LGBT Americans are individuals deserving of dignity

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Sign onto "The People's Brief" to the U.S. Supreme Court

STAND ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY IN THE LANDMARK MARRIAGE EQUALITY CASE

"Times can blind us to certain truths," Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in a major 2003 LGBT rights opinion, "later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact only serve to oppress."

Many voters and legislators really were blinded by the times, when they supported laws and constitutional amendments banning marriage equality. They did not realize that they knew LGBT people personally, and could not recognize the contributions that LGBT people and their families make--as employees, as neighbors, as part of the social fabric in every community in America. Some saw the LGBT community as strangers, not as people with the same hopes and dreams as anyone else.

In many respects, those oppressive times are behind us. In poll after poll, the broad majority of Americans now support marriage equality. Many people who once opposed it are unafraid to admit their views have evolved. Why? They've simply met LGBT people in their own lives.

In other words, the laws challenged in this case are more than fundamentally unfair. They were adopted at a time when many did not understand that LGBT Americans are individuals deserving of dignity. The Supreme Court has already recognized in US v. Windsor that LGBT people have an inherent right to dignity. In light of this undeniable truth, it's time to leave the blindness of the past behind, and guarantee the equal protection our constitution promises to every American.

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1. Signed.

Bowers v Hardwick came down in 1996.

In conjunction with the 1987 Gay Rights March on Washington, there was a nonviolent civil disobedience on the steps of the US Supreme Court, demanding that Bowers be overturned. (It eventually was, some 17 years later in Lawrence v Texas.)

There were 481 of us sitting on the steps, and we were arrested and held in DC lockup for 48 hours.

If the Supreme Court makes a definitive ruling against marriage equality (which I really don't expect in 2015, even with this court), I'd be very interested in getting together with anybody planning a nonviolent action there, especially anybody involved in the 1987 action, for a "reunion" of sorts.

We cannot sit idly by if they pull another Bowers.