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Utilizing the afore-explained definitions regarding what encompasses Civil Rights, it seems simplistic and ever apparent that both black rights and gay rights fall under a theme of Civil Rights as both movements strove/are striving to protect their minority groups from the majority opinion which views them as inhumane, deviant, and unequal. Clearly displaying the parallelism between the two movements on a most basic level, however, this issue far surpasses a dictionary definition in depth.
On the surface, there are many legislative issues that parallel the black struggle for civil rights and the gay struggle for civil rights. Same sex marriage is only allowed in six states in the United States as of 2012, where as there are more than 20 states that have constitutional bans on same-sex marriage and all other kinds of same-sex unions. This can be held comparable to the Jim Crow enacted in the United Sates between 1876 and 1985, under which, disallowed marriage as a legal right between enslaved Africans.
Additionally, there were many public facilities that did not allow blacks, and many jobs that would not employ blacks as skilled labor positions, but rather as domestic positions, and the same is today for LGBTQ community. In 29 states it is still legal to fire someone for being lesbian, gay, or bisexual, and in 34 states it is legal to fire someone solely for being transgender (www.hrc.org) Even republic candidate Mitt Romney even admitted to "liking" to be able to fire people for being gay (Signorile). These legislative injustices that parallel those portrayed in the Jim Crowe laws that dominated the Civil Rights era and were the basis for black uprising add to the similarities between the two struggles, and supports the argument.
In opposition, many people who refute the claim that there are similarities between the gay and the black struggle for Civil Rights in the United States are of African American descent, and this, perhaps, is because of certain a animosity to the gay community.