According to a press release:
Equality Forum, the group that applied for the historical marker, said it was "thrilled" by the commission's unanimous vote. ... "Pennsylvania is proud to be both the birthplace of our nation and the birthplace of so many historic events that have advanced civil rights in America," [Wayne Spilgrove, the chairman of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission] said in a press release issued by Equality Forum.
Agape Press, an outlet for all things anti-gay, says:
Diane Gramley of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania (AFA of PA) is calling the decision "a slap in the faces of our Founding Fathers," and she says the marker is nothing more than a homosexual activist attempt to rewrite U.S. history. Spilgrove is apparently confused, Gramley says, to suggest that homosexual protest has advanced civil rights in America, since "the debate on homosexuality has nothing to do with civil rights, but rather [to do with] forcing the acceptance of abhorrent sexual behavior on all America." She points out that homosexuals as a group have never been denied suffrage or been required to attend segregated schools, and they have never been forced to sit at the back of the bus or drink from "Gay Only" water fountains.
Women haven't been forced to drink from "female only" water fountains. Asians haven't been required to attend their own schools. Does that mean, therefore, that they haven't been discriminated against and that they have had nothing to do with civil rights? Of course not — it would require monumental stupidity to suggest otherwise.
But what does that say about Diane Gramley?
[Gramley] contends that it is fairly easy to establish where the Founding Fathers stood on the issue of homosexuality. She notes that Pennsylvania law dictated that persons found guilty of homosexual offenses be punished as felons, and Thomas Jefferson himself authored legislation penalizing perpetrators of sodomy with castration.
It doesn’t matter what the "Founding Fathers" thought about homosexuality. Many of the Founding Fathers owned slaves and we don't use that as a reason to deny civil rights to blacks — much less reject monuments and markers commemorating the movement for civil rights for blacks. Conservative like these are invariably an embarrassment to future conservatives in 50 years.
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