Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I believe that all men and women are created equal, but it took our country until 1920 to acknowledge this for women. And then it took until 1964, the year before I was born, to outlaw discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. And same-sex marriage became the law of the land in 2015.
I was for civil unions and believed strongly that the flow of benefits and protections that would be provided in a civil union for same-sex couples, the decisions that have to be made, when health hardships are faced, when economic hardships are faced, I wanted all of those protections. I never strayed from them.
And we have done more in the two and a half years that I've been in here than the previous 43 Presidents to uphold that principle, whether it's ending 'don't ask, don't tell,' making sure that gay and lesbian partners can visit each other in hospitals, making sure that federal benefits can be provided to same-sex couples.
I wouldn't say I'm against same-sex marriage. I believe in freedom and equality for all people. I believe that when it comes to gay marriage, that's a political and legal issue that has to be dealt with in that arena. I have privately held beliefs, but when it comes to that, it's properly placed in the political and legal arena.
I knew marriage was not the answer to changing the conditions for poor, black, queer folks. So I never felt compelled to get married - it just didn't seem important. But even if marriage wasn't right for me at the time, or a quick fix toward black empowerment, I found it repulsive that loving same-sex couples were refused the right.
In every community in Illinois, same-sex couples have chosen to join together and, in many instances, to raise families of their own. These couples are our relatives and friends, our neighbors, co-workers and parents of our children's classmates. They deserve the same rights and responsibilities that civil marriage offers straight couples.
As both an essayist and science fiction and fantasy novelist, I write about and for the future. I talk about the past to remind us that what we believe has always been true - that men and women are somehow static categories, or that men in power has always been the default, or that same-sex love affairs were always taboo - has not always been thus.
