Why marching matters

THE NATIONAL Equality March for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights is sending a message to Washington--and setting an important example for everyone who wants to see progressive social change.

At a time when liberals, labor leaders and the left are increasingly angry, but mostly inactive, about the Obama administration's concessions to Republicans and the right, a new generation of LGBT activists are taking the initiative.

The demands of the march--federal legislation outlawing all discrimination against LGBT people--ought to be easily achievable. If, that is, the Democrats who control the White House and Congress would only make good on longstanding promises.

But they haven't. President Barack Obama has yet to act on his campaign pledge to push for repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which bars the federal government from recognizing marriages of same-sex couples.

Nor has Obama moved to end the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward gays in the military, even though the policy has caused thousands of LGBT people to be witch-hunted out of the armed forces.
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THE OBAMA administration's refusal to push the repeal of DOMA helped spur veteran gay activist Cleve Jones, a collaborator with assassinated gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk, to back a grassroots call for a national march on Washington to demand full rights for LGBT people, including marriage.

As Jones put it in a speech in Chicago in September, "We don't have a laundry list for this march. We're marching for one demand, and one demand only. It's called the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. We are a people protected in all places governed by civil law in all 50 states, period. That's what we're fighting for.

"I believe we're equal. If you believe we're equal, it's time to act like it. A free and equal people do not settle for compromises. We do not accept timelines where we can't get that this year, but maybe if we fight for five years, we can get marriage in 20 years, and on and on. No--now is the time."
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