IT GETS BETTER

[IT GETS BETTER]

On John Lewis, Civil Rights Hero

“I fought too long & too hard against discrimination based on race & color, not to fight against discrimination based on sexual orientation,” tweeted civil rights icon John Lewis on July 23, 2015.

Fifty-five years ago, on May 14, 1961, Lewis rode with the Freedom Riders in a bus pelted by rocks and bricks, as axes smashed through windshields, a firebomb lobbed through the shattered glass. State troopers fired warning shots – but whom they warned was not the violent mob.

The bus’s passengers were black and white Americans riding together, testing the recent Supreme Court ruling that said it would be illegal to segregate public transportation passengers based on their race. 

John Lewis was the first Freedom Rider to be assaulted. And yet, a battered face and broken ribs did not prevent him from continuing his ride. “We were determined not to let any act of violence keep us from our goal,” Lewis has said of the experience. “We knew our lives could be threatened, but we had made up our minds not to turn back.”

As the fight for civil rights continued over the ensuing years, Lewis kept to his conviction that there was no turning back. Three years following the Freedom Riders’ journeys aboard greyhounds, Lewis marched in Selma, Mississippi, in a demonstration of their urgent insistence on African Americans’ right to vote amidst widespread voter suppression. On a day that became known as Bloody Sunday, the peaceful protesters were beaten by state troopers who met them at the end of Edmond Pettus Bridge.

[from John Lewis’ testimony]

After a lifetime of fighting for civil rights, John Lewis has never stooped to rest. As a champion of LGBTQ rights, Lewis gave an impassioned speech in a 1996 debate on the Defense of Marriage Act, where he lashed out against any who would deny LGBTQ citizens’ their right to marriage.

“I will not turn my back on another American,” he said. “I will not oppress my fellow human being. I fought too hard and too long against discrimination based on race and color to stand up against discrimination based on sexual orientation.”

[watch the full speech here]

Lewis has been elected to Congress fourteen times, a few times running unopposed, beloved for his bravery and dedication to fighting for the rights of his constituents and fellow Americans at large. He has recently received media attention for the criticism laid down on him by President Donald Trump, who said of the civil rights hero, “All talk, talk, talk — no action or results. Sad!”

With the sun high on the first day of February, a new month awaits dedicated to remembering the contributions of Black Americans throughout our history. They are the trailblazers who have fought tirelessly for justice and equality, and who today continue to fight for their community, in addition to others marginalized in similar manners, allies united in their advocation.

[IT GETS BETTER]

[dynamicafrica]

Haiti’s fight for gay rights by Allyn Gaestel for Al Jazeera America

Photos by Katie Orlinsky for Al Jazeera America

“Lesbian and gay people are beaten in the street, on the way to school. They are discriminated against by health professionals, abandoned by their families,” said Dave Stephen, operations director at SEROvie. “They hide themselves, even though it’s not criminal.”

Haiti’s LGBT community, which has long existed in relative secrecy, has faced greater criticism since the deadly earthquake that struck the island nation in 2010. From the pulpit and on the radio, evangelists, some inspired by American sponsors and mentors, have blamed the earthquake on the sins of the country’s gay population. Gay Haitians living in tent camps after the disaster reported “corrective” rape and increased harassment as a result of the greater exposure of displacement and flimsy shelters.

And last year, more than 1,000 people participated in a march against homosexuality in Port-au-Prince organized by a new anti-gay “coalition of moral and religious organizations.” The protest was blamed for an escalation in violence against gay people: Forty-seven attacks were reported in the week surrounding the event, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Some say a new gay-rights organization Kouraj (“courage” in Haitian Creole), and its brash demands for rights, helped to prompt the backlash.

Now, the fight over gay rights in Haiti has become one that’s largely over visibility. The question of how closeted gays should be is the subject of internal struggles for many gay Haitians, the root of infighting among advocates and part of a broader societal struggle over what behavior is to be permitted in public.

“What we call masisi [Creole for ‘homosexual’] — it’s recently we allow this in public; before it was private,” said pastor Gerard Forges, an organizer of the anti-gay march last year. He said the march was in protest of public displays of homosexuality, not homosexuality itself. Forges emphasized that there are gays in his 7,600-member Pentecostal congregation. To him, it is not the people themselves who are the problem, but their actions. “We have homosexuals in church; we sit with them; we say, ‘God loves you, we love you, but we don’t like what you do.’”

Forges’ family lives between Port-au-Prince and Georgia. He holds a divinity degree from Jacksonville University in Florida and is pursuing a doctorate from Oral Roberts University. He said his organization does not have international funding but that American missionaries visit. “In the U.S. they can’t make public opinion on this subject. There are pastors that agree with me, but they can’t do anything this public. They encourage me, tell me to keep my stance.”

(read more at the source)