National Equality March, Oct. 11

[CurtCB]

I will be there with my two gay cousins and a troupe of "performance artists"
I would invite every gay American to be there too.


What the National Equality March Is About

This isn't about one small legislative item or one Congress person's vote. It's about the culture shift - the new demand for equality that sees us as entitled to all of our rights instead of weakly asking for them.
This is about the interweave between our community and immigrants; some of us have partners currently caught in the bi-national trap.
This is about how we treat people of color, women, the disabled, and the ill - both inside and outside of our own LGBT community.
This is about workers and not just queer ones; we all have the same employers and how has corporate America treated you lately?
This is about police brutality, crimes meant to scare whole communities, and racial, ethnic, and gender identity profiling and stereotyping.
This is about taking our place at the table instead of fighting for scraps. This is about bringing us all up to the same place instead of narrowly advancing one small agenda at the cost of another.
I'm marching because my rights are bigger than a march. I'm marching because I want to see equality across America and not just for me. I want to see women, people of color, immigrants, workers, the LGBT community, and everyone else stand up and say, "Enough."
The wild conspiracy theories, breathless reporting and baseless accusations don't empower us. It's time we lifted ourselves out of the muck of "That's mine. This is yours.", and realized that to win true equality across America we have to step outside our usual boundaries.
No, this march isn't about Prop 8. It's not about ENDA. It's not about hate crimes, DADT, or Maine's marriage fight.
It's about all of that and then some. It's about saying, "I'm entitled to all of these rights. I'm not asking you to give them to me. I'm demanding them. I'm a human too and I'm just as worthy as you are."


-Bill Browning

The Bilerico Project | Daily experiments in LGBTQ

[fredv3b]

Whist I appreciate the sentiments, I am dubious about the wisdom of such a global agenda. The march is pushing for the rights of gays, women, blacks, immigrants, the disabled, etc., etc. The rights that these groups are denied are very varied, some rights are denied by law, some denied by the practices of American employers. There are two ways to cope with this. First is to minimise specific practical demands and make abstract demands of 'equality', fair play, motherhood and apple-pie, the result is tends to be is that everyone agrees in principle and little happens in practice. The alternative is a long and detailed shopping list of demands which is easily described by commentators as being part of a left-wing progressive (un-American) agenda.

I totally agree that it marching in favour of a small agenda means that it will tend to he played off against other agendas. Anti-hate crime legislation seems to be frequently passed as a fig leaf towards various minority communities, despite little if any evidence that it reduces the incidence of hate-crimes and introduces pernicous inequalities in the law between those groups who have these extra 'protections' and those that do not.

That said, I think the agenda of this march is too broad.

I will be there with my two gay cousins and a troupe of "performance artists"

Very few people these days see protests with their own eyes, more often through the television screen. Respectable Americans marching for their rights can easily seem boring to TV producers compared to small minorities in marches who may be scantily clad and disregarding social mores.

[CurtCB]

Fred no offense but you have no fire in your gut.
I don't care about the outcome but at least I stood up for myself.
As for my friends the performance troupe, they preform as every week at the New Orleans Little Theater and have been more than acclaimed.
The main point is that I am taking my 16 year old gay cousin to show him that his is worth more.
You should try being worth more once in a while maybe it would lift that black cloud from over your head.

[fredv3b]

Fred no offense but you have no fire in your gut.
I don't care about the outcome but at least I stood up for myself.

You absolutely hit the nail on the head. I really do care about the outcome. I no interest whatsoever in ineffectually standing up for myself. I don't need to go on a march to boost my self-esteem. I am an utter materialist, going on a march that achieves nothing, to me is failure.

General Patton is reported to have said something to the effect of, 'nobody ever won a war by dying for his country, he did it by making the other guy die for his country'.

[CurtCB]

"very few people these days see protests with their own eyes, more often through the television screen. respectable americans marching for their rights can easily seem boring to tv producers compared to small minorities in marches who may be scantily clad and disregarding social mores."

that is what I was referring to when i said I don't care about the outcome.
As for marches being ineffective try telling that to Martin Luther King and Susan B Anthony

If you posted a Thread on something you supported even if it was something I didn't support. I would tell you Good Luck and Godspeed.
As for my self esteem. I think I would find a different way to boost it if I needed to.

[fredv3b]

As for marches being ineffective try telling that to Martin Luther King and Susan B Anthony

I didn't say that marches were ineffective, history easily proves that point. I just think that the purpose of a march has to be clear and, in the era of modern media, one must be careful not to allow it to be misrepresented.

If you posted a Thread on something you supported even if it was something I didn't support. I would tell you Good Luck and Godspeed.

If I posted about something and you thought I was in danger of shooting myself in the foot or, worse yet, shooting our side in the foot I hope you would tell me so.

[CurtCB]

Shoot myself in the foot? Ok whatever Fred.
I guess a can cross you off of my list for people to invite to Halloween 26 for project Lazarus, a gay a costumed charity ball in New Orleans For fear that the press may portray you as being too flamboyant.
Also the USHRF dinner. Geez all those guys in Texudos holding hands. The press will have a field day with that one!
If you email me your your first and last name I'll put on a dress, some chaps with nothing underneath, or some very small shorts and nothing else, find a camera and send you a shout out from the march
My Cousin who is a sheriff's deputy and my friend who is a state trooper are marching in uniform so I figured I would dress up as an Indian so maybe the BBC will mistake us for the village people.:eek:
(that is sarcasm encase you are wondering):tongue: