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“I only wanted to love him.”
As Zerlina said earlier this morning, President Obama’s announcement yesterday that he believes that same sex couples should be allowed to get married was significant. It represents an historic turning point in this particular struggle for American civil rights.
This video, by Shane Bitney Crone, is about what it can look like, and feel like, when people are forced to live and love without those rights. Shane was not married to his partner of six years, Tom. And when Tom died, his family, who had never accepted their son’s homosexuality, cut Shane out, of their lives and of their version of Tom’s life. Shane was threatened with physical violence if he came to Tom’s funeral.
This story, and many thousands more like it, are a part of America’s history of denying civil rights to LGBT people. That history should never be forgotten. But yesterday, the President took an important step toward leaving that history behind.