GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE MARCH 20, 1998

COMMUNITY FORUM

National event needed

To the Editors:

We believe our community has an opportunity to welcome the new century in a fresh way with a Millennium March for Equality in the year 2000. Inside and outside of our organizations, we have felt much enthusiasm around the country for the proposed march.

In the year 2000, the entire nation will be looking for new trends and fresh messages. We have an opportunity, if not an obligation, to use this wave to effectively shift the paradigm of perceptions about gay people.

Given that, we concluded early involvement could provide an opportunity to shape the messages such a gathering will impart to the nation and to avoid some of the pitfalls of prior marches.

We believe that in the early 1990s, gay America entered an entirely new period that has gone largely unlabeled and unanalyzed. Shaped partly by the AIDS crisis and partly by the groundswell of people coming out and living honestly, the priorities of our community have changed dramatically. We are looking for ways to find stability in our relationships, health, homes and communities. We are in the middle of a gay baby boom. The desire to legally marry has emerged as an extremely important goal for many gay Americans. Many of us are returning to the churches of our youth or finding new ways to express our spirituality.

We are also living in a time when, despite the best efforts and significant financing of the extreme right, the country is moving forward. We have seen important shifts in public attitudes and institutions, particularly in the workplace. The journey is not without struggle and setbacks, but we are moving at a speed inconceivable even a generation ago. The shift we have described has never been effectively communicated on a mass scale to the American people. A Millennium March provides a remarkable opportunity to dramatically demonstrate what it means to be gay in this nation at the turn of the century. This march is an unprecedented opportunity to celebrate our diversity as a community of family, spirituality and equality. This march should be absolutely inclusive-gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and straight.

The practical benefits of such a march are myriad.

This is a tremendous opportunity for every LBGT organization to build membership. People will come in huge numbers for this march, and they will be looking for a variety of activities. Groups could plan anything from street fairs to forums, workshops to cultural events.

Most people who took up gay civil rights work in recent years were inspired at a march on Washington. Everything from ACT UP to the "Free Sharon Kowalski" movement were born out of marches on Washington. No matter where the passion goes, it is important to provide a medium where new leadership and ideas can spawn.

The year 2000 is a presidential election year and the LBGT segment of the electorate will

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To march, or not?

In letters and columns in this Chronicle and the March 6 issue, national gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender groups discuss the pros and cons of a national march on Washington in the spring of 2000.

We want to hear your opinion. Will a march on Washington in two years energize our community and gain national attention? Or, should our resources be devoted to state and local efforts?

E-mail us at letters@chronohio.com, or write to Letters, P.O. Box 5426, Cleveland, Ohio 44101, or fax to 216-631-1052. Please include your address and phone number, for verification.

be courted as never before. This is also an incredible opportunity to organize people to work in campaigns and to lobby their members of Congress when they are here.

Even those people who cannot travel to Washington will be able to share the march on television, perhaps holding house parties for friends and families.

Although no decisions have been made regarding excess revenue, a national march is probably one of the few ways to raise the kind of funds needed at the statewide level.

Over the past five years, we have invested heavily at the state level, responding to crisis after crisis. We have channeled thousands of dollars in these battles and for the most part, we have won. All of the statewide anti-gay ballot initiatives have been defeated and, thanks to the work of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Colorado Legal Initiative Project and Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled favorably in the Colorado case.

But our statewide organizations remain in dire need of investment. The leadership in many states is excellent, but with a few notable exceptions, most of our statewide organizations are in severely lacking in capacity-building and general investment. Moreover, they need pooled funding for polling, research, message development and a network of crack lobbyists.

Some critics of the march have used the recent loss in Maine as a basis to argue that a national march shouldn't take place because some other plan would produce the investment needed at the state level. We believe this is a faulty analysis. First, there are millions of dollars available in the community not accessed by any organization. The last march should be instructive. Gay Americans spent more than $170 million to attend that march. With proper planning, some of this revenue can be captured by the march entity.

Others have argued a Millennium March would detract from a 50-State Action being planned for 1999 by the Federation of Statewide Organizations. We see the two events as complementary. And we believe that state actions alone will not capture the imagination of most LBGT Americans, nor will they slake the desire for a national millennial event. We believe the national march is the natural follow-on to bring energy and excitement to these proposed statewide actions.

Critics of the march concept have argued that the statehouses are where all the action is, but the fact is we need to be strong, bold and strategic as a movement at every level. The statehouses are where the state action is. Congress, the executive branch and the U.S. Supreme Court are alive and well and able to do harm or good on any given day. And gay citizens of many states will never win their civil rights without a national effort. One of the best examples is AIDS. Congress appropriated $1 billion for AIDS last year. Imagine where we would be today if the states had to fight this battle alone.

We think a national march in the year 2000 is an incredible opportunity for all of the above reasons. Rather than become mired in the mud fight that has emerged among those who would criticize this idea, we would like to invite them and you to participate in what we believe will be the most exciting demonstration of our unity and power at a seminal moment in time.

Elizabeth Birch, Executive Director Human Rights Campaign The Rev. Troy Perry, Founder Metropolitan Community Churches Washington, D.C.

First, agree on goals

To the Editor:

The millennium approaches. As it does, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community is right to focus on it as an opportunity. The symbolism of a new century can be a powerful one for all of us to bring the civil rights struggle for the lesbian and gay community front and center.

Coupled with an election year, the turn of the century will present us with an opportunity to make history.

Consider our recent losses in Maine and Washington state. There are several lessons for us: 1) We must be smart, move fast and work together. 2) More needs to be done to bolster our statewide organizations. 3) Educating swing voters will be key-and polls tell us that us that these voters are predominantly married and live primarily outside of urban

areas.

It is in the context of these lessons that any proposed tactics for welcoming in the millennium must be evaluated. Several ideas are currently being considered. The Human Rights Campaign and Metropolitan Community Church, recognizing the opportunity that the new millennium will present, has called for a national march on Washington in the spring of 2000. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force along with the Federation of Statewide Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Political Organizations, recognizing the need to mobilize locally, have proposed a fifty-state initiative in 1999.

As these proposals are considered, a key question emerges: How do we best use the valuable resources of our community to maximize the opportunity presented by the millennium? Remember that resources should be broadly defined to include time, energy and money.

A set of other more specific issues flows from the broader question above, each of which must be thoughtfully considered before moving forward.

1) If we are going to educate the public (with an eye on those swing voters) about hatedriven initiatives, we must have strong operations at the local level. Strong, vibrant state and local organizations, focusing their resources within, will be the linchpin. What strategy best addresses this?

2) In the year 2000, we have the opportunity to re-shape the political face of America by electing both national and local candidates supportive of our civil rights. How are our financial resources best allocated? Perhaps our money needs to stay in the trenches where we can focus efforts on fighting local and state ballot initiatives and electing supportive candidates.

3) Who will we be speaking to in the spring of 2000? When you consider that a new president and many new members of Congress will be elected later that year, a national march may be more effective the following year when we have an opportunity to engage a new administration and a new Congress in the issues of our community.

4) Is there ample time/funding/organization to mount successful statewide actions around the country? 1999 is just around the corner and there is much work to be done.

We look to this letter as a means to expand a vigorous scrutiny of all ideas under consideration. We believe strongly that decisions are richer for the debate. Further, we as community leaders recognize our responsibility to engage our constituents in a public conversation on issues such as these, and we commit to developing both formal and informal mechanisms for that conversation.

The Human Rights Campaign, Metropoli-

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tan Community Church and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force deserve our thanks for identifying the turn of the century as the extraordinary opportunity it is. We can set a new tone for a new century. But we must all be careful to avoid setting our tactics before we have agreed on our goals.

Joan M. Garry, Executive Director Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Brian K. Bond, Executive Director Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund Lorri L. Jean, Executive Director Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center Kevin M. Cathcart, Executive Director

Lambda Legal Defense

and Education Fund Jubi Headley, Executive Director National Black Lesbian and Gay Leadership Forum

Stand for justice

To the Editors:

This year, the Cleveland HRC Dinner will fall on the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This strikes a very strong chord for me.

While I was not yet born when King was killed, I do believe that his struggle around being committed to change shaped my parents' understanding of what tools I would need to be resilient in a world where equality was not a given when it came to black folks. One of the gifts that was instilled in me is discernment to stand for justice, even when it isn't easy.

King said, "True peace is not merely the Continued on facing page