Exist.
Find some people, and justify your right to exist with the same rights as the majority.
Hopefully, this will end with some of those people deciding that you're right, and you do have the right to exist with the same rights as the majority.
Some of these people will now become allies.
You and your allies find some more people, and justify your right to exist with the same rights as the majority.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
The whole premise is based upon needing to demonstrate why you should be allowed to be something more than a second-class citizen, until the good people of the majority grow comfortable enough with you to grant you the rights denied to your predecessors.
The whole premise is based upon making it clear to those around you that you deserve to have access to the same rights and liberties as those who have never had to justify their existence in this kind of instance.
Or, in other words, the minority has to prove that its members are just as good, as human, as full of citizeny goodness as the majority.
Here's my problem with this whole deal. Chances are, large swaths of the majority have had to go through this song and dance themselves. There is only a small sliver of the population who has never had to justify themselves in the "I'm as good as you" way. And yet, we all just keep on dancing.
Here's my other problem with the whole deal. The problem with democracies is that the democratic process does not translate into justice, or equality, or the pursuit of happiness. All it means is that the majority gets their way; and the majority can be, at times, a bunch of assholes. Even when whole huge swaths of said majority also belong to any number of minority groups as well. I love my democratically elected republic government, and I would not trade it for any other form. But a pure democracy (or democratic republic) isn't the sole basis for the just or free society. For that, there need to be safe-guards.
I don't truly know how to articulate it; but luckily, someone else did (in talking about women's rights):
Rights are for all. When only some people have them, they're just privileges. And privileges can be taken away.
Those who don't have to rationally discuss whether or not they should have the right to wed are privileged. That privilege will probably never be taken away. And yet, it isn't a right. Because what those for marriage equality want aren't special rights, but rights to the same damn thing. And the thing standing in their way isn't anything more or less than other people's prejudices. Those prejudices aren't based in justice, aren't based in the philosophy of the American way. They are based in the undemocratic, anti-justice stance that just because this privilege of mine has rarely been challenged or questioned and is simply accepted as matter-of-fact that I have an intrinsic right to decide whether or not you get the same consideration.
That isn't to say that we shouldn't fight injustices by trying to convince other people that our path is the best. But it is to say this: democracy and justice don't just go hand in hand. Sometimes, the democratic process is used to deny justice to groups of people. Sometimes our judicial system does the same thing. But often in American history, it isn't the will of the majority that pushes forward the cause of justice, of equality, of a more perfect union. It is the actions of the few. They are the actions of presidents, of courts, of those who push the unwilling masses forward - because the balance between the will of the majority and the rights of the minority is a tenuous one, and one that must be guarded jealously.
