Yahoo News with Katie Couric hosted the daughters of former President Lyndon B. Johnson to discuss their father's legacy of "social justice" as the 50th anniversary of his Civil Rights Act of 1964 approaches.
Couric got straight to the point by reading a quote equating homosexual rights with the civil rights issue of the 60s and wanted to know what their father would think of the association. Johnson's two daughters, Luci Baines Johnson and Lynda Bird Johnson Robb, responded:
Johnson: It’s a great civil rights concern of our day. We are prevented from [the] most important union of marriage simply because of who you love and that is a great tragedy from my own perspective.
Couric: Do you think your dad would have supported the notion of gay marriage?
Robb: I just can't, you know, it's hard to project what daddy would have thought about that because that wasn't an issue that had come upon the stage at that time, but I know he really wanted everybody to be able to live up to the best that God gave them.
Johnson: And social justice was terribly important to Lyndon Johnson -- across the board.
Robb: Absolutely.
Couric: What about for you all? How important is gay marriage to the two of you?
Robb: Well, we all have friends who are gay. Obviously heterosexuals have divorce and have problems in their lives and I can't say that we are all perfect and I certainly think that if God made you a homosexual, that you should have love and affection with somebody. And I would not want to deny anybody that opportunity to be happy.
Johnson: And I guess my own opinion is that I do not think that being a homosexual is something that's a choice anymore than the fact that I am 5'4" is a choice, and not my sister's beautiful height. It's just a fact of life. And to deny someone the chance to have the kind of love I have in my marriage simply based upon the fact that the person they love is of the same gender, just seems to me to be morally wrong and deeply tragic. And I don't see how giving them the blessing of respect in any way hurts me. I think my father felt very strongly that when there was bigotry anywhere, prejudice anywhere, all of us lose out because it's just one more expression of hate.
Couric turns the conversation to the issue of race and wonders why the Civil Rights act "didn't do more to level the playing field." The interview continued:
Johnson: If you don't start off at the same place, if you don't have a two parent home, if you don't have a school that can provide you a safe opportunity to learn on an equal playing field, then the differences just get worse and worse and worse.
And I don't know how we could have expected to have enslaved a people for 100 years and then pass a law and think instantly everything was going to be made better. It takes time.
Unfortunately as the old song goes, you have to be carefully taught to hate what your grandparents hate. You have to be carefully taught. And we were taught for a long time to do that. So it takes some time for all of us to be able to pull together to get past and over these ancient challenges.
Couric: Is it disappointing though when you consider the state of race relations in America today that there is still prejudice, there's still inequality and that we do have so far to go?
Robb: Well, we do have inequality -- well, lots of places. We have it with, I think, people of color. I think recently, we have seen the fear and the concern with people who are Muslims, for instance, or who we think might be Muslims, or people who are from the Middle East. We're scared because we remember 9/11.
Johnson: And if they're not like us -- whoever us are -- there is a sense that maybe they are suspicious. Maybe something's wrong with them because they are not one of our own kind.
