"Bayard Rustin (March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) was an American civil rights activist, important largely behind the scenes in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and earlier, and the main organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom [1]. He counseled Martin Luther King, Jr. on the techniques of nonviolent resistance. For much of his career, Rustin lived in New York City's Chelsea neighborhood, [2] in the union-funded Penn South complex, from 1978 with his partner Walter Naegle. He became an advocate on behalf of gay and lesbian causes in the latter part of his career; however, his homosexuality was the reason for attacks from many governmental as well as interest groups."
Civil Rights is a strange topic about power and social control. The main argument is "if we let these people have the same rights as the majority, the whole of society will go on a downward spiral towards everlasting doom". Even for Swiss women, voting rights for women came only recently:
"The Swiss referendum on women's suffrage was held on 1 February 1959. The majority of Switzerland's men voted no, however in some cantons the vote was given to women.[18] Switzerland was the last Western democracies (however, women could not vote in Liechtenstein until 1984) to allow women to vote. Women did not gain the right to vote in federal elections until 1973."
Many use history as evidence that things should be a certain way, since it was always that way. It must be pretty frightening to change things when you might lose a special standing within society by granting other people the same chances to rise up and become a competitor. Change can be seen as thrilling, but usually when there is a visible chance that you might profit in some way. It can be easy to say marriage should be between a man and a woman since that's the way things were for thousands of years, but I doubt many women would bring up their lack of property rights that existed for thousands of years, or anyone about slavery, an institution so old its origins are unknown.
Feminism started as an opposition of a two-gender power system, "man" or "not a man", and actually has nothing to do with being a woman. Black Civil Rights, though started because of historical inequalities, in essence has nothing to do with history. It is about a minority being legally oppressed by a majority, where no reasons are necessary for the movement to exist other than "equality does not exist at the moment between the two parties". In the end, it is the same.
There are many minority peoples, ideas, identities, and habits in this world. Things can be silenced for thousands of years. However, in the end it will not matter, since no matter how hard anyone tries, one group cannot hold power over another for all of eternity.
Things are constantly changing, whether it be fast or slow.
