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Report from California: Meeting the (gay marriage) opposition
S/B GAY Train to LA IMPACT
By Ali Davis, Special to 365gay.com 11.18.2008 4:54pm EST I didn’t go out on Friday night; I spent most of it fretting over my sign for Saturday’s Join the Impact march. I wish I were good at craft projects, but years of attempts have indicated that I should maybe stick to verbal skills. Still, any good cause is worth a little persistence, even if stenciling turns out to take way longer than you thought it would. And the rewards did come.
In just12 or15 short hours, I had a double-sided sign, complete with cardboard reinforcements to keep it from going all floppy and a sacrificial wooden ruler as a handle. (Learn from my mistake: Buy a yardstick.) I met my friends bright and early the next morning. (Randi had a simple, eloquent sign: A big broken heart, beautifully colored, with the word “Ow” written underneath. She estimated that her sign had taken “about seven minutes” to make. Screw you, Randi.) We headed off to the Metro station, which was festive and way more full than I’ve ever seen it on a weekend. You can tell that Angelinos are serious when they try using public transportation. We grinned and nodded at each other as the train filled up with more and more people who were clearly going off to the march, as we could tell from subtle cues like intriguingly spiky haircuts, carefully rolled bits of posterboard, and large men dressed entirely in day-glo rainbow colors.
I liked knowing that somewhere in the United States, perhaps at that very moment, some lucky transit system was home to the Gayest Train in the Whole Wide World.
We poured out of the Civic Center station and followed the sweep of the crowd out to City Hall. The mood of the crowd was buoyant. There were a lot of us – the police estimate was 10,000 to 12,000 people – and we seemed to have gotten our footing back after the Election Day blow. Police and fellow marchers directed us toward the starting area, but we did have to make it past one hurdle: The opposition.

Well, not so much a hurdle as a wood chip. We went past maybe a dozen guys with half a dozen signs, well protected by the police. As sad as it is that they were there at all, it was gratifying to see that they seemed to have lost a lot of their oomph. Maybe it’s because there were 12,000 of us and so few of them. But I think it was mostly because they had once again done us the huge favor of being unintentionally hilarious.
There was the old classic “HOMO SEX IS A SIN,” which is so 1970’s I almost found it charming; and “Attention sodomites: Your behavior is a gross abomination! Read the Bible for details;” which for some reason just made me giggle and giggle. From now on, when I tell someone they’re horrible, I’ll make sure to provide resources for further reading.
The sign that really floored me was “GOD DOES NOT LOVE YOU JUST THE WAY YOU ARE.” I’m no theologian, but I based on what I recall, that is a pretty bold reinterpretation of the Bible. Mostly I was relieved to know that we can all stop with that tedious wondering and philosophizing and stuff, because there is at last a man on earth who has a perfect knowledge of the mind of God. If we have any questions, I’m assuming we can just ask him. I hope someone at the march thought to get his e-mail address, because it slipped my mind. Darn.
In a way, looking at these backwards people protesting our protest really heartened me. (And, seriously, fellas, though we will have to agree to disagree, more power to you for having the courage of your convictions and exercising your right as Americans to express them. I really will try to giggle less when I see you. OK, that’s not realistic; I will try to be farther away when I giggle after seeing you.)
OK, back to the heartening part. Though Prop 8 has certainly taught me never to underestimate the opposition again, the guys with the Dirty Bad Sodomite signs remind me of who the driving core of the anti-GLBT movement really are: These sad, angry, frightened people, who get whipped into a frenzy every couple of years by politicians looking for a wedge issue and then dropped the minute the polls close.
Maybe I should be angrier with them, but the most I can work up lately is “Oh, poor things.” As the increasingly big and beautiful crowd gathered, we listened to some rev ‘em up speeches. There were several notable speakers, including City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo and Los Angeles Mayor Anthony Villaragosa, a longstanding and vocal opponent of Prop 8. I was impressed that he was there in spite of what had to be a rough day – the day’s hot winds were whipping up the wildfires, causing evacuations and untold damage. There were also a few celebrities on the speaking bill. Little Britain’s Matt Lucas, best known in the GLBT community for his “only Gay in the village” sketches, pointed out some of his favorite signs in the crowd, including the moving “This would have been our wedding day,” and a more lighthearted “You’ll let us plan your weddings, but not have our own.” Lucy Lawless also spoke, quoting a Chinese saying that one must not fear the enemies outside the walls so much as the people who build the walls. Ms. Lawless may well have said a few other inspirational things, but I’m not sure; I might have passed out for a moment when they introduced her. Grateful as we were to have so much well-spoken support, the crowd grew restless with listening after a while and began chanting “March! March! March!” And because the organizers were wise, they cut short the speaking and we did.
We moved forward into an instant bottleneck, then stretched out into a good and proper parade in the baking sun.
I know people in other cities showed some serious moxie for marching in cold and rainy weather, and I am not trying to take anything away from that. I’m just saying that downtown L.A. hit 92 degrees that afternoon. If you have a time machine and a snow cone cart, I believe I know how you can make your life’s fortune. Please, please do not sell out your stock before I get to you.
In a way, even the heat worked out well. L.A.’s downtown is eerily deserted on weekends, which meant we were mostly marching for each other. The fact that people occasionally darted from the crowd in desperate attempts to find fluids meant that there were at least little pockets on the sidewalks clapping for each other. The rally route, appropriately enough, was not straight. (Though there were, as always, plenty of very welcome straight marchers there. I am growing weary of news accounts that describe Prop 8 protest crowds as “gays and lesbians.” It could be a convenient shorthand, or it could be a tin-eared failure to understand the full spectrum of orientations in the community. Or it just might be a teeny attempt to marginalize a civil rights issue into a “special interest.”) We horseshoed around and doubled back, allowing us to peek down the side streets at each other and see how pleasingly huge the line of marchers was. We marched through some ohthankgod SHADE!!! and then onto a highway overpass, drawing some movingly enthusiastic supportive honking. I don’t know why the support honking lifts the spirits so much, but it truly does. Regardless of your city, if you see protesters out there, please do honk away. It’s like a frosty snow cone of love for the ears. If you’re concerned that your beeping may be interpreted as hostile, honk out the rhythm to “Holiday.” Or have Kathy Griffin in the car. They’ll get it. The day was a system-bracer, and a good one. Prop 8 and the similar unfair measures that passed in Arizona, Arkansas, and Florida reminded us that we have a long way to go with civil rights all over the U.S. and throughout the world, but I’m betting that a lot of people in the crowd have never felt so certain of getting there. And so we marched exuberantly into the much-more-populated Chinatown neighborhood to finish the march and demonstrate the power of Queer Dollars. Specifically, the Power of Queer Dollars That Would Really Like Some Cold Drinks Right Now. Cold drinks and good luck to us all. Ali Davis is a writer and performer in Los Angeles. Her sign was much better than Randi’s.