Here’s some of the shots I took at the NOM rally in front of the Capital yesterday…
They held the rally in front of the Capital south wing, which is right across from the Supreme Court building, but you really couldn’t see the court all that clearly for all the trees. The rally was mostly tucked away in one corner of the grassy park there in front of the south wing. This is what the crowd looked like, just a few moments literally, before Bishop Coles brought his cavalry in. It was almost exclusively white, and very nearly half media and NOM organizers.
Brian Brown getting a tad heated in front of a media lady just before the rally started. I don’t know what she may have asked him but he’d been really nice and polite to the media there, even the gay media, before this.
A couple NOM supporters brought their kids along. Most of the early arrivals were older folks. You didn’t start seeing many young people there until Bishop Coles’ cavalry came along.
That LET THE PEOPLE VOTE chant was an early hit with the crowd. Here they are while Brian Brown gives it a few turns.
Sometime into Bishop Coles’ speech a larger group of counter protesters arrived. (There had already been a few individual counter protesters there, including Mel White and Soulforce companions, as NOM was setting up.) The first wave of them just made themselves quietly known with signs around the perimeter of the event. NOM tried to have them removed, but the Capital Police told them basically that as long as they were quiet and didn’t interfere with the event they had a right to be where they were.
Some gay folk wandered around the NOM crowd during the event. I don’t know if this couple were with the larger group of counter protesters or not. The man’s t-shirt reads: Together 14 years, Married 1 year, 2nd class citizens every day.
Walter Fauntroy, with some other clergyman whose name I thankfully don’t know, waiting to speak. The white clergyman was there when NOM was setting up so I assume he was one of their local organizers. And unlike Bishops Jackson and Coles, he actually paid attention to all the other clergymen as they spoke. He didn’t talk much with the crowd though. Coles worked the crowd a little bit. Jackson was working the media.
Bishop Coles right after his speech, walked off the sump and whipped up the crowd with that LET THE PEOPLE VOTE chant. Black people were denied voting rights in this country for generations after then end of slavery. But those same rights were not won back by the ballot, but in the courts. The lesson that the courts have an important role to play in protecting the rights of all Americans, and that the basic human rights of minorities are not a popularity contest, seems to have escaped a lot of folks there. Prejudice does that to a person. Oh…YOUR rights don’t count…
More later…
And…yes, yes…before any NOMers get their bowels in an uproar…the second wave of counter-protesters were a Lot noisier then the first. Those eventually got moved away by the Capital Police, but their only disruptiveness was the megaphone one lady brought along. I’ve been going to these Washington D.C. protests with my cameras since Nixon and the Vietnam war so don’t tell me those counter protesters were in any way violent or I’ll laugh in your face. They actually Obeyed the police when they were told to move. I’ll post some shots of that later…
I would love to see you juxtapose a picture of last year’s crowd from the March for Equality so people can see for themselves just how dead the hate movement is.
Thanks for being there Bruce!
Well for one thing, the crowd attending the March for Equality took something like two hours to finish marching from the staging area around 15th and “I” to the Mall.
And…let me clarify what I said a moment ago about rights not being won at the ballot but in the courts. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a major legislative victory and turning point in the black civil rights struggle. But it wasn’t a case of winning the right to vote by the ballot box either, which would have been nonsensical since black folk were being systematically denied that right in the first place. In point of fact, states where race segregation was legal were not likely at all to change that by popular vote. It happened in the congress of the United States of America (the whole in other words), and only after a southern filibuster was broken.
In the meantime, a string of courtroom victories took place, integrating the schools and other public services (like…oh…buses). Black leaders like Fauntroy were not bashful about asking the courts to protect their rights in those days. And…case in obvious point…in 1967 the supreme court decided in Loving v. Virginia that the states could not deny mixed race couples the right to marry. I don’t have the data in front of me right now, but I am made to understand that it took nearly another three decades for popular opinion to agree that those couples should have that right.
The comparison here is obvious, which is why NOM seeks to obfuscate it by turning it into a voting rights issue, and inciting black voters with: The Homosexuals Are Hijacking Your Civil Rights Movement!!!
You don’t put minority rights up for a vote. Fauntroy and Every Black Minister there knows and agrees with this. Our only point of difference is “Is Marriage One Of Those Rights?” Every one of these men, who won’t take on that question honestly, but instead resorts to the lowest kind of dishonest mob inciting rhetoric in order to win, isn’t just betraying their own movement’s ideals, but also their own personal honor as fighters for a noble cause. And as I said, prejudice does that to a person. It will rot your soul and leave nothing left, nothing that was ever fine and decent and noble, but hate and the need to keep on hating.
I have had enough of the religious community holding back our progress as a nation. This country was founded on the principle of separation of church and state. If our Congressional representatives cannot live up to the Constitution, then they should be impeached. Each and every one of those Congress Critters who cannot stand up for equality, need to have their Senate/Representative title taken from them, not at the polls, from by the courts.
The separation principle meant that there was to be no “Church of the United States” like there is a “Church of England” and there is none but the country was not founded on the assumption that religion in general would have no influence on society at large. That much was assumed and thought to be a good and moderating influence.
“This country was founded on the principle of separation of church and state”