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[rivka]

On Monday, curiousangel and I celebrated Valentine's Day by going to Annapolis for an Equality Maryland lobby day and rally in support of GLBT rights. It didn't work out quite the way we planned, but we had a good time anyway.

The schedule called for a 45-minute assembly and briefing followed by a 1-hour rally, after which we would split up into legislative districts and lobby our state senators and delegates. There's a "Defense of Marriage" bill that's introduced every year (and doesn't have much hope of passing), but there are also some bills before the legislature that could make a positive difference - such as the Medical Decision Making Act, a fairly well-thought-out bill which confers hospital visitation rights and medical decisionmaking powers on couples who register with the state as partners. Equality Maryland made appointments with legislators and provided bill summaries, voting records, and other supporting materials on their website. It was a well-planned action...

...until we arrived in Annapolis and saw, driving towards the center of town, that one of the traffic lights was out. We thought nothing of it until the next traffic light was out as well. Downtown Annapolis had no power. Including the hotel where we gathered for the briefing - although it did have an atrium, at least, so there was daylight in the main hall. (But not the bathrooms, each of which was eerily lit by a flashlight balanced on end.) There was no PA system. We spent most of the briefing hour milling around aimlessly, looking for members of our church and periodically asking if anyone else could hear the speaker. (No.)

We marched several blocks to the statehouse with about a dozen people from our church, behind a banner that said "Equal Rights in the Free State" and had the Unitarian-Universalists for Social Justice logo. It had been raining all day, but the rain slacked off to nothing as we left the hotel and held off until we were in the car again at the end of the day - a clear sign that God supports gay rights. But it was cold, and I was wearing nice clothes - a dress, in fact - in preparation for lobbying my legislators. Yes, this is foreshadowing.

The rally was great. Somehow they'd managed to get generators in on short notice, so the rally speakers were amplified. Alan Keyes' daughter, Maya Marcel-Keyes, gave a great speech about how the amount of support that poured in when her father kicked her out for being a lesbian wasn't at all the typical fate of gay teenagers rejected by their parents. She told a moving story about a friend from a similarly conservative family who wound up living on the streets, and recently died. A 14-year-old boy with lesbian parents talked about his family life and why he wanted his moms to be able to marry. Matthew Shepherd's mother spoke about the need for hate crimes legislation. We hung out in the cold and the mud, clapping and cheering, and curiousangel took turns helping to hold up the church banner using umbrellas as improvised poles. (We weren't allowed to have signs on sticks.) I was grateful that he had brought a lawn chair for me to sit in, because just the walk from the hotel to the statehouse wore me out.

As the rally drew to a close, we got bad news: the power still wasn't on in the legislative office buildings, and the fire marshal wasn't willing to let us into the building as long as only had emergency lights. Some people's legislators apparently did come out to meet briefly with their constituents in the square, but all the scheduled meetings were cancelled. We were disappointed. Our delegates had voted the Equality Maryland party line on all relevant bills, so we just would've gone by to say "thank you," but I still think that's an important thing to do.

So instead we headed back to the hotel, which now had power. We spent a few minutes at the reception - damn, you'd think that the Log Cabin Republicans could afford to provide better food - and then, once we'd warmed up enough to be able to feel our toes again, we went home. We were so worn out from the cold, and from several long walks in the wind, that curiousangel fell asleep in our Chinese restaurant while we were waiting for takeout. But I'm glad we went. And I saved a sticker from the rally - I DO in Maryland - for the Li'l Critter's baby book. Her first political action.

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[rivka.livejournal.com]

You know, I was thinking about that. One of the couples suing for the right to get married in Maryland - Charles Blackburn and Glen Dehn, on this page (http://www.equalitymaryland.org/deane_polyak_bios.htm) - goes to our church. Charles was the minister of a Unitarian church in the deep south (Alabama or Mississippi, I don't remember which) in the 1960s. He was on the front lines of the civil rights movement and quite literally risked his life to help end segregation. And now that's history. It's stuff that I read about in my textbooks as a child, hardly even able to understand why anyone ever believed in separate education or separate drinking fountains. When things changed, they changed fast. And the same may be true for gay rights as well.