For love: Nationwide LGBTQ rights protest Saturday
Last Tuesday the voters of three states - Arizona, California and Florida - added discrimination to their very core by amending their constitutions to define marriage as a right limited only to heterosexual couples. In doing so they joined a growing number of states in refusing rights to gay and lesbian couples based only on the shapes of their bodies. Around the country this growing discrimination, rooted in personal moral judgment against a class of love, is inspiring people to abuse the power of the majority to reduce the rights of minority citizens to love as they will and to build legally and socially recognized families on that love.
This shameful discrimination is propped up only by couching it in terms of fear and aggression, in claims that loving same-sex couples threaten to destroy social order and wreck heterosexual relationships. This gross misrepresentation is at best ill-founded and at worst pointedly malicious. The fact that so many people hear the propaganda and accept it is heartbreaking. The notion that misdirection and fear can be wielded so effectively to refuse citizens’ rights is frankly terrifying.
To everyone who reads this message, I ask that you stand up against this fear, against this discrimination, against this false division of love. I ask that you stand up for the right of your neighbor to build a family. I ask that you stand up for love.
Please join me in protest for LGBTQ rights this Saturday. Peaceful protest events are happening around the nation at 1:30 PM EST and throughout the day. In Atlanta we are gathering in front of the State Capitol building at 1:30 and for a candlelight vigil at 10th and Piedmont at 5.
Most importantly, please pass the word around to all who love.