Rick, I have been thinking back to 1978 and Prop 6 and I think it is very difficult to view the events of then with the mentality of today.
At the time, there was no widespread support for the very concept of "gay rights". Most of us were just barely coming out, the public at large had only a rudimentary understanding that we even existed much less had rights.
The closest analogy to our situation was the civil rights movement and we sought to tag onto the successes of that push so the word "rights" was a hook we could hang our demands upon.
But like prop8, prop 6 was an attack upon us, only comparatively it was a level 5 attack and 8 was a 2. We had barely won the right to walk hand in hand in public and in most states it was a crime to engage in any gay activity, including dancing together.
We knew that if prop 6 passed we would lose all of our rights, however few they may have been. We could be denied any work at all, could have been denied access to any and all government programs, housing, everything. Our very lives were at stake.
To compare that to losing the right to marry is absurd. Marriage is, for most of us who went through the earlier struggles, icing on the cake. Prop 6 would have annihilated us for practical purposes. You have to remember this was part of Anita Bryant's campaign to make everything we did illegal. Everything.
I am proud of the energy that younger gays and lesbians have discovered in themselves since the passage of prop 8. It heartens me to think the current generation of young men and women have woken up to the possibility that all is not well with the assimilation movement they have adopted.
At no time, however, did any of we "older gays" ever think of "gay rights." We always rested our movement on human rights, not a distinct body of rights that we alone were entitled to.
I urge you to look more deeply into this. Maybe sit down with someone over 60 who was out in 1978 to get a feel for what things were like then.
