The backlash against gay rights

It's not just in the courts -- as PlanetOut reports in a recent article, "Reports of anti-gay violence increase", hate crimes against gays and lesbians have surged since last June, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down anti-sodomy laws. As the article reports, some areas saw more of an increase than others -- anti-gay violence rose by 120 percent in Chicago and 43 percent in New York.

The backlash shows no signs of abating. Rakowski told the Gay.com/PlanetOut.com Network that when she and her partner got married at City Hall in San Francisco on March 9, a protester held up a sign that said, "Gross."

In Multnomah County, Ore., which grants marriage rights to same-sex couples, county commissioners have reported receiving death threats. "I hope your whole family is killed. I hope with all my heart that you're gunned down and killed," said one caller in a phone message to commissioners.

On Saturday the only gay bar in Newport, R.I., called Castaways, was vandalized by a man who smashed in the bar's windows with a baseball bat while yelling anti-gay epithets.

"You can't pass this off as a random act of vandalism," Castaways' owner Lionel Pires told the Newport News. "We were singled out, terrorized."

So, not only do I have to worry about my state's and my country's constitutions amending discrimination against me into their constitutions, but I also have to keep an eye out for redneck fundamentalists (why do those two adjectives seem to fit so neatly together?) bashing me in the head with a baseball bat.