David Jefferson (distant relation to Thomas) in an article in Newsweek tells how he scrambled to marry Jeff Bechtloff in October before the election. At the time he didn't realize marriage led to activism. He says now one reason why we lost is that most gays don't know much about gay history. The Stonewall riots are now two generations ago. And the big aspect of gay history is that we don't get our rights when we wait for others to give them to us. We must demand and take them. This is something that even ML King knew. Gays didn't get much funding for AIDS research until they demanded it. We waited for Bill Clinton to allow us to serve openly in the military and we got Don't Ask, Don't Tell and Defense of Marriage.
In the same way we were complacent this year. Those for the marriage ban were able to say Obama was for it, even though he said he was against it. We didn't press Obama to explain how he could be both against gay marriage and against a gay marriage ban and we didn't take that message to the black community. We tried to make the whole campaign not be about gays. It is good to see the ban has mobilized new generations of activists in the same way the Stonewall riots did.
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