Big Gay Splash in the Pan?

 

I am amazed at the dearth of coverage of the huge Gay Equality march in Washington DC yesterday.  The Birthers and the Carpetbagger/teabaggers  got tons of publicity and broad media coverage.  Their images were plastered all over everything.  Was it because they were a regular Barnum and Bailey sideshow but the gays were orderly, neat, well behaved people and therefore not as newsworthy?  Their signs were not misspelled; their clothing was tidy and contemporary.  No one had anything hateful to say.  They were almost uniformly young, attractive and well-behaved.  And nobody is covering the march.  Even Huffington post has nary a word about it today.  CNN barely mentioned it.  I doubt it even showed up as a brief mention on the network news.

Some terrific speakers addressed the march.  Julian Bond was outstanding.  The Broadway cast of Hair showed up and did a rousing rendition of Let the Sunshine in.  Did you know that Harvey Milk was one of the producers of the original Broadway production of Hair?  Not to mention Jesus Christ Superstar.  Wonder what Harvey would have though of the march?  He would have seen that it got a lot more publicity than it did, I'm sure of that.  His name was mentioned there many times.  We need his brash and determined attitude.  we need his outrage as well as his outrageousness.

President Obama did not show up for the rally, but he spoke to HRC, the big gay lobbying group we feed money into, rain or shine, and which produces next to nothing for our efforts yet takes full credit for whatever happens by serendipity or otherwise.   He said yes he supported gay rights and one day we would have equality, which was a good thing for everybody, and he was working on some stuff, and that's why he had already included gay families in the Easter Egg Roll on the White House Lawn.  His speech made me cry, because he was the first president to ever come to a gay event and speak, and he did say a lot of positive things.  But in the cold light of day, what sticks with me is the actual results: an Easter Egg Roll.

The Easter Egg Roll is not going to cut it, Mr. President.  I love and support you, but you still do not get it.  Few straight people do.  Julian Bond does, though.  He really gets it, and he articulates it very well.  He says all people deserve full civil rights, including people who have "immutable differences." And gay people are immutably different, however much the conservative Christians would like you to believe otherwise.  We are born gay and there is nothing anyone can do to change that particular reality.  We know it from an early age and because of your attitudes, we carry our shame like a second skin.  People are going to have to get it, because little children must not be made ashamed of who they are by birth.  Whatever the preachers may tell you, scientific reality is what it is.  And scientific reality IS "God's law," like it or not.  If you believe God is the creator, this is the reality that God created. 

If you look at the faces of the people at the rally, you will see they are not the stereotypes of gay people that non-gay people usually carry in their minds.  These are your neighbors, your co-workers, your friends.  Not some "Internet left fringe" who need to get out of their pajamas and get a taste of reality, as one of the president's spokespeople actually described us today.   These young people got together with a new resolve, and the broken or deferred promises the administration reiterated Saturday night at the HRC dinner will not, must not, defray their anger.

We will see an end to Don't Ask Don't tell and we will see DOMA overturned.  Not in 20 years.  NOW.

A dream deferred is a dream denied. And we are not in denial.

photos: Huffington Post