 1960s.

Presidential inauguration days are often filled with pomp, circumstance, cheering crowds, and moments to remember, but rarely do they so perfectly illustrate a dramatic shift in our country’s understanding and acceptance of cultural changes. The second inauguration of President Barack Obama did just that. … To be sure, having our President call for full equality for gay Americans in what is one of the biggest and most viewed speeches of his Presidency is monumental.

Vice President Joseph Biden apparently called LGBT discrimination the “civil rights issue of our time” before an Obama campaign office in Florida, according to a pool report.

Democracy is about participation — it’s about caring about an issue so much that you’ll go door-to-door in your neighborhood talking to voters about marriage equality. Heck, you might not even be in your neighborhood. We’re so quick to judge when we lose an amendment or a referendum, but how quick are we to be out knocking on doors and making calls for equality?