Not surprisingly, I received a torrent of mail about a column I wrote a month ago expressing mixed feelings about same sex marriages. Many of the responses were part of a national letter-writing campaign organized by the Los Angeles-based Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Of course, that doesn’t make their opinions any less valid and I’ve decided to use this space to share excerpts from their e-mails and letters.

“Like most gay people, I am able to comprehend, if not agree with, the trouble many religious people have with homosexuality, and the movement in this country to legally recognize our relationships. After all, I was raised in the Catholic Church, where I was taught how vulgar, how immoral, how disgusting, how repellant gay and lesbian people were. Imagine my surprise, my disgust, my shame when I realized that I was one of those people.

“…You hold our sex lives to be immoral, which means that you hold our love lives, our relationships, to be immoral. You are fine if we keep that morality under wraps, in the privacy of our own homes. You just don’t want to hear about it, you don’t want to see it, and you sure as hell don’t want your government or churches recognizing it as something positive, or at least neutral...What are we to do? Do you really expect millions of people in this country to remain silent about our lives, simply because you are offended? Do you expect those millions to meekly acquiesce to your demands for silence and shame?”

William F. Tulloch

“You obviously were not lynched, and now you would not be killed for whistling at a white woman. You never lived that type of oppression that the African slaves lived. I, on the other hand, am still living in the gay Jim Crow era, and you are the one posting a ‘Straight Only’ sign…

“Many of us hide all the things that happen to us to protect our family members from shame. Families have lost members due to suicide because they couldn’t be who they were without leaving town. Many gay sons are beaten by fathers and put in the streets. Mothers disown their daughters. We are chased and beaten, physically and emotionally by school bullies and religious nuts.”

E. Swinney

“I don’t think that any struggle can be fairly compared against another, as each person is different. However, I think a degree of respect is necessary if equality is ever to be achieved. Maybe the gay rights movement cannot be compared to the black rights movement but there is one common threat – we are all human. All humans deserve equality.”

J. Terrell

“I, as a same gender loving Black woman, agree with you, there is no comparing the civil rights movement to the gay movement. There are challenges white gays and lesbians will never face and have never had to face. The challenges are totally different. But different is not necessarily less. Who am I or who is any of us to say that the pain of discrimination and rejection based on a natural tendency within oneself is any less painful than that faces by us Blacks when we encounter discrimination and racism? Being homosexual is often a biological trait, not a chosen behavior. Please get that!"

Iya Ta’Shia Asanti

“You say that it irks you that gays have the audacity to use the civil rights movement as a model for our civil rights, that you had no choice in being Black. Well sorry to bust your bubble, I had no choice in being black or being gay. How can you tell 10% of the population that they chose to be something that obviously is not accepted by the masses? Who in their right mind would want that type of ridicule? A masochist maybe, but not me and a host of others.”

Richard Kirkwood

“I am an out black lesbian, who has been active in the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/queer/intrasex (lgbtq&i), the black communities, community economic development and grassroot politics for over 40 years. I am an out black lesbian in a committed relation with another black lesbian for over 24 years. As an out black lesbian couple, we have raised two great, straight adult children. Our children are highly successful and they have given us five wonderful grandchildren. We have instilled in our children great sense of the black and lgbtq&i communities, profound beliefs and good work ethics.”

Cheryl Robinson

“Just as I’m sure you didn’t wake up one day and decide you were going to be heterosexuals, most of us homosexuals did not wake up and decide to be homosexual. You must be how God made you. As a black homosexual man who God, in all His infinite glory and wisdom made, He didn’t make me to be less. He made me gay and He blessed me this way.”

Minister Hank Millbourne