Social Security is one of the two great make-or-break battles now before progressive patriots. The other is gay rights. Progressive Americans are beginning both battles from defensive positions, and that must be changed with desperate haste. We must resist the current rightist onslaughts viciously and immediately, and then rebound and attack at every point.

Brush up on the reality of Social Security's strength and the need to preserve it with this article by Molly Ivins.

The American people are being lied to about Social Security, which is the foundational legacy of the great “New Deal” of the 1930’s and 1940’s that created the middleclass. It dies and the New Deal dies. If the New Deal dies, it means the retirement security of millions of Americans is in jeopardy—sacrificed in an act of final betrayal against the American dream by the Republican Party, scarified on the altar of the Republican Party’s always-ultimate concern: greater wealth for the controlling and monied class.

As Social Security represents the preservation of a better America fought hard for and made progress towards in the past, gay rights is a new but critical part of a better American future. Gay rights are civil rights. Coretta Scott King has made this commonsensical argument forcefully. Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is as inherently barbaric and medieval as discrimination based on skin or eye color.

It is a bigoted and thus irrational notion that there is anything "special" or extraordinary about extending basic rights of life, liberty, and non-discrimination in employment, housing, and marriage (including inheritance rights, visitation rights, tax benefits, spousal immigration/naturalization rights, etc.) relative to Americans who happen to be gay. Even if 2005’s progress on gay rights ends up having to be limited to stopping a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, the fight must be fought with a clear sense of a full and urgent agenda as the final goal. Beginning immediately, at local, state, and federal levels, we must push decisively forward and finally win the battle for gay rights—specifically getting passed into law the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act passed, and gay marriage. In doing so, we will have kept alive the very ideal of civil rights, with all the implications that has for everything from reproductive rights to voting rights.

The ACLU has a fairly good section of its website dedicated to gay rights. Also, you can read more about this effort at the Center for American Progress.

What is more, countering the horrific lies from the rightwing (America’s “wingnuts”) that Social Security is in trouble and needs “reforming,” or that gay rights are somehow “special rights” and not civil rights, will mean successfully countering the conservative media machine itself!

Radicals are pouring millions of dollars extra into the already massive and nationally dominate conservative media machine in an attempt to spread falsehoods about Social Security and gay rights. If we can defeat the message machine on these issues, we can defeat it on any issue! Becoming competitive against the conservative media machine on issues like Social Security and gay rights is the first great post-election test for each and every progressive political organization, non-profit, and media/entertainment vehicle out there—NDN, ACT!, MoveOn.org, Media Matters, Air America Radio, and all the other groups now part of the nascent but growing progressive infrastructure. Even organizations seemingly irrelevant to the issues of Social Security and gay rights—like NOW, NARAL, and the Sierra Club—need to focus time and energy on fighting for them and coordinating with other progressive organizations in order to fight effectively every day for American progress.

The battle is being joined, and your attention, efforts, money, time, willpower, and strength are needed.