So, yesterday I went into the city with C. He had an appointment; I went to a rally in support of overturning Prop 8, the mean vicious anti-gay marriage proposition that was foisted on California's ballot by a well-organized crew of Mormons and other right-wing ultra-Christian nut jobs, many of whom were from out of state. (I heard that the Mormon church in Utah contributed 20 million to the campaign of disinformation that was mounted in California, targeting especially churches of color, but I can't substantiate that figure.)

Yesterday California's Supreme Court started hearings on a motion to overturn that proposition. The rally was outside the Supreme Court building at 350 McAllister. I have been to a lot of rallies and demonstations before, but never one where we were so intermingled and face-to-face with our opponents. Usually there is separate turfs; over here the demonstrators, over there the counter-demonstrators. But we were all jammed up together, the "No On 8" crowd, with our signs and banners, cheek by jowl with the homophobes with their signs, which read things like "Gays Are An Anti-Species," and "A Moral Wrong Cannot Be A Civil Right," and "Marriage = One man plus one Woman."

I was looking for my friend Jonathan, who said he's be there, but I couldn't find him. Perhaps he was across the street watching the proceedings in court on a giant Tele-tron. I was singing. Some young guys on our side had a guitar and we sang old spirituals and Beatles songs: I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Let Us Be (with apologies to george Harrison,) All Ya Need is Love, etc. I ended up holding up one side of a big banner. The other pole was held by a cute young gay chiropracter with a magnificent tenor voice. When he sang lead on Stand By Me, you could practically see the music pouring out of him. Beautiful.

I liked it a lot better when we were singing than when we =were shouting. When we were singing the other side fell silent and listened. We had some good voices in our group and some sweet harmonies. When we were shouting "No on 8!" they took up their shouting "Yes on 8!" and soon the two sounds belended together. They were composed of the same oppostional angry energy.

I got interviewed by a reporter from the NY Times. Here's the link. I'm one of the talking heads below the article. I was tired when we started and by the time we got back from the city I was exhausted. Three hours of standing on pavement in the middle of that energy plus walking around the city afterwards with C looking for a place to eat left me footsore and limp. But I was glad to have shown up. This issue may come down to numbers again, and every body counts.

http://www.nytimes.com%2F2009%2F03%2F06%2Fus%2F06marriage.html%3F_r%3D1