LBGTQ+ Rights are Civil Rights

June 25, 2020

by Vice-Chair

Patrick Crabtree

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

These are the words from the Declaration of Independence. And the Preamble of the U. S. Constitution states, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Let us frames these words, “all men [and women] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” and “Blessings of Liberty to ourselves.” These words were lived up to with the Supreme Court’s June 15, 2020 6-3 landmark decision that gay and transgender employees are protected by civil rights laws against employer discrimination. This moves us to “to form a more perfect Union.”

We applaud the SCOTUS on this decision.

These three cases, Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda, Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, and R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission led to this landmark decision. Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote the opinion for the six-member majority, said that it does.

"Today, we must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender," Gorsuch wrote.

"The answer is clear. An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids."

Gorsuch is correct; it has everything to do with sex. How one acts, how one dresses, who one loves, and who one has sex with. If a male “acts manly” and has sex with women, it is condoned. It is the same for women who are “feminine.” But, be outside the box, then all of a sudden it not condoned. Why should it matter? What should matter is whether or not an employee does his/her job.

The whole homosexual issue is deeply entrenched in religious beliefs, religious beliefs of the dark ages, religious beliefs that does not promote justice, liberty, and certain unalienable rights. Our U. S. Constitution clearly separates re

ligion from governance. We all have choices, if one does not “believe” it is not right simply do not do it. One has no right to force their “Beliefs” on another human being with opposing religious ideology.

This is only the beginning of a struggle. We won a battle but we have not won the war. 

Advocates for Gay and Lesbian rights, among other liberal activists, warned that President Donald Trump’s election would lead to conservative judges and rollbacks in such landmark victories as the high court’s decision to leg

alize same-sex marriage in 2015 under President Barack Obama. It was and will be thinly veiled under the banner “religious freedom” similar to Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission and Alabama’s House Bill 24 that allows religions to deny us the right to adopt children. They will make other “Jim Crow” anti-gay bills to weaken Monday’s ruling.

In the words of Robert Kennedy, “Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

As Democrats and LGBTQI, we must be ever vigilant. 

We must end Betsy DeVos’s dismantling of LGBTQI students’ rights. We must defeat Trump’s, ALEC’s, Heritage Foundation’s, and Federalist Society’s attack on our rights. We must fight the Religious Right’s attack on our freedom.

This is what the Mobile County Democratic Executive Committee believes in and what the LGBTQI Community believes in. To achieve this we must demand our lawmakers to treat us equally and equitably and enact laws that enshrine “all men [and women] are created equally.