This is what being right feels like
May. 1st, 2004 08:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperBack from a very long day, the latter part of which involved ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
solarbird and I going to look at a couple of houses, but most of which involved attending the protest to the anti-gay-marriage rally at Safeco Field downtown. kathrynt and spazzkat accompanied us, and while we're very weary, Dara and I, we're also pretty darned satisfied with what we did today. Kathryn turned to me at one point and said, "This is what being right feels like!"
(I've edited this post a few times to add stuff in that I forgot when I originally wrote it. So if you read it already, feel free to read it again to see if you missed something!)
Mostly, we stood around and tried to look as cute and unthreatening as possible. None of us had made signs, but people were passing signs around anyway, so we wound up holding some. I got one that said "Love is a higher law". I supported that, so that's the one I hung onto for most of our presence there. And fairly early on we all wound up along the front lines of the protest contingent, leaning against the barricades that the cops constructed. So we started smiling and waving politely to the folks actually going into the rally, and holding up our fingers in peace signs and the like. Others were more confrontational, and that's fine to some degree, but we were aiming for the gentler approach.
People were handing out flyers all over the place, and stickers saying "I'm loved by PFLAG". We took some of each, and I wound up with one of the stickers on my hat.
Some of the more enthusiastic protestors actually got into the stadium and up on the upper levels, yelling down at the rest of us and trying to get us all to come in. I thought about it, but the whole idea really made me kind of nervous; as I think about why, I think it has to do with the fact that there were simply SO MANY MORE of the folks on that side in there than there were folks on our side. We heard waves of cheering coming out of the stadium as people spoke. And I just don't think I was brave enough to walk into the lions' den, as it were. Some folks tried tactics that we thought were kind of over-the-top--things like trying to shout out to the children of rally attendees. (Dara and Paul caught a couple people doing that and told them that was tacky.) Things like rainbow-colored phalluses. So we tried to balance that out with the gentler approach; we think it worked, at least a little.
There was a band on hand, a bunch of folks wearing very casual sorts of uniforms--mostly a bunch of safety-orange and safety-yellow vests and armbands and things. But they seemed to have an emblem of a flame on most of their attire. I don't know who they were, but they did play heavily percussive music off and on through the proceedings. That was kind of cool; it got some of our side dancing around. Paul cracked a joke about how we should tell people that if they danced, they were queer.
One pair of dykes with a daughter who looked to be about nine years old were extremely cool. They got into the stadium and up on the second level up, overlooking the crowd, and yelled and cheered down to us. They also got people to take their picture with the two mothers crouching down with the kid up on their shoulders, holding up a sign that said "Love makes a family". Later, the kid did a lot of dancing to the music of the aforementioned band. When I have a kid, I want a kid that cool.
We did miss the presence ofmamishka, though, especially given the number of people with kids going in for the rally. Kathryn thought we should have Mimi giving out balloon animals to the kids and saying, "Here, have a gay wiener dog!" Hehehehe.
At least a couple of times people looked actively confused as they glanced at us smiling and waving at them, and actually calling out "God bless" and "Jesus loves you too!" More often than not they were trying very hard to avoid making eye contact. One couple actively sprinted across the street on the way out of the stadium after we called out chirpy good-byes at them; I could almost hear them muttering, "Aaah! Queers! Run!"
A couple of people came over and tried to argue their point. One guy went past us up and down the line and said we ought to be ashamed of ourselves; a woman got this pious look on her face and told us it wasn't about hate, it was about "what God says". I wanted to call out that different people have really different opinons about what God says--like, for example, the black gentleman who came over and took Dara's hand and said "not all of us preachers are crazy" and introduced himself as Reverend Dr. Boyd--but I don't think she would have believed us or heard me anyway over the shouts of the younger folks next to us.
There were a lot of people with children of varying ages. Some of those children kept looking over at us with confused looks on their faces; I saw those kids and found myself hoping that maybe later they'll remember what they saw today, and think about it. Kathryn spotted a father feeding his baby boy a corn dog, and she fought down the urge to yell out "Y'know, that'll make him queer!"
One couple showed up REALLY late. Late enough that the cops had already shoved us all back to either side or across the street, to keep the way clear for all the people to come out of the stadium--but this one couple tried to come through our crowd and get past the barricade. The cops wouldn't let them go through, so they had to work their way back out and go around. Q turned to me after they'd walked off and chirped, "Oh no, you're standing among the queers and the infidels!"
One guy came over to the barricade as folks were leaving, and irately asked something to the effect of whether he had the right to his own viewpoint. We told him yeah, which he claimed was all he wanted--I doubt whether Dara's calling out that we aren't trying to pass laws against their viewpoint did anything for him, though.
Another man called out to us, "One man, one woman!" We called back, "Sometimes!" Because, well, none of us have a PROBLEM with a guy marrying a woman if he wants to, or vice versa. But they don't seem to get that, either.
A woman thanked us for showing up because we "made it fun". That was kind of amusing.
Dara did manage to confuse the hell out of one woman wandering around with Bush/Cheney stickers on her shirt, though. Dara called out "I was a delegate for Forbes in '96!" And the woman gaped and blurted, "You're kidding! What happened to you?" Dara went on to explain that the Republican party took a hard turn towards bigotry and that as a lesbian she couldn't support that. That lady fled as soon as she could; I noticed that she got noticeably farther away from the barricade than she'd been before Dara planted that little bomb in her worldview.
The one arrest from the whole thing was on their side, too, though I didn't know this when I saw one guy get hauled off by the cops, a portly-looking guy who was holding on to what looked like a handful of flyers or something. I couldn't make out what was on them. Nor did I know then what he did, but he looked pretty smug as the two cops to either side of him hauled him away. Dara says he's the guy that the news stories have been saying was trying to incite our crowd by mooning us and the like.
It took quite some time for the crowd inside to disperse, and at one point, Q turned to me and said that they must be getting their marching orders (which she'd gotten in turn from Dara). So I chirped, "Okay! Section 142, you guys go hate Spokane! 143--you hate Yakima!" And Q added, "You guys in 145, you have the hard part: you have to go hate Capitol Hill. Here are your helmets!"
Boy howdy, there were a lot of cops there. I can't remember ever being that near to over a dozen cops in the same place in my life. Around noon or so, after we'd been watching people come into the stadium for well over an hour and a half, we asked one of them when the rally had actually started--he said he didn't really know, but he'd been there since eight this morning. He looked kind of worn out, so I could buy that.
Mostly, the cops looked bored. We thought this was a good thing, and upheld the strategy of not making the cops' day interesting.
This did not, however, stop us from singing amongst ourselves on our own way out of the protest, to the tune of the "Rocks Rocks Rocks" song (which will make sense to absolutely nobody who hasn't seen the fan-produced MST'ing of Star Trek V: "There's cops above and cops below and cops down in the valley! Cops to left and cops to right and cops all at the rally! Cops cops cops cops, cops cops cops cops..."
We saw where they'd parked all the cop cars, too, on our way back to the International District bus station. A whole flock of cop cars. It looked like a shot out of The Blues Brothers.
solarbird and I going to look at a couple of houses, but most of which involved attending the protest to the anti-gay-marriage rally at Safeco Field downtown. kathrynt and spazzkat accompanied us, and while we're very weary, Dara and I, we're also pretty darned satisfied with what we did today. Kathryn turned to me at one point and said, "This is what being right feels like!"(I've edited this post a few times to add stuff in that I forgot when I originally wrote it. So if you read it already, feel free to read it again to see if you missed something!)
Mostly, we stood around and tried to look as cute and unthreatening as possible. None of us had made signs, but people were passing signs around anyway, so we wound up holding some. I got one that said "Love is a higher law". I supported that, so that's the one I hung onto for most of our presence there. And fairly early on we all wound up along the front lines of the protest contingent, leaning against the barricades that the cops constructed. So we started smiling and waving politely to the folks actually going into the rally, and holding up our fingers in peace signs and the like. Others were more confrontational, and that's fine to some degree, but we were aiming for the gentler approach.
People were handing out flyers all over the place, and stickers saying "I'm loved by PFLAG". We took some of each, and I wound up with one of the stickers on my hat.
Some of the more enthusiastic protestors actually got into the stadium and up on the upper levels, yelling down at the rest of us and trying to get us all to come in. I thought about it, but the whole idea really made me kind of nervous; as I think about why, I think it has to do with the fact that there were simply SO MANY MORE of the folks on that side in there than there were folks on our side. We heard waves of cheering coming out of the stadium as people spoke. And I just don't think I was brave enough to walk into the lions' den, as it were. Some folks tried tactics that we thought were kind of over-the-top--things like trying to shout out to the children of rally attendees. (Dara and Paul caught a couple people doing that and told them that was tacky.) Things like rainbow-colored phalluses. So we tried to balance that out with the gentler approach; we think it worked, at least a little.
There was a band on hand, a bunch of folks wearing very casual sorts of uniforms--mostly a bunch of safety-orange and safety-yellow vests and armbands and things. But they seemed to have an emblem of a flame on most of their attire. I don't know who they were, but they did play heavily percussive music off and on through the proceedings. That was kind of cool; it got some of our side dancing around. Paul cracked a joke about how we should tell people that if they danced, they were queer.
One pair of dykes with a daughter who looked to be about nine years old were extremely cool. They got into the stadium and up on the second level up, overlooking the crowd, and yelled and cheered down to us. They also got people to take their picture with the two mothers crouching down with the kid up on their shoulders, holding up a sign that said "Love makes a family". Later, the kid did a lot of dancing to the music of the aforementioned band. When I have a kid, I want a kid that cool.
We did miss the presence of
mamishka, though, especially given the number of people with kids going in for the rally. Kathryn thought we should have Mimi giving out balloon animals to the kids and saying, "Here, have a gay wiener dog!" Hehehehe.At least a couple of times people looked actively confused as they glanced at us smiling and waving at them, and actually calling out "God bless" and "Jesus loves you too!" More often than not they were trying very hard to avoid making eye contact. One couple actively sprinted across the street on the way out of the stadium after we called out chirpy good-byes at them; I could almost hear them muttering, "Aaah! Queers! Run!"
A couple of people came over and tried to argue their point. One guy went past us up and down the line and said we ought to be ashamed of ourselves; a woman got this pious look on her face and told us it wasn't about hate, it was about "what God says". I wanted to call out that different people have really different opinons about what God says--like, for example, the black gentleman who came over and took Dara's hand and said "not all of us preachers are crazy" and introduced himself as Reverend Dr. Boyd--but I don't think she would have believed us or heard me anyway over the shouts of the younger folks next to us.
There were a lot of people with children of varying ages. Some of those children kept looking over at us with confused looks on their faces; I saw those kids and found myself hoping that maybe later they'll remember what they saw today, and think about it. Kathryn spotted a father feeding his baby boy a corn dog, and she fought down the urge to yell out "Y'know, that'll make him queer!"
One couple showed up REALLY late. Late enough that the cops had already shoved us all back to either side or across the street, to keep the way clear for all the people to come out of the stadium--but this one couple tried to come through our crowd and get past the barricade. The cops wouldn't let them go through, so they had to work their way back out and go around. Q turned to me after they'd walked off and chirped, "Oh no, you're standing among the queers and the infidels!"
One guy came over to the barricade as folks were leaving, and irately asked something to the effect of whether he had the right to his own viewpoint. We told him yeah, which he claimed was all he wanted--I doubt whether Dara's calling out that we aren't trying to pass laws against their viewpoint did anything for him, though.
Another man called out to us, "One man, one woman!" We called back, "Sometimes!" Because, well, none of us have a PROBLEM with a guy marrying a woman if he wants to, or vice versa. But they don't seem to get that, either.
A woman thanked us for showing up because we "made it fun". That was kind of amusing.
Dara did manage to confuse the hell out of one woman wandering around with Bush/Cheney stickers on her shirt, though. Dara called out "I was a delegate for Forbes in '96!" And the woman gaped and blurted, "You're kidding! What happened to you?" Dara went on to explain that the Republican party took a hard turn towards bigotry and that as a lesbian she couldn't support that. That lady fled as soon as she could; I noticed that she got noticeably farther away from the barricade than she'd been before Dara planted that little bomb in her worldview.
The one arrest from the whole thing was on their side, too, though I didn't know this when I saw one guy get hauled off by the cops, a portly-looking guy who was holding on to what looked like a handful of flyers or something. I couldn't make out what was on them. Nor did I know then what he did, but he looked pretty smug as the two cops to either side of him hauled him away. Dara says he's the guy that the news stories have been saying was trying to incite our crowd by mooning us and the like.
It took quite some time for the crowd inside to disperse, and at one point, Q turned to me and said that they must be getting their marching orders (which she'd gotten in turn from Dara). So I chirped, "Okay! Section 142, you guys go hate Spokane! 143--you hate Yakima!" And Q added, "You guys in 145, you have the hard part: you have to go hate Capitol Hill. Here are your helmets!"
Boy howdy, there were a lot of cops there. I can't remember ever being that near to over a dozen cops in the same place in my life. Around noon or so, after we'd been watching people come into the stadium for well over an hour and a half, we asked one of them when the rally had actually started--he said he didn't really know, but he'd been there since eight this morning. He looked kind of worn out, so I could buy that.
Mostly, the cops looked bored. We thought this was a good thing, and upheld the strategy of not making the cops' day interesting.
This did not, however, stop us from singing amongst ourselves on our own way out of the protest, to the tune of the "Rocks Rocks Rocks" song (which will make sense to absolutely nobody who hasn't seen the fan-produced MST'ing of Star Trek V: "There's cops above and cops below and cops down in the valley! Cops to left and cops to right and cops all at the rally! Cops cops cops cops, cops cops cops cops..."
We saw where they'd parked all the cop cars, too, on our way back to the International District bus station. A whole flock of cop cars. It looked like a shot out of The Blues Brothers.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-05-01 08:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-02 11:02 am (UTC)And awwwwww, thank you! ^_^ Likewise, hon!
Following Bread Crumbs
Date: 2004-05-02 11:59 am (UTC)I loved your method of protesting: kindness and civility. That always gets the other side totally confused, which usually ends up making one or two actually think about what they're doing.
Your beautiful way with words brightened my otherwise gloomy morning (am cleaning house ... ugh!).
Thank you.
-Heather
Re: Following Bread Crumbs
Date: 2004-05-02 12:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-03 07:34 am (UTC)Cathy
no subject
Date: 2004-05-03 07:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-03 04:28 pm (UTC)I was the girl that took the pic of the daughter and her two mothers with the "Love Makes a Marriage" sign! Did you know they almost got arrested?
Who are you? Have a picture? I may have taken some of you of the protest...
no subject
Date: 2004-05-03 04:54 pm (UTC)Me, I was the blonde chick with a ponytail, a green tank top, a green hat, and a yellow backpack. I was with my partner
As folks were leaving, we wound up right behind the barricades over to the left side of the same entrance (left in relation to if you were looking towards the entrance).
no subject
Date: 2004-05-05 08:33 am (UTC)Yeah, it was interesting - and I have pictures - but being detained (and almost arrested) looks like no fun. I was only threatened, but believe me: it was an eye-openner!!!
Did you guys deal with any odd happenings down there? I lost a lot of faith in some key people...
no subject
Date: 2004-05-06 10:04 pm (UTC)And yeah, I'd pass on the whole detainment and arrest thing! Sorry to hear you got threatened. :(
Nothing of that nature happened directly to me and mine... the closest we got was just that one Bush/Cheney droid who was so stunned to hear someone professing herself a lesbian (i.e., my partner) talking about having been a delegate for Forbes. And there was the woman who was all sanctimonious about how "it's not about hate! It's about what God says!" *smirk* Uh-huh. Right, lady.
I can't honestly say I've had too terribly much faith to lose in the city in the last couple of years--mostly due to the really crappy way they've been handling the University District. But that's another issue entirely!
no subject
Date: 2004-05-07 09:02 am (UTC)With nine different signs, including "Are you a racist too?," "Love Makes a Marriage," and "I am a Christian in Support of Gay Marriage"?
Or no?
Yeah, I'm getting really sick of the way this city has been handling a LOT of things...but that just means I'll have to get more involved, ya know?
no subject
Date: 2004-05-30 05:19 pm (UTC)At this point I fear I don't remember the pair you're describing; were you one of them?
And I hear ya, about the need to get more involved. I hope it'll do some good. I'd heard that Safeco Field's management claimed that they would be open to the grounds being booked by queer-friendly organizations, but I wonder if they would put their stadium where their mouth is. Guess we'll have to see.