At least 1,000 people showed up today in Pasadena, California for the Join the Impact protest against Proposition 8. There were rallies held all across the country as part of the protest against marriage discrimination. The big California rallies were in Los Angeles and San Francisco, but Pasadena's rally had a pretty good turnout given that the effort to put it together didn't start until Wednesday.
The crowd was fairly diverse, at least by Pasadena standards.* Most of the people were in their 30s-60s, with some younger folks thrown in. One of my favorite signs was "Let My Dads Stay Married", which was held by a male couple who were there with their son, who was around 10 years old. There were a few signs in Spanish, which made sense since there were quite a few hispanics. There were also some Asian and African Americans.
One of the reasons the turnout was so good was that All Saints Episcopal Church helped organize it. You may be familiar with All Saints from its battle with the Bush Administration over statements made from the pulpit about the Iraq War.
Some of the signs that we saw:
"You Gave Chickens Their Rights But Took Mine Away"**
"The Bill of Rights - Void Where Prohibited By Law"
"Mormons Want 3 Wives, But I Can't Have 1 Husband"
"Quakers For Marriage Equality"
"Ignorance Often Comes Disguised as Tradition"
"In 1967 70% of the American People Were Against Interracial Marriage, Should We Have Voted on That"
"Separate Is Not Equal"
You get the idea. At several points during the rally, the crowd broke out in chants of "Yes We Can" as a call for getting marriage rights. I admit that I would be more than a little amused if the Obama chant*** turns into a gay rights slogan.
Join the Impact plans a second day of nationwide protests on January 10. Now if we only had a similar effort aimed at the bailout.
* One of the men wore a t-shirt that said "Pasadena - West Hollywood's Closet." Heh.
** Refers to the California proposition that passed that regulates the living conditions of farm animals.
*** Of course, Obama did not invent "Yes We Can." The Spanish version (Si se puede) was used by the United Farm Workers.
***
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"Please do not patronize them"
http://antigayblacklist.com/
"a four-paragraph decree to be read to congregations,"
-- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/15/us/pol... -- Mormons Tipped Scale in Ban on Gay Marriage --
"... First approached by the Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco a few weeks after the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in May, the Mormons were the last major religious group to join the campaign, and the final spice in an unusual stew that included Catholics, evangelical Christians, conservative black and Latino pastors, and myriad smaller ethnic groups with strong religious ties.
Shortly after receiving the invitation from the San Francisco Archdiocese, the Mormon leadership in Salt Lake City issued a four-paragraph decree to be read to congregations, saying “the formation of families is central to the Creator’s plan,” and urging members to become involved with the cause.
“And they sure did,” Mr. Schubert said.
..."
simple math, if you're black and "care about Our Community"
which is: where is growth in AIDS affliction coming from?
"Down Low" brothers.
it's long past time for the Black Community to ahem, 'come to terms.' there's little else i can say. but i can say that I *know* who is "the problem" here. the closet cases, and 'faith based' money hos, who work so fucking hard to make sure that fact and logic don't play into all this.
Prop Hate
opened my eyes, again. time for me to go the church, sigh. my MDiv protects me; and the simple fact is, a handful of black church types would rather kill 0000s, than face the fact that they are tools; tools who kill people, at that. and, revulsive closet cases. yes, i'm looking at you! i'm, um, trying to not use the word 'hate,' but i really don't like those hypocrites. tell me how i can be more effective.
I went to the rally in Denver, and once the march started,
while others were yelling and chanting and cheering, I couldn't smile.
I now have proof that the congregation I used to belong to, or any other congregation of black people I could join, really hopes I die alone.
They wanted to emulate the megachurches, and get that media exposure, the book sales and DVD sales and the interlocking partnerships of special appearances at other churches, and now they're as corrupt as the churches who harbored the men and women of the KKK in their pews. As long as the tithes were green, white Southern churches often didn't care about the white sheets.
Now, black churches' education projects about AIDS were mere lip service -- they'll ignore usury as a sin (hell, some Ministry of Helps folk became mortgage brokers) and fornication/divorce as a sin, as long as they fight the queers.
No matter what the gay community is trying to believe about Obama's conduct in re gay marriage (a ACLU flunky said his advertised support of Prop 8 was a 'big lie', despite the robo calls with his accurate quotes regarding marriage being between a man and a woman), there will be no top-down support for repeal in those states affected, and the gay community knows it. But when someone started singing 'give peace a chance', I smirked. We can pray for peace, but we'd better prepare for war.
Once the right gets a taste of eliminating rights in a constitution, they won't stop with queers. Why is that so hard to comprehend?
cool! Wanda Sykes came out at one in Vegas --
"... In Las Vegas, the comedian Wanda Sykes surprised a crowd of more than 1,000 rallying outside a gay community center by announcing that she is gay and had wed her wife in California on Oct. 25. Ms. Sykes, who divorced her husband of seven years in 1998, had never publicly discussed her sexual orientation but said the passage of Proposition 8 had propelled her to be open about it.
“I felt like I was being attacked, personally attacked — our community was attacked,” she told the crowd.
..." -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/us/16p...
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Thanks for this report, BDBlue
Excellent. And it's nice to see people reacting right away, instead of waiting around.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
I suppose you heard
about the (nontoxic) white powder that was sent to some Mormon temples. Predictably, the Mormons publicly blamed some in the gay community for it. I hope this fight costs them $$$$$$. They're really starting to piss me off.