by JM130ELM Tue Nov 23, 2010 12:48 pm
The level of struggle each movement had/has, is harder to compare. I think it's best not to even try. There have been other struggles for different groups and it can be hard to compare two of them with each other. (but just to throw it out there, think about the genocide of the Native American population, think about the hutu's and the tutsi in Rwanda and other instances of inter-ethnic violence in Africa, or the black people in South Africa, the aboriginals in Australia, the Indian populations of Latin America, the different castes and the Dalits in India)
But to get back to the civil rights movement and gay rights...
There are some passing similarities, but more obvious differences.
Skin color and sexual orientation are not the same thing, thus the struggles for both to be seen as equal cannot be the same thing either. It involves different levels of acceptance. People agree on the fact that you are born black, and you cannot change your skin color. People do not agree on whether homosexuality is something you are born with. Some still see it as a preference, a choice, as something that can be altered. With skin color there is no such argument to be had.
So there is a different battle to be won by each movement. Both want acceptance as human beings, both want equality, but one has to also convince people of something of which the origin is not yet known. Skin color is hereditary, sexual orientation is not. Where sexual orientation comes from, what makes a person gay, has not been fully explained. Skin color is easily explained compared to sexuality. So the arguments to get equal rights vary quite a bit. Black people have had to fight to be seen as equal, gay people have had to fight to be seen as equal and have had to fight to convince people that it's not their own choice to be gay.
Black people have had to endure far greater levels of direct oppression. They could be segregated more easily because you can see the color of skin. Gay people were oppressed indirectly, the oppression often done by unspoken societal rules. For a long time homosexuality was invisible, black people never had the option to retreat and hide, while still be able to blend in on some level. One could argue gay people for a long time had no option but to retreat and hide, but they could still be part of society.
I could write longer, but I have to go now. What I was basically trying to say is this: There are similarities in both movements, mainly emotional similarities, because people feel oppressed and feel they have a right to be seen as equal. There are many differences between both movements, differences that make it very hard to compare them. The sentiment both groups feel can be loosely compared, but the battles and struggles they fought in the past and are fighting today cannot.
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I am sure you feel the same about right-wing groups. (Which makes your post a tad pointless.)
Not seeing similarities doesn't make somebody a bigot, it makes them the owner of a different viewpoint. (As for being left-wing being bad, people here have lamented the right-wing just as hard.) 
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