Why I have decided to march on Washington on 10 October

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One of the very real ways I measure gay progress is by comparing my life now, to my uncle's life in the 50's and 60's. It is by no means a perfect mirror to hold up, espcially since we never met but I only know of him through others. But it does serve as a starting off point since his death was so shortly after my birth.

By most practical measures of life, my life as a gay man is vastly better than his. He died before any gay characters regularly appeared on TV. He grew up in a world literally berefit of gay lawyers, gay doctors, gay school teachers, gay politicians, gay actors, gay athletes, gay school children, or any other openly gay role model. By contrast, I was 9 when Milk was elected and 10 when he took office. I was 13 when Barney Frank took office and 21 when he came out. I was 5 when the first regularly scheduled gay character came on TV, and 30 when Ellen came out. I know gay couples who have children and are legally married. While I certainly have some fear of not being able to get a job in many school districts, I am safely out in mine. In the realm of commerece, entertainment, education, and even sports my life is far closer to yours than it is to his.

Legally, it is a horse of a different color. The fact is, even if I lived in Pennsylvania and not North Carolina, there would be one legal difference between me and my uncle. He could still be arrested for sodomy while I can't. We have no nationwide protections in employment, housing, education, or accomodation. Neither PA nor NC have those protections on a statewide level. In a majority of states, I am legally no better off than he was, save for the sodomy statute which was overturned in the federal courts.

The chief reason for that state of affairs is that we, the gay community, didn't hold Clinton's feet to the fire when he had the majority of Congress. We thought that we would continue to have at least the House for years to come. We were dead wrong. We can't make this mistake again. We need, like African Americans did in 1963, to hold this President's feet to the fire while he still has his nearly unprecedented majority in the Senate. If we don't see ENDA, hate crimes, and ending DADT by this time in 2010, we won't see it before 2017. That is the lesson we learned from Clinton.

I know many straight supporters of Obama, both here and in the real world, don't want to hear this ugly truth. They want to think that we are a priviledged caste asking for special treatment and to cut in line for our botique issues. The simple fact is, we waited our turn in 1993, and here it is 2009 and we have nothing, not a single law, to show for it. We should have known better in 1993, we damn well know better now.

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