Marriage Equality: Byron Rushing and the Fight for Fairness

This short film focuses on a straight, African-American politician who pushed for marriage equality in Massachusetts, the first state in the U.S. to legalize same sex marriage.

This should have been on the list of LGBT film festivals everywhere. There is a widespread perception in the gay community that straight African-Americans as a group resented the equating of gay marriage rights with interracial marriage rights. And, that all Black American churches worked against gay marriage. This film dispels that notion. It demonstrates that African-American opposition to gay marriage--as with most Americans--was about religion, not race.

This film serves, in some respects, as a reminder that the groundbreaking change in U.S. law that began in Massachusetts needs to be not just documented but celebrated. I hope that the the filmmaker takes on that brief. The gay community world-wide could a) use the encouragement, and b) get a blueprint for how the change was made.