LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
CAMP Out: Fay's Rehoboth Journal - Respect is Not an Agenda |
by Fay Jacobs |
We're queer, we're here and our feet hurt. Bonnie and I got back late last night from the Millennium March on Washington. And now it's two hours from deadline and I'm trying to figure out how to tell you about all the remarkable things we experienced. So please indulge me. I think it's best if I just blurt. With Bonnie having attended the 1979 march, and both of us marching in 1987 and 1993, there was so much that was familiar and oh so much that was different. Heading to Washington, busses jammed the road, including several lumbering coaches with rainbow flags slapped on their butts. At Dupont Circle, a giant rainbow flag billowed over the Doyle Hotel, right between it's Irish and US flags. Inside, at the Vice Versa Awards for gay journalism, CAMP Rehoboth's own Kristen Foery, her proud parents in attendance, accepted the award for Best Youth Journalist. Our Kristen, tapped as the very best from a nation full of young writers. Talk about pride. Her acceptance speech, a plea for the gay press to cover teen issues; to be their voices and votes, brought a whole room of hardened gay journalists to tears. Not to mention sobs of emotion from our CAMP table. In whatever she decides to do with her life, it is clear that Kristin will make a difference. After the awards, the streets around Dupont Circle teemed with gay people, stampeding Lambda Rising and the Human Rights Campaign store. Restaurants overflowed with queers from every state in the nation; on the street, conversations erupted, people met, hugged, laughed and hollered. Blocks and blocks of pedestrians reveled in a spontaneous combustion of good will toward men, women, bisexual and transgendered people. On Saturday, the city closed off Pennsylvania Avenue from 3rd to 9th streets for a giant street fair with food and merchandise vendors as far as the eye could see. I've been in DC over 30 years and never, ever seen anything like it. Police cars flew rainbow flags from their windows; vendors hawked t-shirts, bumper stickers, jewelry, kabobs, hot dogs, ice cream, internet access, magazines, the gamut of capitalism. Favorite bumper sticker: Focus on your own damn family. Best t-shirt: Black, with the Blair Witch logo and the words Queer Bitch Project. Favorite placard: Respect is not an agenda. Sunday morning dawned, another gorgeous sunny day (God must love gay people somebody said, look at this weather!) and we hopped the Metro along with throngs and throngs of gays and family and friends. If you've never been on an early morning Metro ride, both station and subway car filled to the gills with coffee-crazed gay, lesbian, bi, trans marchers and their gay-friendly colleagues, you've truly missed the commute of your life. Once these queer-filled trains converged at the Smithsonian station, the riders joined thousands of other folks assembling for the Marchwhat a knock-out! I wish I could tell you about every second; the energy; the creativity; the sense of humor! Cheers for Vermont's contingent and their newly passed civil union legislation; college groups, high school groups, church after church after synagogue, after ministers and rabbis and parents and children and PFLAG groups and more parents. Then came a bunch of happy dads and cheering kids with the sign Men With Strollers. Next up, the gay pilots, the gay flight attendants (hell, they could have supported an entire march by themselves); gay doctors organizations; Amnesty international; gay legislators; transgender activists, senior citizens, military veterans, gay teachers groups, and more, more, more. Stepping out to the sidelines, we cheered and applauded the PFLAG parents until our hands stung; so we waved, then gave thumbs up, then screamed and cheered some more. The parents marched along, shouting out "we love you" to the crowd as arms stretched out from the side lines to the marchers, just to shake their hands. With equal measure of humor and seriousness, the crowd marched for equality and respect. From the laughter at campy drag queens and gutsy bare breasted womyn, to the choke of emotion for the parents with the sign, "We loved our gay son just the way he was" and his photo with dates of his short life. Without warning our cheering highs would plummet to sudden lows realizing the throngs of those who marched in '79, 87 or 93, no longer with us, felled by the plague; then back up and cheering twice as hard, in their names, and for Kristen and her teen colleagues, giving all those who no longer have a voice or those who do not yet have a voice the benefit of our shouts and energy. Groups marched chanting "Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Homophobia's got to go" or "Gore, Gore, He's our man, if he can't do it, Tipper can" and sang "Going to the Chapel and We're Gonna Get Married" And the signs! Tinky Winky Made Me Do It; We're Proud of our Straight Parents; Four out of Five Cats Prefer Lesbians; In '93 my students thought I was at a weddingthis year they know their lesbian teacher is marching!; Protect our Families and on and on. People pranced, some danced, others rolled their chairs or slowed for their partners walking with canes; children skipped, carriages rolled and some of us dropped out and in, making our way down the Mall, grumbling and laughing that we were too damn old and crazy to be marching after all these years. Old or young, you could almost tell who was marching for the first time and who was proud to be back pounding the path along the Mall once again. With the Washington Monument looming behind and the Capitol steps welcoming ahead it was never more clear that bigotry and a denial of our human rights was just plain un-American. And when the marching was done, came the rally and the speeches. From fiery rhetoric (DC's Eleanor Holmes Nortonyou GO girl!!) to touching pleas for human justice (Matt Shepherd's parents) most called for voter turnout and political action. Tammy Baldwin, the openly gay Congresswoman from Wisconsin had a compelling plan. "You want a world where you can put a picture of your partner on your desk? Put it there and you will have such a world; want a world where you can take your spouse to the company picnic? Take her and you will have such a world. Create this world by coming out!" Idealistic? In many cases, yes. But lots of us here in Rehoboth live just that way and she's right. We've created that world. The difference from prior marches? While there's still plenty of wonderful diversity within diversity, there was far less spectacle. Where once the Park Police wore riot gear and rubber gloves, this time they strolled their steeds through the crowds, chatting and visiting. And the most notable difference? Everybody and his gay brother had a cell phone. The Mall was one big ad for wireless communication. You'd hear a ring and thousands of marchers would clutch for their pockets. We want equality and free air time! Well, one thing hasn't changed. The reporters and camera people trampled over 98 percent of the crowd to get photos and sound bites from only the most scandalously dressed drag queens and leather girls. At least the press is consistent. So how many of us were at the March? The Washington Post guessed 300,00. The organizers figured 750,000, so it's a safe bet there were at least a half a million marchers and 100,000 cell phones. Oh, and from what I could see, there were only about three or four sad-sack groups of folks shaking bibles and hollering for us to repent. And frankly, lots of the marchers kept asking them to pose for pictures, thereby confusing the heck out of them. All this to music by Melissa Etheridge, the Metropolitan Community Church Choir and brass bands. As the day ended and the crowd fanned out through town, we really were everywhere. As Bonnie and I made our way back to the Metro escalator, I turned around for a last look at the Mall. And the last placard I saw said it best. "We all Matter." We've come a long way, baby; we've still got a long way to go; and which way is it to the Podiatrist? Fay Jacobs' CAMPOut, the 1998 winner of the Vice Versa Award for "Best First Person Column," is a regular feature of Letters from CAMP Rehoboth. Fay Jacobs is a member of the board of directors of CAMP Rehoboth. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 10, No. 4, May 5, 2000. |