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FOUNDING MEMBER
L E T T E R F R OM T HE E D I T OR
John Lewis, An Unrivaled
Leader for the Ages
BY PAUL SCHINDLER
John Lewis, the Georgia veteran
congressmember and
civil rights giant who died at
age 80 on July 17, was also
a giant of an advocate for LGBTQ
equality. That, of course, was but a
tiny corner of his extraordinary life
as a social justice champion.
In 1996, he was one of only 67
members of the 435-member House
of Representatives — joined by but 14
members of the Senate — to vote no
on the Defense of Marriage Act. Lewis
didn’t take the route of arguing that
the punitive measure was unnecessary
given that no jurisdiction in the
US had marriage equality. Instead,
he made a full-throated case for the
rights of same-sex couples to wed.
As Buzzfeed noted, in his remarks
on the fl oor, he argued, “This bill is
a slap in the face of the Declaration
of Independence. It denies gay men
and women the right to liberty and
the pursuit of happiness. Marriage is
a basic human right.”
Later, he would explicitly link the
struggle for LGBTQ equality to the
Black Civil Rights Movement he had
joined in the late ‘50s as a teenager.
“I have fought too hard and too
long against discrimination based on
race and color not to stand up against
discrimination based on sexual orientation,”
he argued. “I’ve heard the
reasons for opposing civil marriage
for same-sex couples. Cut through
the distractions, and they stink of
the same fear, hatred, and intolerance
I have known in racism and in
bigotry.”
It was no surprise, then, that Lewis
proudly associated himself with all
of the top LGBTQ legislative priorities
that followed. Among them was
the Equality Act — fi rst introduced
in 2015 — that would extend the protections
of the 1964 Civil Rights Act
and subsequent similar legislation to
Americans on the basis of sexual orientation
and gender identity. In the
early discussion about the Equality
Act, there was some vague talk that
African-American leaders might be
hesitant about any approach that
tinkered with the cornerstone legislation
of the Civil Rights Movement.
The support of prominent Black
members of Congress like Lewis put
that worry to rest, and the support of
the Leadership Conference on Civil
and Human Rights is likely the most
powerful tool in the arsenal of Equality
Act advocates.
But to characterize Lewis merely
as “progressive” or “ahead of his time”
on LGBTQ issues is to miss a crucial
point about his political philosophy,
his compassion, and his decency as a
human being.
John Lewis saw politics and social
change from an intersectional perspective
long before that terminology
ever existed. He saw through the
specifi cs of any given human rights
question and understood the ignorance,
hatred, and evil at the core of
opposition to it.
Lewis was one of 10 children born
to sharecropper parents in rural Alabama
in 1940. He learned about Martin
Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks
by listening to them on the radio. By
the time he was 18, he had met both.
As a student at a Nashville theological
seminary, he joined other students
in sit-ins at segregated lunch
counters, where he discovered the
importance of “good trouble, necessary
trouble.” In 1961, he was one of
the original 13 Freedom Riders pushing
to integrate interstate bus travel.
For his activism, he was beaten and
jailed. Two years later, he became
chair of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee, a group whose
militant but peaceful resistance to
segregation makes it a forerunner of
the Black Lives Matter Movement.
By that year, 1963, he had also become
a close confi dant of King, and
he was the youngest of the speakers
at the March on Washington. Since
his death, stories have surfaced that
Kennedy administration offi cials
were on hand on the stage that day
ready to pull the plug on Lewis’ remarks
should they become too radical.
Whether that’s true or not, it
doesn’t seem that threat did much to
persuade him to pull his punches.
“To those who have said, ‘Be patient
and wait,’ we have long said
that we cannot be patient,” he told
the throngs on the Washington Mall.
“We do not want our freedom gradually,
but we want to be free now! We
are tired. We are tired of being beaten
by policemen. We are tired of seeing
our people locked up in jail over and
over again. And then you holler, ‘Be
patient.’ How long can we be patient?
We want our freedom and we want it
now. We do not want to go to jail. But
we will go to jail if this is the price we
must pay for love, brotherhood, and
true peace.”
He added, “If we do not get meaningful
legislation out of this Congress,
the time will come when we will
not confi ne our marching to Washington.
We will march through the
South; through the streets of Jackson,
through the streets of Danville,
through the streets of Cambridge,
through the streets of Birmingham.”
During his fi nal days, Lewis several
times took pains to salute the spirit
of anger and rebellion that has fi lled
America’s streets since the Minneapolis
police killing of George Floyd.
On June 7, he joined Washington
Mayor Muriel Bowser to visit the street
mural of bright yellow paint reading
“Black Lives Matter” in a two-block
area leading to the White House. Afterward,
in a statement referring to
the 1955 lynching of a 14-year-old
Black Chicagoan Emmett Till in Mississippi
after charges of having offended
a white woman, Lewis wrote,
“Despite real progress, I can’t help
but think of young Emmett today as
I watch video after video after video
of unarmed Black Americans being
killed, and falsely accused. My heart
breaks for these men and women,
their families, and the country that
let them down — again.”
Nine days later, Lewis joined former
President Barack Obama on a
Zoom call that included an intergenerational
group of African-American
activists.
During the discussion, Lewis said,
“We need to tell people, tell each other
to be hopeful, to be optimistic and to
never ever give up or to get down. I
tell you the past few days been so inspiring
to me. To see so many young
people, so many children… it gives
me great hope and we’re going to get
there. It’s all going to work out. But we
must help it work out. We must continue
to be bold, brave, courageous,
push and pull, ‘til we redeem the soul
of America and move closer to a community
at peace with itself.”
July 30 - August 12, 2 14 020 | GayCityNews.com
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