Coretta Scott King died overnight. I don't know volumes about her work and her mission, but I know I liked what she gave us. I like what remains. She was an outspoken supporter of civil rights for gays and lesbians, as I’ve mentioned before. Her ideals were/are inclusive of all kinds of people. If you believe in the dream she continued to work towards after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, now’s a good time to take a personal assessment: how are you ensuring this dream becomes a reality? Are your actions inclusionary? Are your words? Are the people you vote for?

Okay, sidebar: MS Word doesn't recognize "inclusionary" and insists that it should be replaced with "exclusionary."

If you want to learn more about Coretta Scott King, search for articles about her in any major online newspaper and you’re sure to find material. Another good place to start is the King Center.

Hatecrime.org has a page with plenty of inspirational remarks by Ms. Scott King. I’m unable to check them for accuracy, but assuming they ARE accurate, here’s the link.

Finally, for the sake of beauty and hope, a haunting portrait of Coretta Scott King here.

But we deserve basic rights. No, we are not Black, though some of us are. We are not Women, though some of us are. Queer includes many kinds of PEOPLE, who all deserve Civil Rights not BECAUSE of their queerness, but despite it, regardless of it. We deserve not to be erased but EMbraced, because we are part of the national body, as wonderful and crude, as polite and confused as any fully realized biologically male heterosexual.

In the face of doubt about the similarities between Matthew Shepard and Frederick Douglass, remember that intolerance and hate and discrimination are hurtful to individuals and to society, regardless of the degree of their manifestation.

And so with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday marked on yesterday's calendar, let's wonder: