Voice for Equality: Julian Bond

Social activist and leader of the American civil rights movement, Julian Bond has been Chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the USA's oldest and largest civil rights organization, since 1998, and was a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Bond has been elected to both houses of the Georgia Legislature, where he served for twenty years.

In a 2006 speech at the University of Virginia, Bond noted, "Marriage is a civil right. If you don’t want gay people to marry in your church, good for you. But you can’t say they can’t marry in your city."

He said, "Like race, our sexuality is not a preference -- it is immutable, unchangeable, and the Constitution protects us all against prejudices and discrimination based on immutable characteristics."

Under Bond, the NAACP released a statement in February 2009 supporting the effort to overturn Proposition 8. "The NAACP has long opposed any proposal that would alter the federal or state constitutions for the purpose of excluding any groups or individuals from guarantees of equal protections," Bond wrote in a press release.

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