Couching the Gay Pride Movement in Terms of the Civil Rights Movement: Appropriate?

An interesting opinion article by LZ Granderson, a gay, black ESPN commentator, based on his experiences being both gay and black. He implies there is a lack of relativism in comparing the LGBT movement's criticisms of President Obama's lack of decisive action on policies like DADT and repealing DOMA. What's probably most striking is that he likens LGBT comparisons to the civil rights movement in the 1960s to another example of white appropriation of the African-American experience, especially in regards to criticisms of DADT, a relatively recent policy compared to our sordid history of racism.

This is not to say that gay rights are not as important as minority rights, as Granderson expressly makes clear. However, do we do a disservice to hundreds of years of race-based dicrimination by what he implies is a civil rights version of Godwin's Law, or are we instead taking proactive steps to prevent a potential longer-term acceptance of sexual-orientation based discrimination through invocation of the civil rights movement? Do we hold President Obama to a higher standard on LGBT rights because he has adopted a heritage of American relations between blacks and whites--from slavery to more covert institutions of racism today--by virtue of the color of his skin? Should this give him special insight into the ramifications of failing to act decisively, rather than incrementally (if the LGBT community concedes that much)?

One other thing Granderson notes is that being LGBT doesn't similarly give insight into race-based discrimination, anecdotally speaking of the segregation of white and black gays on different floors in a bar in Washington D.C., and the rage-filled flinging of the n-word to blacks in California after Proposition 8 passed because of their disproportional votes in favor of of the measure. Of course, individuals are individuals, with their own particular prejudices, but it is examples like these that really highlight his major premise: invocation and adoption of historical emblems like the civil rights movement should be done with proper consideration and respect of the context and history behind and leading up to those events. Just look at how laughable and incredulous the Republicans are in calling Judge Sonia Sotomayor a racist (although I myself may have now invoked some parallel to Godwin's Law in pointing this out).