Peter's Place

In the early 1990s, I advocated pursuing the fight for full marriage equality, in the Hawaii case. Most of the leadership in the LGBTQ community (with the notable exception of Evan Wolfson) nay-sayed the idea, saying that it was too much, too soon. Having studied the civil rights struggles of two notable minority groups in this nation (namely, women and Blacks), it's clear that the minority remained oppressed for centuries because they were appeased with the step-by-step breadcrumbs thrown at them by those in power, those who kept them in second-class citizenship status. I argued that, to break this cycle, we must not accept these small steps, these small breadcrumbs and scraps of rights thrown from the table. We must not have to fight 20 years just to achieve one equal right and another 30 years to achieve another. Instead, we must ask for it all, the whole kit and kaboodle, upfront. Only then will we be able to achieve the equality to which we are legally entitled. Twenty ...