Perhaps people find it easier not to support the gay rights movement, to tell themselves that these individuals are somehow less deserving of equality under the law, because gay and lesbian individuals make up a relatively small sector of society, one which, in many communities across the nation, one hardly encounters at all, certainly not with any personal face attached to it.

But think of it for a moment in comparison to a movement that, as a straight woman, I have plenty of personal experience with and which it closely mirrors, a movement which affected more than half of the people in the United States, and indeed, in the world: the women’s movement. Before the current battle over the evolution of marriage, a different war for marital and personal freedoms was fought in this country, by and for women who were hoping to find something more than just marriage, as well as more rights within that union.

Up until very recently, then, women and gays have been, if not in the same boat, then at least sailing in the same direction.

Read the rest of AFER Board Member Kristina Schake’s Huffington Post article here.