Letter: Gay community needs to stand up

Gay/LGBT people (especially those with kids) and our supporters need to become visible to Sutter County Assessor Michael Strong, Supervisor-elect James Gallagher and Supervisor Stan Cleveland, Yuba County Supervisor Dan Logue and Yuba-Sutter Assemblymen Doug LaMalfa and Rick Keene.

The gay/LGBT community needs to have significant conversations with them, show them that we are real people, and show them the families that they are advocating be hurt.

Strong, Gallagher and Cleveland have displayed a glaring lack of character in asking the Sutter County clerk to engage in civil disobedience. Rather than advising the clerk to do that, why didn’t they have the courage to do something like that themselves? They could have physically tried to block same-gender couples from marrying or seized the gender neutral marriage licenses?

Also, on June 17, when gays began to have the freedom to marry in my hometown of Yuba-Sutter, three other supporters and I held pro-gay marriage signs and marched across the Fifth and Tenth Street bridges to mark the historic day. While we received plenty of support, there were also many who flipped us off and yelled anti-gay expletives at us. It’s absurd that people so blatantly prejudiced and hateful toward gays get to vote on our freedom. It’s as outrageous as would be a white supremacist voting on interracial marriage.

At equalityforall.com, you can learn how to help defeat the attempt to ban gay marriage in the November election.

May equality and level-heads prevail.

Jeffrey Girard
Sacramento