Well, illegals have it.

Actually, they don’t. Not on a national, federal basis.

Maybe not on the Fed level, but the support they get at local and state level makes up for that.

No, it doesn’t. The Feds can, and do, move into “tolerance zones” and do what they want - including plucking out illegals by the dozen and tossing them onto the next plane out. And if somebody fires a worker discovered to be an illegal alien, nobody, not even in San Francisco, is going to do one damned thing about it - because federal law, which supercedes local laws in these matters, say it is illegal for him to employ illegal aliens. In fact, I can tell you that many SF businesses do screen for illegals quite stringently, and the City does not one damned thing about it. Because they know they can’t, and if they tried, they could be charged with crimes themselves.

Illegals have no legal protection that means spit in employment anywhere in the US. Gays have no legal protection that means spit in employment in 36 states, more or less.

This is a far more important goal nationwide than gay marriage. This is one liberal goal I hope they achieve.

I disagree, Bill. ENDA and “Hate Crimes” legislation are little more than liberal sops to a voting constituency. They feed victimhood mentality, give credence to charges of “special rights”, do little to advance a cause of greater acceptance of gay people in society, and will tend to annoy (rightfully) decent folks forced to attend an additional component of “diversity training” designed solely by the HR department to avoid lawsuits. Will there then be “religious objector” efforts and lawsuits to opt out of these “trainings”, and a SoCon agenda to pass legislation to support them?

As far as I’m concerned, the efforts of political gay rights organizations at the federal level should be limited to repeal of DADT and DOMA. The rest is window dressing, and playing at the never ending game of political access, money and power.

I still think it’s important to support and encourage nationwide efforts at marriage equality.

Paraphrasing Sullivan “Once we’ve won the right to marry and the ability to serve openly in the military, we can throw a party and close down the gay rights movement for good.”

“Once we’ve won the right to marry and the ability to serve openly in the military, we can throw a party and close down the gay rights movement for good.”

Ray, I don’t think the gay rights movement is done with its legitimate grievances yet, so it still has plenty of reason to exist. However, if your paraphrase of Sully is accurate, then it’s just one more example of foolishness from that thoroughly addled quarter.

Old “rights movements” never die, they fossilize. The more actual success they achieve, the more shrill and inappropriate they become about the ever-smaller and more pathetic remaining grievances they claim. They also have a strong tendency to decay from their initial (ostensibly) idealistic motivations into grasping guardians of every last bit of privilege and subsidy that they can encode into law.

Can you provide an example of any “rights movement” that ever declared “Mission Accomplished” and disbanded itself?

Well, do you think Maura Damn-Loony’s salary just appears from mid-air?