Sunday, November 16, 2008

Scenes from Stop H8 rally: San Francisco City Hall

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The police apparently told reporters there were 7500 of us protesting Prop. 8 at this venue, among 300 cities nationwide yesterday. For once, I agree with the police numbers, assuming you count all the shifts.

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First came the young and eager, nearly as many straight as gay, protesting what seems to them an abominable, inexplicable travesty. Why would anyone oppose marriage for any who want it?

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Some seemed simply sweet.

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And yes, dogs too protest Prop. 8.

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My friends from LAGAI-Queer Insurrection, who've been on the barricades for human liberation since before some of the crowd were born turned up later. Old time queers don't do 10:30 am Saturday rallies.

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The crowd agreed that religious bigotry was problem, but cheered Rev. Penny Nixon of Metropolitan Community Church when she warned according to the SF Chronicle:

"We put salt on everyone's wounds when we scapegoat and place blame. We cannot speak about each other in this way. It will kill us."

I can't claim I heard her say that. The sound system was inadequate to the size of the gathering, so the rally had the character of a slightly aimless mill-in on the lawn.

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This woman agreed with Rev. Penny.

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This gentleman's sign made me wonder: did bigotry begin to lose the high ground when children began to be raised by Sesame Street? Might be.

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On the way home on BART (the subway), I ran into these guys. I asked what church they were with -- they replied "no group." But they liked the sign and were thrilled when someone gave it to them.

5 comments:

Darlene said...

I hope the Supreme Court finds that proposition 8 is unconstitutional. It clearly is, but with right wing conservatives like Samuel Allito on the bench it might survive.

janinsanfran said...

Actually -- the challenge will be heard in the California Supreme Court -- which just found exactly that "separate but equal" was not equal. So this will be tough for them to uphold, although they are subject to recall by the voters, so I can't imagine they aren't distressed at the idea of facing that. Would be very ugly if recall happened.

planet trans said...

That's fantastic. We had between 1,000 and 1,300 for the H8 and 100 for two Sundays in a row to protest Dallas First Baptist.

Civic Center said...

I was at Peet's Coffee in Opera Plaza at about 11:00 AM with a number of other 50-plus gay dudes, and I couldn't help myself from saying to them, "So we're all arriving at the protest on gay time, I see," and they said, "Who does a protest at 10:30 on a Saturday morning? Jeesh."

Anonymous said...

Estimates range from 3,000 to 5,000 marching in Seattle. My favorite sign, held by a gay man, was "if I can't marry my boyfriend, I'll marry your daughter."

Earlier that morning, I read about the "Holocaust survivors (who) are trying to negotiate with the Mormon church over posthumous baptisms of Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps, saying the church has repeatedly violated a 13-year-old agreement barring the practice." Maybe it's time for queers (Jewish & non-) to join with Jews (queer & non-) to do some major multi-front challenges to the Mormon oligarchy.

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