Gay Charlotte and LGBTQ Carolina News, Arts & Entertainment
In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of full marriage rights for all couples nationwide in an opinion released June 26 in Obergefell v. Hodges, one of several cases brought to the court.
The Supreme Court’s decision opening marriage equality to all 50 states was met with jubilation among LGBT people across the nation and world. A long fought legal, activist and political battle led ultimately to a national ruling, putting to bed a debate over LGBT marriage recognition begun nearly 50 years ago.
Across the Queen City, the LGBT community and its allies celebrated with jubilation after the Supreme Court’s June 26 decision on marriage equality.
Jermaine Nakia Lee can still remember the pushback and the controversy. Racist emails and letters, questions from other community leaders and confrontation with some.
Dixie Longate is anything but your typical Tupperware lady. Longate is a hard-drinking, hypersexual single mother, thrice widowed, from Mobile, Ala., who affectionately refers to her audience as “hookers.”
In 1969, much of our LGBT progress began with a riot. I think we sometimes forget that act of rebellion, especially in a banker city like Charlotte, N.C. Today we remember the Stonewall Riots with Pride festivals, parades and orderly marches. But I choose to remember a drag queen and trans woman named Sylvia Rivera.
There’s a reason I love history and why I’ve devoted so much of my academic and personal pursuits to its study. She’s a brilliant teacher and, at times, a remarkable creator of beautiful meaning and symbolism.
No state should embrace a symbol that so clearly stands for bigotry, violence, division and hate. No government entity should fly a flag that once divided this nation in bloody conflict and now reminds millions of people in the United States of the racism that still plagues this nation.
God speaks. Some people listen, some don’t. That’s the way it has always been. We have read it in our various religious texts. We have experienced it in our own lives. Revelatory moments.
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