Saturday, November 15, 2008

Colorado Springs Says No to California's Proposition 8



Dozens of protests were held by the GLBT community across the country on Saturday, Nov. 15, to express opposition to the passage of California's Proposition 8, which seeks to change the state constitution to add a permanent ban on gay marriage. At the last minute, the feisty Spectrum group at UCCS organized a protest in Colorado Springs to augment the one in Denver. Above is a talk from Peterson Toscano, a theatrical performance activist in Connecticut, about the recent legalizing of gay marriage in his state. You can also follow the links in this sentence to talks by transgender activists Argiope and Nancy-Jo Morris, to local activist Rita Ague, to an unknown person at the start of the rally, and to a group shot of protesters (around 75 or so) on City Hall steps.

Update: Mark Lewis took a pic of me speaking at the rally (that's Bonnie Barnes of Spectrum on the left of the photo - she had a lot of responsibility in organizing this). Mark also did an excellent 5-minute recap of the rally here.

7 comments:

Sharon said...

Zoe was so funny election night, she was more concerned with Prop 8 than the presidential returns and kept coming in and asking if the counts were in. When she awoke on Wednesday to the news that it had passed she was incredulous, like it was an immediate and personal affront to her 13 year old self.

Loring Wirbel said...

I am SUPER impressed she was paying attention. Abby is typical 18-yr-old bi-to-be-trendy, so she paid attention, but to do that at 13 is awesome.

John G said...

I agree with what you said Loring, it seems insane for people to vote on amendments involving civil rights.

Ruth said...

Great job you all did! Bravo!!

I ache for my friends Karl and Lloyd who want to adopt at least two kids, but if one is the legal parent, the other can't be, so they keep waiting for our state to come around.

My nephew in Sydney used to be ok with civil union being legal, don't know if he still is, he said he'd be happy for that in all 50 states, but even then it still wouldn't be right that he can't be married to his partner.

My sister Ginnie and her partner were going to fly to San Francisco this month for a ceremony if this had not passed. I tell you, I get weary of fights against idiots, who don't know reason even when it slaps them in the face.

Loring Wirbel said...

I empathize just a little with the gay radicals who say that marriage is just an establishment trap to begin with, but let's fess up, gays and lesbians are so mainstream and middle class, we have room enough for the Log Cabin Republicans. Anyone should be able to get married if they really want to subject themselves to that level of "mainstreaming". I feel the same queasiness as I did when Ms. magazine started telling women how to be more powerful in business by imitating men's habits of greed and rapaciousness - I suppose it's progress of a sort, but do they really want to go there?

Don said...

You did a really nice job of articulating the idea behind prop 8as a restriction on rights of Americans. I wish we could just all be Americans and have equal rights and equal care about each other. Come on

Loring Wirbel said...

Yeah, Don, we can dream....