Civil rights and stuff
For anyone out there interested in civil rights, equality between the sexes (or in general), and a bit of 20th century history, I recommend an excellent and well-spoken essay by Bertrand Russell, written way back in the day when the UK was rather more particular about who was allowed to vote. Although that particular battle is over (at least in most of "the West"), a lot of his points are relevant to current events as well.
I'd also like to take a moment to recall Romer v. Evans, the only national case (to my knowledge) where gay political rights were at stake, relatively independently from civil rights (like marriage, immigration, and not being thrown in jail for perfectly normal sodomy). Colorado (home of yours truly) had passed a law that said, in short, that gay, lesbian, and bisexual people could not be the subject of anti-discrimination or hate-crime legislation. Specifically, the cities of Boulder, Denver, and Aspen already had anti-discrimination legislation that included sexual orientation, and the conservative segment of the population (centered around, but not nearly limited to, Colorado Springs) decided to negate that legislation via constitutional amendment.
The Supreme Court of that time (somewhat more awesome than the current court) overturned this amendment, 6-3. The decision is somewhat amusing to read (or so I recall; it has been a while). The general feel of the statement is "we are so flabbergasted by this senseless amendment that we cannot uphold it". Although the decision is not very coherent, I can try to sum up the decision in one long sentence: "The explicit, sole purpose of the amendment is to strip a specific group of any political protection or ability to petition for the redress of grievances, and since we can't imagine why anyone would want to do this except to express pure animosity, we find that there is no rational basis for this law that has anything to do with responsible government."
On a different but related note, my school has a campus-wide "unlawful discrimination" policy that sort-of includes sexual orientation. That is, there is a list of types of unlawful discrimination, which lists sexual orientation. Then the next paragraph discusses what kinds of complaints can be filed, and has exactly the same list, except that sexual orientation isn't listed. Reading the document literally, it says that discrimination based on sexual orientation is unlawful, but has no penalty since no one can complain about it. However, if someone is discriminated against for acting on the behalf of such an individual, that other person can file a complaint, which makes no sense at all. I'm tempted to hope that this was an oversight on the behalf of someone editing a pdf somewhere, but it's really puzzling. I want to look into it.
I'd also like to take a moment to recall Romer v. Evans, the only national case (to my knowledge) where gay political rights were at stake, relatively independently from civil rights (like marriage, immigration, and not being thrown in jail for perfectly normal sodomy). Colorado (home of yours truly) had passed a law that said, in short, that gay, lesbian, and bisexual people could not be the subject of anti-discrimination or hate-crime legislation. Specifically, the cities of Boulder, Denver, and Aspen already had anti-discrimination legislation that included sexual orientation, and the conservative segment of the population (centered around, but not nearly limited to, Colorado Springs) decided to negate that legislation via constitutional amendment.
The Supreme Court of that time (somewhat more awesome than the current court) overturned this amendment, 6-3. The decision is somewhat amusing to read (or so I recall; it has been a while). The general feel of the statement is "we are so flabbergasted by this senseless amendment that we cannot uphold it". Although the decision is not very coherent, I can try to sum up the decision in one long sentence: "The explicit, sole purpose of the amendment is to strip a specific group of any political protection or ability to petition for the redress of grievances, and since we can't imagine why anyone would want to do this except to express pure animosity, we find that there is no rational basis for this law that has anything to do with responsible government."
On a different but related note, my school has a campus-wide "unlawful discrimination" policy that sort-of includes sexual orientation. That is, there is a list of types of unlawful discrimination, which lists sexual orientation. Then the next paragraph discusses what kinds of complaints can be filed, and has exactly the same list, except that sexual orientation isn't listed. Reading the document literally, it says that discrimination based on sexual orientation is unlawful, but has no penalty since no one can complain about it. However, if someone is discriminated against for acting on the behalf of such an individual, that other person can file a complaint, which makes no sense at all. I'm tempted to hope that this was an oversight on the behalf of someone editing a pdf somewhere, but it's really puzzling. I want to look into it.