Today, I am proud to be a member of the NAACP. So many blacks follow some religious misinterpretations (From the same churches that legitimized their ancestors' slavery) and somehow can't see that black civil rights are exactly the same as gay civil rights. Eventually, just as with the Loving decision the Supreme Court will have to do the right thing and overturn Florida's and all the other backward states laws that curtail civil rights like it did in 1967 for racial civil rights.

'NAACP passes resolution in support of marriage equality'

May 19, 2012

(Miami, Florida) The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People today released a resolution supporting marriage equality. At a meeting of the 103-year old civil rights group’s board of directors, the organization voted to support marriage equality as a continuation of its historic commitment to equal protection under the law.

“The mission of the NAACP has always been to ensure the political, social and economic equality of all people,” said Roslyn M. Brock, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the NAACP. “We have and will oppose efforts to codify discrimination into law.”

“Civil marriage is a civil right and a matter of civil law. The NAACP’s support for marriage equality is deeply rooted in the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and equal protection of all people” said Benjamin Todd Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP.

The NAACP has addressed civil rights with regard to marriage since Loving v. Virginia declared anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional in 1967. In recent years the NAACP has taken public positions against state and federal efforts to ban the rights and privileges for LGBT citizens, including strong opposition to Proposition 8 in California, the Defense of Marriage Act, and most recently, North Carolina’s Amendment 1, which changed the state constitution’s to prohibit same sex marriage.

Below is the text of the resolution passed by the NAACP board of directors:

The NAACP Constitution affirmatively states our objective to ensure the “political, educational, social and economic equality” of all people. Therefore, the NAACP has opposed and will continue to oppose any national, state, local policy or legislative initiative that seeks to codify discrimination or hatred into the law or to remove the Constitutional rights of LGBT citizens. We support marriage equality consistent with equal protection under the law provided under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Further, we strongly affirm the religious freedoms of all people as protected by the First Amendment.

Didn't help in Tennessee.

Alan Smithee wrote:

Didn't help in Tennessee.

That's why this is a federal issue that shouldn't be left to the states to decide. Look at the bigoted hillbillies of NC, whose state motto should be "At least we're not Mississippi ". It's going to take people of all ages, races, genders to make this come together. And it eventually will. I'd just like to see it in my lifetime.