John Lewis saw in gay rights a movement like civil rights [View all]
John Lewis’s fight for racial equality made him an icon in the 1960s, but the Atlanta Democratic congressman also stood at the forefront of another civil rights movement decades later.
Lewis supported same-sex marriage in the early 2000s, years before many fellow African Americans and Democrats embraced the issue, and more than a decade prior to the U.S. Supreme Court legalizing the unions.
Lewis compared the struggle for the equal treatment of LGBTQ people to his work on the front lines of the civil rights movement in an October 2003 Boston Globe editorial.
“I’ve heard the reasons for opposing civil marriage for same-sex couples. Cut through the distractions, and they stink of the same fear, hatred, and intolerance I have known in racism and in bigotry,” he wrote.
“I have fought too hard and too long against discrimination based on race and color not to stand up against discrimination based on sexual orientation.”
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An icon has left us, but his legacy will be immortal.
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