Equality March Draws 250,000 in Nation’s Capital

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12 October 2009 :: Webb Tisch

Between 200,000 and 250,000 people are estimated to have gathered in Washington, DC, to demand action to ensure equal rights for homosexual Americans and other groups. The march was organized to demand full equal rights for same-sex couples and hate-crimes protection for homosexual victims. The rally came just after passage of historic hate-crimes legislation and a pledge from the president to end the military’s controversial “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

On Thursday, the House of Representatives passed historic hate crimes legislation, expanding hate crimes qualifications to cases where a victim was targeted due to gender or sexual orientation. As the New York Times reported:

The House voted Thursday to expand the definition of violent federal hate crimes to those committed because of a victim’s sexual orientation, a step that would extend new protection to lesbian, gay and transgender people.

Democrats hailed the vote of 281 to 146, which brought the measure to the brink of becoming law, as the culmination of a long push to curb violent expressions of bias like the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay Wyoming college student.

Republican House leader John Boehner (R-OH) decried the legislation as “radical social policy” and suggested it was wrong to criminalize what murderers or assailants “may have been thinking”. Boehner and other Republicans have long opposed such legislation, alleging it unfairly extends sentences for violent criminals whose crimes are already covered under other laws, despite supporting more aggressive prosecution of minors, extended sentences and additional funding for private prison firms.

The contrast between those pro-prison positions and the same officials’ opposition to hate crimes protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT), victims, has led many to allege the opposition is either a cynical calculation or a demonstration of entrenched bias against homosexual Americans. Some have gone as far as to accuse opponents of the bill of openly condoning and “giving comfort” to those who would commit such hate crimes.

Ultimately, 131 Republicans voted to oppose the broader Pentagon spending bill —essentially voting to cut off funding for the US military— in order to oppose the expansion of hate-crimes protection to those victimized by hate based on sexual orientation. The vote is one of the most radical in recent years, demonstrating entrenched Republican opposition to any extension of full and equal rights to gay Americans.

But the tide is turning toward expanding basic civil rights and hate-crimes protection to Americans of a minority sexual orientation. As the host of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, Bill Maher, said last week, “Everyone deserves equal rights. That’s why they’re called ‘equal’ and ‘rights.’” Maher even suggested the conservative rage over the issue could be helpful in passing other major reforms, like healthcare, as the conservative movement splits over its opposition to an array of policy changes.

The mood among LGBT activists, homosexual Americans and their supporters —some of whom rallied with signs reading “Straight against hate”— is that the time is now for major reform to guarantee equal rights for all Americans. The Chicago Tribune reports some in attendance said the campaign was “our war”, the civil rights struggle of this century:

“It’s like the [1960s] Freedom Rides [for racial equality],” said Bella Mia, 20, a Columbia College student who said she marched to support her gay friends. “I think gay rights are the great civil rights cause of the here and now.”

Rick Garcia, public policy director with LGBT advocacy group Equality Illinois, said he’s been to every national gay rights march since the first in 1979, and felt this year’s had the clearest goal: to demand equal rights.

The Tribune has also compiled a list of crazy fabrications and historic injustices, related to the issue of incomplete civil rights for gays and lesbians. The premature death of Alan Turing, the British mathematician who helped crack Nazi encryption techniques during World War II, can be attributed to his being brutalized by the state as a result of his sexual orientation.

Organizers of the march were young. TIME magazine reports the average age was under 30. Their interest in spurring a mass protest on the Mall in Washington, DC, was apparently ignited by efforts across the nation to deny equal rights to the LGBT community, including, for example, California’s Prop 8, which established that California cannot legally marry same-sex couples.

According to TIME:

“What Prop 8 did for my generation,” [Wayne] Ting told me the night before the march, at Restaurant Nora, “is that unlike past generations before, we had never been through something like where progress didn’t seem inevitable. Suddenly, some right that was given was taken back. I think that had a huge effect on my generation — to say, wait a minute, you mean, if I voted for and maybe wrote a check to the Democratic Party, that’s not enough?”

The case contesting the constitutionality of Prop 8 was brought by lawyers David Boies and Ted Olsen, who faced each other in the Bush v. Gore 2000 election contest regarding Florida’s electoral votes. The two found common ground in their belief that the government does not have the Constitutional authority to strip certain citizens of rights enjoyed by others.