The O gave some good pub this morning to Basic Rights Oregon, the GLBT advocacy group who have announced that they will be spending the next three years leading up to Election Day 2012 attempting to have Measure 36, "One Man One Woman," repealed. The ballot measure constitutionally limiting the rights of marriage to heterosexuals was passed eight five years ago, at the height of the political wave attempting to preemptively ban efforts to grant marriage equality. But BRO thinks the time is ripe to ask again:
Basic Rights will kick off the first phase of a public education campaign with rallies Monday night in Portland, Tuesday night in Bend and Wednesday evening in Eugene.
The group will encourage gay and lesbian couples to reach out to their neighbors in a conversation on "why marriage matters and how it impacts their daily lives to be excluded from the freedom to marry," said Frazzini.
The group expects to send representatives to speak to churches and civic groups, she said, and it has hired two organizers who will travel the state and make 1,000 short, two-minute videos featuring gay and lesbian Oregonians talking about why marriage is important to them. The videos will be posted on various web sites and e-mailed to residents.
Evan Wolfson, founder and executive director of Freedom to Marry, a New York City-based organization fighting for same-sex marriage, will speak at all of the Basic Rights kick-off events.
Marriage "is one of the most important statements we make about who we are," he said. "It is so important to commitment and love that most people wear the symbol of it on their hands."
People's attitudes about gay marriage change when they know gay couples, he said.
Now's a good time to mention that tonight's event in PDX has been moved to the Vanport Room of Smith Memorial Hall at PSU. (I hope they moved it to a bigger room and not a smaller one; click the link to RSVP and for more info).
IS this a smart move? Is it the right time to begin pressing for equality in Oregon, less than a decade after 57% of voting Oregonians (the lowest winning percentage in any of the states that voted in 2004, it should be said) pretty clearly indicated they were against it? I'm going to say yes, for a couple of reasons.
First of all, intervening events have transpired, particularly in the last year or so, that have changed the game from one of defense to a more offense-based position for seekers of marriage equality. The number of states with the full freedom to marry threatens requiring another hand to count, and other localities like NY and DC have made it clear they will honor those marriages in their own jurisdictions. Given that the sky has not yet fallen in the heartland of Iowa, discerning voters might eventually realize that apocalypse is NOT in fact the inevitable outcome of Adam and Steve.
Part and parcel of that time elapse is demographics: simply put, the younger you are the less likely you are to be against marriage equality, whether by virtue of your active support for it, or simply not giving a rip. The younger generation has benefitted from being exposed to gays and gay culture in a much more open environment, even as homosexuals continue to be discriminated against, harrassed and even assaulted and killed for who they are. It's nearly impossible for detractors to convince young voters that they should care; they simply don't see the threat. Even something like watching the movie MILK is shocking to them--people actually got arrested for drinking in a gay bar? WTF?
The final reason for me is the general state of the political pendulum--we're in a progressive wax, such as it is, and we know there are real opportunities to move forward on sensible legislation with a majority of the electorate...because the far right has gone absolutely batshit crazy. This flatly does NOT happen among people secure in their beliefs that the swing of history is with them; rather it is usually born of deep insecurity and fear that indeed things are irretrievably slipping away.
The problem with that perspective is, the scared and insecure people are shouting and yelling and saying things that just don't hold up for most regular folks. It looks like hysterics rather than a reasoned argument against (which isn't surprising, because the craziest thing about the whole anti-gay movement is that it's 100% bereft of rational arguments that can be made for it), and that simply indicates to the masses that any fears are probably unfounded or motivated by sensibilities most Americans don't share.
Interestingly, the Human Rights Coalition, of which Evan Wolfson is a leader* the most prominent and well-connected GLBT advocacy group, is known to many in the GLBT community as a somewhat plodding, moderate, work-within-the-system organization that has the ear of Washington and would like to keep it that way without making waves. The younger, more activist gay communities would like action now, nationally, on things like Don't Ask Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act.
But ironically, it's at the national level where HRC is typically focused, and if anything is to get done at that level it's HRC's resources you'd want to tap. By contrast, BRO is firmly in the state-by-state camp, figuring that as with many social rights movements in this country, the Snowball Effect will apply. Massachusetts' pioneering marriage law would seem to substantiate that premise; there's almost no question that having MA as an example has made the job easier in subsequent states, and at some point a critical mass is reached where national policy becomes the next obvious step. It's hodgepodge and necessarily parochial to start, but the eventual dividends can be much higher.
Equality in 2012! Remember it.
*Wolfson is in fact the head of Freedom to Marry, not HRC. I do very weird things when I hear Evan Wolfson's name: I think of Howard Wolfson, advisor to Hillary Clinton during her Presidential run. Why this somehow forces me to continually perceive of Evan as the guy from HRC when Howard never was and isn't even gay, I really can't say. Duly corrected, welcome to my neurosis.
It's been a while since I'd been to a pride parade--so long in fact, that at the last one I went to, in Chicago in the late 80s, "bi" revelers were still trying to get their mention among the initials that now include G,L,B, T and Q. I remember a speaker referring multiple times to "gay and lesbian"...only to have the same two women shout out each time, "And BI!"
So I was interested to see how such things had matured over the years, both aided and cursed by the rapdily declining novelty and controversy of such parades. I called up some new lesbian friends who had moved here from Colorado within the last year (and thus had also never seen a Portland Pridefest), and asked if they wanted to check out the scene. They're in their 40s (as am I), and like many people gay or straight, had lost some interest in the bass pumpin' party scene. Thus sequestered from the Portland gay community by age and 12 miles of I-5, they were eager to connect with some of "their people" as they put it, and see how the community compared to the one they had left behind.
Color us all a little sunburned, but mighty impressed. Portland GLBTQ has it going on, folks. I don't know what the crowds looked like all along the route, but near the reviewing stand where emcee and stunning Latina drag queen Meesha Peru made her base, the street was packed and continued to press forward from the sidewalks, pushing the parade participants into an ever-narrower, ever more intimate channel of compressed festivity. And I certainly wasn't the only straight person there to live a little vicariously; there was lots and lots of allied support, both in the parade and looking on.
One thing that had definitely changed since the last time I'd been to a pridefest was the level of corporate and "mainstream institution" participation. There were groups from Nike, PGE, Wells Fargo, Providence Health Group, the City of Portland and Portland Public Schools among others. Think about that last one for a little bit--someone at PPS decided that there wasn't a thing wrong in associating the school district with the gay community...and more importantly, that no one else would think there was either. If I had to guess I'd say they made the right call.
I'd love to say that business has made a value judgement and welcomed the gay community because it's the right thing to do, but the better answer is that at least in Portland, the community is young, well educated and relatively affluent. Corporations aren't stupid--gay people buy stuff. But they also have definitely calculated what their risk-reward ration is in lending their name to such an event, and it's another positive cultural sign (again, in Portland at least) that companies feel comfortable reaching out to the gay community without worrying about the rest of their customer base.
Sociological considerations aside, the parade was simply a blast. The good vibes were pouring out of everyone you saw--broad smiles, unaffected dancing...just pure joy on so many faces. It's infectious, and I headed back to my boogie hovel feeling pretty damn good about the world for a day. Love IS love!
With that, I'm going to jump below the fold and upload some photos I took with an iPhone, which is not exactly a precise photographical instrument, but it takes decent enough photos. If you are on a slow bandwidth connection, recognize that the page will take some time to download.
I suppose if he can't find the time to debate, the citizens will have to ask him the questions directly. Seems one of them did:
Last night I ran into Jeff Merkley at an event, and I was very pleased to be able to get a few minutes of his uninterrupted attention so I could ask him about two issues that I care a lot about: (a) marriage equality, and (b) reform of the Internal Revenue Code to tax capital gains at the same rate as wages.
...
But after I told him I was a Novick supporter and asked him my two yes-or-no questions, what happened next was interesting. He locked those big brown puppylike eyes onto mine (also brown, somewhat smaller and less puppylike) and proceeded to tell me why in his view "those are not 'yes or no' issues."
A citizens' group has organized to fight the frivolous and vindictive recall petition drive in Wasco County (about which I diaried previously). Sparked by unanimous adoption of a local nondiscrimination ordinance, the petitioners are citing disparaging remarks against the voters as the grounds for recall. There's only one problem. The public record shows that the targets of the recall never made the comments attributed to them in the petitions.
Local progressives are not standing idly by. Details, as they say, after the fold.
(When people abuse the recall process in this fashion, it demeans and undermines the ability of duly elected officials to do their job. Recalls are designed and intended to be used to remove corrupt officials. If you don't like the way they vote, then get rid of them at the next election.
Not to mention the fact that the people working on the recall are demonstrating what bigoted a-holes they are. - promoted by carla)
In an e-mail alert sent to its supporters today, Wasco County Citizens for Human Dignity warned that a petition has been taken out to recall Wasco County Judge Dan Ericksen and County Commissioner Sherry Holliday, because they voted for the recently enacted county non-discrimination ordinance the group worked for over a year to get passed.
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