Taking Back Equality: Notes from the March on Washington
Posted on 22. Oct, 2009 by Matthew Clark in Politics
Slouching Towards Washington
“The elevation of the family to ideological preeminence guarantees that a capitalist society will reproduce not just children, but heterosexism and homophobia.”
– John D’Emilio, Capitalism and Gay Identity
For the last several months, this sentence has haunted me and kept me awake at night. Every time I hear the word “gay” or “lesbian” in the news, it is followed by some form of the word “equal,” and I can’t help but wonder what that means anymore. It’s the banner of every Rachel Maddow talking point, the pariah of every Bill O’Reilly pundit.
Most people will give a clear, definitive response to what they mean by equality: marriage. Personally, I take a hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner approach to marriage. Activists and lobbyists alike throw their arms up at this injustice, like the worst thing in the world is being denied the right to be a miserable divorcee with the rest of the country. Imagine me, free to be forced to reconcile banking statements, insurance policies, child-rearing practices and geographic locality with the person I thought I loved senior year of college. The American Dream.
The Human Rights Campaign invests billions of dollars for the sake of marriage while transgender teens (a small minority of the overall population) represent some of the highest in homelessness and suicide rates. Equality could start somewhere closer to anti-discrimination, anti-hate speech, domestic violence prevention and health care reform. It could broaden domestic household rights to include any individuals under a roof and provide more monetary autonomy for every kind of monogamous couple. It could fulfill the sexual revolution that the Gay Liberation Front set out to do almost 40 years ago in 1970.
So it would be an understatement to say that a month before the National Equality March on Washington, D.C., I was reluctant. I had tied myself to the irrational idea that I, as a gay man, could go as an observer and “critique” what I saw. I wanted to put my finger to the pulse of this thing, to take it apart and see what makes it tick.
Instead, less than a month away, the opposite happened. This Pandora’s Box, equality, had more going on within it than outside of it. Protesters who had only cared about Proposition 8 began to talk about the endemic homelessness rate among transgender youth. Heterosexual couples began seeking domestic partnership status instead of marriage. In Gainesville, the Pride Community Center wouldn’t throw its support behind the March, and The International Socialist Organization was the only group in Gainesville to provide transportation for interested parties. As socialism is no longer the dirty word Fox News catered it to be, socialists put themselves at the head of a national movement. The Advocate, by no means a left-leaning publication, featured a purple and pink portrait of Obama and asked the question on many queer people’s minds: “Nope?”
So I put my full support into it. I missed classes, asked for donations and handed out fliers. I got a schedule for all the workshops for the weekend. Plane ticket in hand, my obsession doubled. Equality, it seemed, had drawn my attention as well as the nation’s. Equality, it would seem, was in some type of ménage à trois with Liberty and Justice. And this had extended beyond any pornographic desire. I wanted in.
So I decided: to Washington.
Demanding Equality
“We’re not organizing to march; we’re marching to organize!”
– Sherry Wolf, activist
I fly into Dulles instead of Reagan on principle. There’s something about coming to a gay rights march and landing in an institution named solely for the man who killed more gay people with a mere qualification of nonexistence that (because it doesn’t feel right?) doesn’t feel right. Sure, maybe it took an extra two hours to get to my destination 30 minutes before the Metro closed down for the night, but I have principles, damn it.
D.C. is pretty disgusting. Chinatown is all of three blocks and includes a Ruby Tuesday, which, the last time I checked, only specialized in Asian-specific cuisine as a seasonal promotion à la sweet-and-sour Cajun chicken dinner plates. The image of “the man” is pervasive: stopping at street corners on cell phones, scrolling on BlackBerrys in the subway; they can even be spotted on the yet-gentrified blocks of Columbia Heights. Everywhere, the ideal of an overweight white man in a dress shirt is incessant. These are men who buy Bowflexes as living room ornaments and men who haven’t had their pant legs hemmed since the ’70s.
Most of the events start to kickoff on Saturday. The Human Rights Campaign headquarters has a slew of fact sheets for each state and tables for writing letters to your representatives. They have workshops, buttons and sign-making stations for the March on Sunday.
At noon, a small group of us gather at the Taft Memorial, waiting on details via text for a flash mob protest that is supposed to be taking place. “Stonewall 2.0,” they say. We all get notified about a half-hour later telling us to meet at Union Station. In the lobby, it’s starting to fill with people. Another half-hour later and I’m frozen with about a hundred other people, camcorder in hand, trying to record the event for The Fine Print’s web site. We march outside and start yelling chants from generation’s past: “Gay Straight, Black White! Same Struggle, Same Fight!” It seems like the crowd has grown: 100, maybe 200, people, nearly all under 25. It feels good, and as we make our way to the Capitol, tourists look confused. What do we want? Equality! When do we want it? Now!
The Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell protest an hour later isn’t as successful. Forty-five minutes into it and they’re still asking us to text our friends to come. They hand out tattoos straight from the NoH8 campaign that fought the passage of Proposition 8. When I leave, they’re beginning to duct tape mouths. But I’ve got someplace else to be.
I arrive right on time at Busboys and Poets, and there’s a line around the railing outside, circling the building. Inside are Sherry Wolf and Cleve Jones, two of the organizers of the March. They’re giving a talk on LGBTQ Liberation. Jones was responsible for the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt in the ’80s and personally took up the call for the March. Wolf just wrapped up a tour for her new book and to drum up support for the March. I sneak my way in right before they speak. It’s wall-to-wall people inside.
Wolf says the March is about one thing: full equality in all matters governed under civil law in all 50 states. This means adding sexual orientation and queer identity to the 1964 Civil Rights Amendment. She says this concept of pride over protest and lobbying incrementalism over direct action is unacceptable.
She also changes my views on marriage. The majority of the LGBTQ population aren’t the affluent, campy white males we see on television. They’re ordinary, working-class people. The material benefits of marriage are more real to them than my college-educated status will be able to understand. Moreover, most of those economic benefits come from the national level. Even couples in states that allow for gay marriage are denied those rights.
Wolf ties LGBTQ protest to other direct, leftist political actions. She talks about how Harvey Milk was successful in striking beers in gay bars for labor unions and how the Gay Liberation Front, born from Stonewall, was vehemently anti-war.
“I don’t want to see DADT [Don't Ask, Don't Tell] repealed so that our gay brothers and sisters can go on fighting an illegal war,” she says. ”Here is another reality about the U.S. military: it is the largest employer in our country. I want them to be recognized and receive the benefits for their service everyone gets, and then I want to bring all of our brothers and sisters back home!”
It seems like these people care. Like they get it. Like D.C. isn’t just some vacation to them, and it seems as if people might take this stuff back and start organizing. And that’s what Wolf wants, too.
“It’s not a bad start folks, but we have got to walk away from here with a movement. We’re not organizing to march; we’re marching to organize.”
That night, Obama spoke at the HRC, promising to hear our calls for equality if we continue to make them. Our president invoked Stonewall, when transgender, gay and lesbian working-class people, mostly of color, cornered riot-squad officers into a bar, set fire to the bar and continued to riot for the next several days. That night, queer radicals “glamdalized” the HRC headquarters by tagging “Quit Leaving Queers Behind” in pink spray paint on the door and firing off “glitter-bombs.”
Sunday morning, only a few people were wandering McPherson Square, where the March was to begin. But within two hours, curious stragglers had turned into an enmeshed horde armed with signs, screams and a willingness to demonstrate. The parks couldn’t hold crowds, then the streets couldn’t, and people spilled over in every direction.
The International Socialist Organization had a massive contingent group marching, mostly young people. With megaphones and signs to hand out to everyone passing by, they made it clear that, as part of their political belief, they stood for equality for all and saw the marginalization of gay people as a gross inequality.
Signs everywhere referenced Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Employment Non-Discrimination Act and the Defense of Marriage Act. Groups from colleges all across the country, as well as UF, protested that they wouldn’t stand for this any longer. Radical Queers marched against heteronormativity, poverty and capitalism. Even Lady Gaga, as detracting as her and her entourage’s presence may have been, marched.
Past the Washington Monument in the distance, past the White House and those screaming support on the balcony of the Newseum, the crowd spilled into the Capitol lawn for a rally that would last the rest of the day. Jones, two days after his birthday, begged the crowd to please take protest back home with them.
The Politics of Equality
“Perhaps the crowd at the dinner last night was a little more politically aware and had a better sense at what’s at stake and what can be done.”
– HRC President Joe Solmonese, referring to the HRC banquet
Coverage in general was slim. The majority of print media was this: Are the gays mad at Obama? Broadcast tended to say it directly. The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today all hinted at it. Their scope of issues covered similar ones that were focused on at the March: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Employment Non-Discrimination Act and the Defense of Marriage Act. Rarely did I hear mention of full-blown, one-measure equality –- like the kind Sherry Wolf alluded to.
CNN did tend to delve deeper. In a five-panel discussion after the HRC banquet, Michelangelo Seniorelli alluded to the fact that the HRC mostly represents white, affluent men. The next day, Joe Solmonese defended the HRC and, in doing so, perhaps suggested that economic privilege is a direct link to incremental, lobbyist approaches.
What still remains unclear is if and how the March on Washington’s aftermath will come to fruition. Will there be a national grassroots movement at all? Will it focus on the high-density urban areas many gay people live in? Will it be for single issues, or will it demand full equality now? Will assimilation versus acceptance, as queer radicals connote, take center stage? Will it incorporate issues such as universal health care and migrant farm labor?
What myopia of these issues was actually covered by the media only scratched the surface. Gay Liberation, to pick up where it left off, is going to require a much more politically astute and active base, and it is going to have to lead the way in activism for many more issues that make up the great “change” our society needs.
