by Charlsie Dewey
Feb. 14, besides being Valentine's Day, marked the seventh annual Marriage Equality Day protest by the Gay Liberation Networ ( GLN ) . Members of the LGBT community as well as allies gathered outside the Cook County Marriage License Bureau, 118 N. Clark, on a frigid afternoon, carrying signs with statements such as 'Legal Inequality is Intrinsically Disordered,' 'We Want to Have Wedding Receptions Too,' and '1300 + Rights Come with Marriage' to remind passersby of the rights that LGBT people do not have.
Jeff Graubert, who has been protesting for equal marriage rights since the mid to late 1970s, said, 'Today I'm going to talk about the future. We have made great progress over the years, but the religious right wing is digging in for what could be their last serious effort at stopping us. Massachusetts will probably have an anti-gay referendum on the 2008 ballot, and in Illinois, defeated in their 2006 petition efforts, the anti-marriage equality forces are already gearing up for 2008. Now with our tragic defeat in Wisconsin, Illinois is virtually surrounded by anti-marriage equality states. Certainly there are signs that the tide is turning, a victory in Arizona, an almost dead heat in conservative South Dakota, yet in 2008 they take the campaign right into our heartland, Massachusetts and Illinois. It is not sufficient to hope and pray that their incursion is an exercise in futility. We cannot take any victories for granted. It is essential to mobilize all our resources for the battle that lies ahead.'
GLN member Andy Thayer addressed the crowd and passersby, saying that 'Michigan's amendment is in the process of taking away health benefits of partners of same sex employees working at state controlled institutions. In Massachusetts, where we have won equality in this regard, they're in the process of putting together a possible constitutional amendment for 2008. ... If this isn't a wake-up call for not only the lesbian and gay community, but all people who believe in equality, I don't know what is. ... I think it's unconscionable that any member of our community would support any candidate who is opposed to our legal equality.'
Thayer said that now is the time to start opposing an anti-gay referendum for 2008, and that people need to start getting in candidates' faces about their anti-gay equality positions until these politicians are forced to re-evaluate and change their positions, pointing to the progress made with AIDS in Africa when people began getting in Al Gore's face about the issue in the past.
One difference in this year's protest was that marchers did not descend downstairs to the Cook County Marriage License Bureau because they were told that they could only march down in pairs in order to keep the protest ordered. Many members of the protest were upset at this order, saying that heterosexual couples do not have to follow this rule and can bring as many people with them as they wish when they apply for a marriage license.
The protest ended back outside of the license bureau after a planned march to Holy Name Cathedral was called off due to the freezing temperatures.
