Georgia Congressman John Lewis: The Connection Between Voting Rights And Gay Rights

Georgia Congressman John Lewis has been a major civil rights leader, connected with Martin Luther King, Jr,, and had his head cracked while marching for voting rights in the South.

As a Congressman since 1987, Lewis has been a voice of conscience, and was a rare case of a politician condemning the Defense Of Marriage Act , when it passed Congress in 1996, and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton, afraid to take a stand against it, due to his reelection campaign of that year for the Presidency.

At that time, Lewis compared the concept of interracial marriage,. which had been illegal until 1967, and said gay marriage was no different than interracial marriage, that anyone should be able to marry the person he or she loves!

So Lewis was devastated by the decision of the Supreme Court, negating Section 4 of the Voting Rights Acts of 1965, while thrilled by the decisions of the Supreme Court allowing for gay marriage in California, and for federal recognition of gay marriage, relating to its legality, and the right of gay couples to benefits and privileges of married couples!

Lewis has felt all kinds of emotion in the past two days, and he has stated eloquently, that voting rights guarantees that took nearly a century to accomplish, and were in place for almost half a century,. are now gone, and will it take another century to restore the guarantee of voting rights without any discrimination?

So it is hard not to feel the pain and emotional turmoil this great man, an icon of civil rights, is going through at age 73! God bless him and protect him for many more years of devoted service to civil rights and human rights!

We will see him again as the one surviving major civil rights leaders who participated 50 years ago in the March On Washington on August 28, 1963, which will be reenacted on August 24, 2013!

9 comments on “Georgia Congressman John Lewis: The Connection Between Voting Rights And Gay Rights

  1. D June 27, 2013 9:30 am

    I think John Lewis knows this Republican party very well … and its base is in the south. (On Election Night 2008, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough remarked with the following after Pennsylvania immediately carried, as the polls closed at 8 p.m. ET, for Barack Obama: “It is fool’s gold. The Republicans think they can win the suburbs of Philadelphia. But as long as the epicenter of this party is in the southeast….”)

    Yes, John Lewis understands the most racist elements of the Republican party, the cynicism, and that he knows they can’t be trusted. But at the same time, the Republicans are looking to powerful, wealthy white men to financially prop them up in aid to yield dominance at statewide and local levels. No low bar for them.

    What’s fascinating is this Republican party’s attempt to fight what they cannot topple: the changing demographics (evident through birth rates and, let’s be frank, Mike Murphy warned them back in 2009 and they chose to ignore him). Add to that the white vote, in presidential elections, may be nationally with the Republican Party … but those numbers are skewed toward the states of the Old Confederacy. (Juan, in an attempt to spin 2012’s election numbers with a salute to those who didn’t vote, did not note that. Plus there is the fact that 238 of Obama’s 365 electoral votes came from states where the 44th president did carry the white vote.)

  2. Ronald June 27, 2013 11:09 am

    Thanks, D, again for your perceptive comments, and demonstrating that Juan is selective in his information and analysis, coming from conservative think tanks that would not know the truth if it hit them in the face!

  3. Maggie June 27, 2013 9:58 pm

    Well stated D. I find John Lewis to be such an inspiration. Even after the violent deaths of his two great friends martin Luther King and John Kennedy and his own injury.. this man has remained committed to nonviolence. He has worked his whole life to bring minority millions of minority voters into the process. The man has been reelected over and over and represented Georgia well.
    I remember hearing Joe Biden talk about him some years ago referring to his inspiration courage and integrity which has been respected on both sides of the isle.
    John Lewis is a true STATESMAN. Wish we had more like him!

  4. Engineer Of Knowledge June 28, 2013 9:33 am

    Hello All,
    I thought for this Friday I would pass on a little laugh.

    Arguing with an Engineer is like wrestling with a pig in mud….after a number of hours….you realize the pig likes it…:-)

    Have a good weekend!

  5. Maggie June 28, 2013 11:53 am

    That’s wonderful Engineer!! LOL!

  6. Maggie June 28, 2013 7:01 pm

    I will be listening Engineer! 🙂

  7. Engineer Of Knowledge June 28, 2013 9:08 pm

    Hello Professor,
    John Lewis is an icon and a historical voice of the Civil Rights movement. I remember him well and all he did being on the front lines during those turbulent years. I felt so sorry for the man, who along with many others, how had their heads split open fighting to remove the voting restrictions that repressed true and open voting.

    Here we are once again seeing the same old repressive reactionary elements reinstating the same laws to restrict citizens’ voting rights.

    Now we have the Supreme Court enabling those same mindsets. A very sad step back on issues once won in the 1960s.

    I would add that it is not just a black issue as I remember the two white Jewish college students along with the black male who were killed by Klansmen, for simply trying to register people to be able to vote.

    Who would have thought that today, 50 years later, we would see all of this hard work, blood shed, and yes even lives, be tossed aside only to go back to those repressive times.

    A sad statement indeed.

  8. Ronald June 28, 2013 9:47 pm

    Yes, Engineer Of Knowledge, totally correct, and it shows the damage done by the GOP majority Supreme Court fixing the election of George W. Bush over Al Gore, and the manipulation of the vote against John Kerry! Both elections are suspect in Florida and Ohio, respectively, and led to John Roberts and Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court! Elections, and fixes, have consequences!

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