oh, so it seems you already understand!

Title: LGBT and Black Lives Matter – What About Gay Rights for People of Color?

Keywords: black youth, lgbt people

Summary: The Court's Obergefell v. Hodges decision wouldn't be handed down for nearly two months; on this day, the justices were hearing the case.<br>The plaintiffs were attempting to establish the right of same-sex couples to marry in Kentucky, Michigan, Tennessee and Ohio; the marriage-equality activists who surrounded me were hoping the justices would use the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause not to just affirm a right to marriage in all fifty states but also to create a federal precedent under which any number of other rights for LGBT people might be argued for in the future.<br>This was stage-managed political theater, and the Human Rights Campaign, the LGBT-rights advocacy group, was its director.<br>Gay Men's Chorus belted out the Civil Rights-era protest song "We Shall Overcome."<br>The caucasity of the crowd couldn't be ignored.<br>That unseemly co-optation festered in my mind as I drove forty miles up I-95 to a city on fire.<br>Gray had been allegedly illegally arrested—even State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby later stated so—before he was shackled, thrown in the back of a van without being strapped in, and given a "rough ride" that is believed to have severed his spine.<br>Baltimore had quickly emerged as the new ground zero for the burgeoning Black Lives Matter movement, but the threat of ongoing violence was getting all the news.<br>As day faded into night, the nation wondered if more fires and mayhem would come.<br>Then something unexpected happened, something amazing: Black youth took control and started dancing.<br>They defiantly asserted themselves.<br>No tear gas stung our eyes.<br>These young people stared down the threat of police brutality and defiantly asserted themselves: 'We, by voguing, claim this space as our own.'<br>