Hello, avid readers.
I have been remiss, but mostly because I’ve been sick. Also, I think now is the first time I’ve had a minute to sit down and actually work on the Club. SO much to tell you! The March, the Philadelphia adventure…. Sigh.
So. The March. When last we met, I was concerned that my Saturday-before-the-March had been just the teensiest bit GLB, and not much T or Q. I am delighted to inform you that the March itself exceeded most of my expectations. It was better organized, better attended, and better integrated than even most of the optimistic supporters had thought it would be, and I was damn proud to be there.
I had, as you know, worried that it would be a bunch of 30-40 year old gay men and lesbians, mostly white, mostly of a particular income. I had worried that if the weather was lovely it would turn into an opportunity to saunter around DC with a flask of mojitos and no shirts. I had worried that it would be like my last March, which was in April 1993: a ginormous Pride Parade with bands and music and a lot of spectators hanging from lamposts.
This was not the case.
We Marched. We carried signs about every issue I could imagine — marriage and DADT were heavily represented of course, but so were trans women, and people of color, and health care, and HIV/AIDS, and sex workers… Everyone who could possibly be in the queer umbrella was there. And oh my God, the kids!!!! That was the best part. Cleve Jones made sure that queer kids came in en masse from all over the country, and then he gave them the best jobs. He asked them to March with him in the front, if they didn’t have another group to join, and he fed them from his hotel’s hospitality suite, and he hugged every one of them. He had them escorting Lady Gaga around the city, having rescued her from HRC’s foul clutches. And they were awesome.
About Lady Gaga — she showed up wearing more or less normal clothes (no Muppet heads, for example), and she didn’t sing. She didn’t perform. She said, Being here is the best day of my life, I feel like I’m doing something important, and I want you to know that part of what I can do, other than loving you all, is working to end the rampant insane homophobia in the music industry.
There were a lot of speakers. Most of them were not your basic middle/high income white gay/lesbian person. Most of them were people of color, or trans people, or kids, or other folk not part of the HRCsexual wishlist.
I will write more later as I process, but… It was glorious. Yes, I wished that there were MORE trans folk, and I always wish that people would stop saying “gay” as if that were the right word, but whatever. I wish that there had been MORE noise about health care.
But it was good. It was real. It was not a party. And it was definitely not a Joe Solomonese/Barney Frank glory hole mixer.
And then there was Philadelphia… Oh my. I think the Philadelphia Story requires its own post, actually.
pax
