News & Observer | newsobserver.com | 2008 NCAA Men's Bracket

Orange County Commissioner Mike Nelson is comparing the protests against California's Proposition 8 striking down gay marriage to the Stonewall Riots, which many credit with starting the modern gay rights movement in 1969.

Nelson, who is gay, participated in the Nov. 15 rally in Raleigh that attracted 1,400 people and ended with a march on the governor's mansion.

Mormon Church money fueled the anti-gay marriage proposition, and analysts say conservative black voters turning out for Obama helped seal the deal. That prompted Nelson to call for prominent black Americans like comedian Wanda Sykes to start a dialogue on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues within the African-American community.

"Well, Wanda Sykes is now out there and working her behind off," Nelson writes in an update on his blog, 'Leading from the Left." See a video of Sykes speaking at a Las Vegas rally and read Nelson's other posts on gay marriage and Prop 8 here.