Chants

The best chant that I heard someone yell out at the rally the other night:

Two, four, six, eight
Are you sure your husband's straight?

Gay Marriage Rally

As you've all heard by now, the California Supreme Court ruling on Prop 8 came out today. The proposition was upheld, but so were the 18,000 marriages performed in the window while it was legal.

There were protest rallys all over the state tonight. D and I went to the rally for Orange County at the Old Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana. It was pretty great. I guesstimate that there were around 500-600 people there in support of gay marriage, and about 3 oddballs holding signs against it and telling us we were all going to hell.

We listened to a few speakers and then marched from the courthouse to a gathering spot at the other end of the county buildings referred to as the Circle of Flags (or Circle of Fags as I affectionately refer to it). We listened to a few more people talk about it there, raised our voices to join in some chants, and then we all marched back to the courthouse.

It was a good time. It made me proud to be part of something democratic that's changing history.

For the most part, the people who spoke were great to listen to. Unfortunately, the main organizer woman that did most of the talking was not that great. In fact, she was horrible at it - but you could tell that she thought she was great. It's sad. I give her a ton of credit and love for the work she is doing, but she just wasn't all that great behind the microphone. I hope they take my anonymous email well and find someone else to do the speaking. I mean, hey, even Moses had someone to speak for him since he wasn't very good at it. On the other hand, the minister from the Unitarian church that spoke was fantastic. Extremely motivational. I loved listening to him.

They introduced several churches located in Orange County that are very much gay rights and gay marriage advocates. I wonder if these groups will play a larger role in the next ballot initiative that tries to legalize gay marriage. The movement definitely needs better and more cohesive leadership in order to succeed.

All in all, it was a fun evening (followed up going to Lucille's BBQ for dinner).

BTW: D and I happen to be in the picture at the top of this. Time to play "Where's Waldo". Credit for the photo goes to the Orange County Register.

Interesting

So, two posts ago when I talked about my relationship with D, I had about 70 hits per day for 4 days. With my last post about going to the Long Beach Pride Parade, I had 16 hits.

I also noticed that my blog is no longer linked from Northern Lights. No room for sinners at the table, eh? *shrug*

A tip of the hat to those of you who are interested enough to have me in your reader, and/or are genuine enough to respect my decision to pursue my relationship with D.

My First Parade

This past weekend was the Long Beach Pride Festival. It was the first time since I came out that I felt like attending. So, on Sunday D-train and I went to the parade to see what it was all about.

One of the reasons I haven't attended before was that I was scared of it. I was frightened of all the booze, drugs and public sex that was sure to be happening. And me with my puritanical roots couldn't handle such human depravity. But, my curiosity got the better of me this year and I talked D into going to it (although at the mention of the possibility of seeing cute boys, it didn't take much persuasive talk).

The parade was fun. It was harmless. There was no nudity (although quite a few cute, shirtless boys). No drugs. And very few people were drinking (it was at 10:30 in the morning, so it was mostly people cradling their Starbucks). I was surprised at the number of straight families with kids that were there to watch. I was equally surprised at the high number of normal looking people that were there. There were plenty of queeny ones to go around, but I'd say that the majority looked pretty much just like D and myself (although, for the most part not as dashingly handsome as either of us).

We both agreed that the tranny's were our favorite (Miss Lola was gorgeous! And Ongina from RuPaul's Drag Race was there too!). Honestly, years ago I was kind of creeped out by them, but at this point in my life I can look at them with respect at how comfortable with themselves they are. They are some of the few people in the world who are truly comfortable in their own skin.

But perhaps the most surprising thing to both of us was the sheer number of gay latino and black people there were. I'd venture to guess that at the Long Beach parade (at least where we were standing on the route) our latino brothers were the majority.

In a few weeks I get to march in the LA Pride parade. My employer is one of the corporate sponsors, and I'm in the GLBTA club, so I get to participate as a corporate representative. I'm pretty excited about that.