Heads up queers: "Freedom to Marry Week"

[foreigncorrespondent]

While searching for the latest LGBT news today, I came across this little doozie of a press release:

World's Largest Gay Church Group And DontAmend.com Announce National "Freedom to Marry Week" Actions

Gays Called To Flood Marriage Bureaus With Same-Sex Marriage License Applications And Participate In National Pro-Marriage Rallies

Los Angeles -- Lesbian and gay rights activists today announced sweeping plans for a set of civil rights rallies and other events during "Freedom to Marry Week," February 9-15, 2004.

National organizations The Equality Campaign, DontAmend.com and Metropolitan Community Churches, the world's largest predominantly gay and lesbian church group, are joining hands with a network of civil rights groups including Marriage Equality and the National Freedom to Marry Coalition. Their goals are to increase support for marriage equality for same-sex couples and to stop a proposed anti-gay amendment to the US Constitution. If passed, the constitutional amendment would not only prohibit marriages by same sex couples, but according to some legal scholars, could also wipe out a host of local, pro-gay civil rights protections around the country.

"We're not taking this threat lying down. Activists in cities across the nation are stepping forward to organize civil rights rallies," said activist Robin Tyler, a co-founder of DontAmend.com and Executive Director of The Equality Campaign. Tyler was an organizer and producer for three of the four national Lesbian and Gay marches on Washington and co-founder of StopDrLaura.com, a grassroots organization that successfully stopped the anti-gay radio host Dr. Laura Schlessinger's national television program. "These rallies across the United States are designed to secure civil rights the way they always have been won, by mobilizing the affected community and their allies in the streets of the nation and sending a strong message that our community deserves and demands full equal legal rights, including the right to marry, said Tyler. "Accepting any status less than marriage, for example, civil unions or domestic partnership, does not afford us the same benefits as marriage. These so called 'compromises' are supposed to be 'separate, but equal' but in fact, are a form of marriage segregation which treats us as second class citizens. Marriage is a human right, not a heterosexual privilege."

More... http://www.gaywire.net/newswire/index.cgi?Func=show&File=20040113-171554

I must say it is nice to see the queer community using a method that ahs worked in the past.

They are right when they say "These rallies across the United States are designed to secure civil rights the way they always have been won, by mobilizing the affected community and their allies in the streets of the nation and sending a strong message that our community deserves and demands full equal legal rights, including the right to marry."

This is a brilliant move.

What do you guys and gals think?

On edit: Edited title for clarity.

[Sapphocrat]

1. I think it's about time we stopped asking and start demanding!

Big kick! :kick:

[corporatewhore]

2. I totally agree

[corporatewhore]

3. kick!!

[foreigncorrespondent]

4. And another kick.

Because this thread is too important to let it die a quick death.

:kick:

[Duncan Grant]

5. Brilliant!

Would you mind putting a link in the Activism/Events forum, too? This is great! Thanks for passing this on! :loveya:

[foreigncorrespondent]

6. Done (n/t)

[nofurylike]

7. thank you for the info! sorry late, but kick! n/t

[nofurylike]

8. it's great!

wouldn't it be awesome if all millions of us turned out?
:)

peace!

[terrya]

9. This is a terrific idea!

My thinking has changed about gay marriage. Until very recently, I was willing to accept civil unions...but screw that. We deserve MARRIAGE. I can just hear the churches about gay marriage...how they find it morally wrong. Fine, whatever. But gay men and lesbians deserve the right to get married...and those marriages should be recognized as legal. It's that simple.

It's just too, too sad, IMO, that Britney Spears can get married on a whim and have that marriage annulled 48 hours later...but gay people who want to have their lifetime relationships of love and committment recognized by the state are told no...that somehow those marriages are a "threat" to the "sanctity of marriage". I'm REALLY missing something here.