Mason Branham, president of USC’s Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Straight Alliance, said it best: “Old white men: Times are changing.”
Saturday’s SC Pride festival was a good illustration of how those times are changing. Protesters, mostly older white men, as Branham said, stood in a line in front of the Statehouse. A mass of supporters nearly four rows deep stood directly across from them. That contrast reflects what’s happening in our society.
Tides are turning in favor of equal rights, and our generation is leading the charge. Socially, younger people are generally more accepting, but it takes more than wearing a rainbow outfit and showing up at a parade to change the world.
Our generation has to take the fight to the judicial system. We’ve had some victories federally, but South Carolina is still, as usual, lagging behind. One same-sex couple has filed a lawsuit challenging South Carolina’s Defense of Marriage Law from 1996 and the 2006 amendment to the state constitution that ban same-sex marriage from being recognized in the state. That’s the first step toward guaranteeing all South Carolinians equality.
This isn’t the first time South Carolina has fought, tooth-and-nail, to resist change for the better. The gay rights movement is seeing a lot of the same challenges that the Civil Rights Movement did, which is simultaneously encouraging and disheartening.
It’s going to happen. We believe that. Eventually, our state will catch up and accept that marriage equality — and gender and sexuality equality — is important. But it may take a while. And like the Civil Rights Movement, even when the battle has been won on paper, there will still be plenty of work to do.
Inequality will persist, but it’s up to us to keep trying to change that.