“We, as UCC ministers, believe the separation of church and
state is good for the church and for the state”

While the minsiters of the UCC Church will continue to celebrate the sacrament of marriage for all couples who wish to have thier spiritual union belssed by the church, the ministers will not be signing marriage licenses for any couple being married in thier church until they are legally able to sign marriage licenses for everyone.

“At First Congregational United Church of
Christ in Ashland we will no longer sign marriage licenses for any
one until we are able to sign marriage licenses for everyone.”

For more information contact Leslie Stone at lesliestone@ashlandhome.net

Everyone be safe and stay warm!

UPDATE:  There are a couple of folks who do not want this event to be completely cancelled, so if you feel you can SAFELY make it, there should be others there.  If the weather turns as early as predicted, we WILL cancel completely.   Check back here after lunch tomorrow. BE SAFE!!!!

When:

Saturday, December 20th, 5:00 p.m.

Who:

You,  Family,  Friends,  Allies

Where:

Pioneer Square, Portland OR

What:

Silent Candle Light Vigil

Why:

Keeping the issue of Equality from being forgotten. Standing in solidarity to mourn the loss of rights stripped from families.

Questions:

Simply submit a comment to this blog post.

The following article has been reposted in it’s entirety and with permission from the Bilerico Project Blog

Editors’ Note: Guest blogger Torie Osborn has been a social activist for 40 years; She is former Executive Director of the LA Gay and Lesbian Center, NGLTF, and the LIberty HIll Foundation. She is currently Senior Advisor to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and a Durfee Foundation Stanton Fellow.

A Prayer

Thursday was the 30th anniversary of Harvey Milk’s assassination. In his honor, I write this to help move forward the conversation in the wake of Prop 8. It is a loving work in progress. I dedicate it also to my friends who died of AIDS and who are shouting from The Beyond: Do not miss this opportunity to forge transformation from this defeat. Do not forget us!

In particular, I honor Ken Dawson, Connie Norman, Marlon Riggs, Rand Schrader, Mark Kostopolous, Paul Monette, Tom Stoddard, and Gabe Kruks. They never forgot what really matters: love and justice.

Defeat Requires Honesty, Humility and a Longterm Movement Building Strategy

Learning from others

When the devastating violence of 1992′s civil unrest scorched communities of color in Los Angeles, a phoenix rose up from those ashes. Even with formidable external forces tearing them apart, forward-looking Asian, African-American and Latino leaders showed extraordinary leadership: rather than devolve into infighting or finger-pointing, they took a clear-eyed look at their own failures and vowed to do things completely differently. “We have an urgent need to think long-term,” were the words that reverberated, and a fundamental paradigm shift took place. Vowing to move beyond short term and fragmented efforts, diverse leaders in diverse neighborhoods made an intentional, coordinated plan: to retool existing groups or found brand new organizations dedicated to long-term community organizing for real power in their respective neighborhoods and to forge an ongoing multi-ethnic network of trusting relationships.

Not unlike the Right after the bitter defeat of Goldwater in 1964, they dedicated themselves to building the infrastructure of a serious new social movement. As a result, quietly, effectively, since 1992, LA has birthed a vibrant economic and racial justice movement that is building neighborhood power, incubating leaders for political office, and helping move a regional social reform agenda for labor and immigrant rights and economic equity. Fifteen years later, LA has: progressives of color as Mayor, CA Assembly Speaker, and new Supervisor; a vibrant set of organizations that network and strategize across ethnic lines; and, a pipeline of young leaders who will make history for decades to come. Progressive ideas that seemed preposterous in 1992 — such as the living wage and environmental justice — are mainstream.

That transformation started with humility and self-responsibility – and an eye on the prize of longterm movement building for justice. What could have devolved into permanent divisions instead moved from pain to power.

I have seen nothing similar in the LGBT community since the bitter victory of the homophobic Proposition 8. Nobody has accepted responsibility for failure and stepped up to lead a coherent, community- wide discussion of where to from here. As a result there is too much finger pointing, and a startling loss of credibility for established LGBT organizations and leaders. Without a humble and truth-telling self-assessment, the energetic protest and proliferation of new young activists may well evaporate, or be too narrowly contained within one single – if exciting — strand of the LGBT movement: web activism. Or, inaccurate analysis will become set in stone and lead toward division rather than powerful motion forward.

Why We Will Win Next Time: Beating Prop 8 Is a True Cause of the New Obama Era of Progressive Patriotism

The nation-wide eruption of anger over Prop 8′s homophobic victory – at the same historic moment Connecticut granted marriage equality — is the first major wave of social activism of the new Obama era. Make no mistake about it, if progressive allies and the LGBT community do our homework, we will reverse Prop 8. Yes, we got outgunned pretty spectacularly on Proposition 8 by that big scary Mormon Church and the lies of the Right wing, but the world has suddenly and radically shifted toward justice and equality and the Right is rapidly losing power. Feel the zeitgeist! Listen to how silly Newt Gingrich sounds when he talks about the new “gay fascism.” View Jon Stewart take on Bill O’Reilly and tell him marriage equality is the next great cause. Watch Keith Obermann passionately promote our cause!

Look around, LGBT America! Equality and justice is on the ascendancy and we will win. Today, we have faith in the courts – and the public outcry creates a climate that helps with the legal challenge — but if the CA Supreme Court fails us, we will go back to the ballot box in California in two or four years, and we will win. If we look with clear eyes and learn well from our own mistakes, and take a few pages from the playbook of our own history, as well as that of our allies in communities of color, there is no doubt marriage equality will be achieved in fairly short order, at least in California, which legalized inter-racial marriage twenty years before the country as a whole.
Full disclosure: I wrote sacrificially large checks, but did not work on No on 8. I was one of thousands of people who felt called by history to drop my life and join the Obama campaign full-time for the last two months before the election. I spent 24/7 working to help move the army of nearly 15,000 California volunteers to western battleground states, primarily Nevada – which we turned blue by an amazing 12 points. My primary passion was working shoulder to shoulder with the most amazing team of (mostly) women of all colors and backgrounds to do the all-important job of getting African American and Latino to Nevada for voter-to-voter outreach.

Occasionally, I suffer from self-doubt: Would I have chosen to pour all my energies into Obama if I had known Prop 8 would lose narrowly, and Obama would win Nevada by such huge margins? I don’t know, but I honor my time with the Obama campaign as a glorious and instructive experience. On that last GOTV weekend, with 25 others on my team, I walked the dusty streets of suburban Henderson and rural Boulder City, Nevada. I spent election night with a few of my team and a thousand strangers at the Hotel Rio in Las Vegas. We cried hard with Jesse; we danced harder with the Kenyons. Victory shared with several billion world citizens was sweeter than I have ever known. I will not let the homophobes take that from me, and, in fact, my experience on the Obama campaign is what gives me huge hope.

Hallelujah!: We are Not Alone – at last!

I returned from Obamaland in Nevada to the implosion and righteous rage in my own community in LA and across the country. Immediately, I learned the first lesson I need to share: For the first time in our history as an LGBT community fighting the Right, we are not alone. I remember the bitterness of No on 64 in 1986 – fighting the evil LaRouche initiative to quarantine People with AIDS – we couldn’t get any non-gay organization to endorse us besides our steady ally, the ACLU. Today, we have an army of straight allies who are just as outraged as we are and who have vowed to help us reverse this decision.

Thursday night after election day, our LA Obama team had our victory celebration and, with a heavy heart, I drove to Silver Lake to the party – my spirit staying in Westwood with the protesters surrounding the Mormon Church – but wanting to see my Obama campaign sisters and brothers, my new friends and tribe. I still cry when I recall the love and solidarity that poured toward me that night about Prop 8. To a person, the Obama staff and volunteers I spoke with, a majority Latino and African American, mostly non-gay, told me to count on them in the next steps in beating Prop 8. And then they showed up at the City Hall protest November 15. The world has turned; even more than those who endorsed No on 8 – greatly increased from previous battles — we have a critical mass of newly empowered and passionate allies for justice, fired up and ready to go! As one new Obama friend put it: “Sister, you got next!” Those who fear that African American and Latino voters are permanently against us are flat wrong: if we do our footwork, all the signs point to changed minds and hearts in the near future (see: “Where to From Here” section). Change is in the air!

I have emerged from immersion in the Obama movement knowing that it’s a new day in America: a new progressive patriotism is on the rise that suddenly makes the Right a throwback. It won’t happen automatically; it will require hard work, but a new spirit is rising. “Respect/Empower/Include” was the mantra of the Obama campaign, and it means everyone. What a delicious irony that the first major issue that calls the question of the new era of change is the freedom for gays and lesbians to marry! Remember that this issue was blamed by many Democrats for Kerry’s loss four years ago.

Why We Should Have Won: We Know How to Beat the Right

Last week, I saw the must-see film, Gus Van Zant’s MILK, and was brought back thirty years to the No on 6 campaign against the Briggs initiative that would have fired gay teachers. The ugly homophobic words of messianic homophobes Anita Bryant and John Briggs were the same words we heard from the YES on 8 folks only the Right has gotten more clever over its three decades in power – there isn’t one celebrity spokesperson and they wrap the package in a happy-yellow family picture. But the themes were eerily similar: we threaten their children, we threaten their religion. And, yes, we’ve come a long way when we are fighting for the right to marry as opposed to defending the right of gay schoolteachers to work. But, the film inspired me to speak out, because I believe in my heart that we could have beaten Prop 8 had we studied our own history. 30 years ago was a different time, a time of widespread social activism on the progressive side; organizing and coalition-building was the norm, and the latest human rights movement – ours – learned how. We came from a 25-point deficit to beat Briggs because we did exactly in 1978 what Barack Obama did this year to win the presidency: Build both a professionally run, disciplined, top-notch top-down campaign and an inclusive huge grassroots movement that engaged every single person possible in activist support.

In 1978 I was immersed in the lesbian-feminist ‘women’s music’ world and helped organize an amazing 10-city Holly Near/Meg Christian concert tour that reached 50,000 people. The day after their concerts, Holly and Meg led training sessions to inspire and educate hundreds of women to become, yes, community organizers. There were a zillion other ways to plug into No on 6, and, as a result, the gay and lesbian community came together on No on 6 in a way that presaged fighting AIDS later. (Historical note: at the time gay men and lesbians were living on separate planets, as you’ll see in MILK where you meet exactly one lesbian although in truth a huge and vibrant lesbian community, including myself, lived then in the Mission – out of the camera lens focused only on Harvey and the Castro.) Together, we built a grassroots movement the likes of which had never been seen before in CA; thousands of people came “Out of the closet and into the streets,” pouring into organizing meetings in bars and coffeehouses and feminist bookstores and newly emerging community centers and clinics that were our new home base.
But even that mass grassroots movement would not have defeated the right wing’s vicious campaign without the professional political consultant, David Mixner, who got Ronald Reagan to do a 30-second radio ad that ran the last two weeks of the campaign (and delivered LA’s Bradley coalition). This year, the No on 8 equivalent of that Reagan ad designed to reach the “moveable middle” was Barack Obama. In one of the most puzzling decisions of the No on 8 campaign, Obama opposed Prop 8 early on, but the campaign failed to use it until the last days of the campaign when it was too late.

When Obama’s CA campaign director asked me in early October why Barack’s face wasn’t plastered all over mailers and TV and radio – which might have made a big difference in Black and Brown communities that overwhelmingly voted for him – I posed the question immediately to a friend in the campaign’s inner circle. I was told Barack’s position was “too confusing.” (He says he opposes gay marriage.) Confusing? He gave us the endorsement early; moreover, it was his only endorsement in CA despite pleas from other initiative campaigns. I’ve heard people blame the Obama campaign for sucking money and people out of the struggle against 8; I’ve heard too much ugly anger at the Black community. But take responsibility, folks – you had Barack’s endorsement and you didn’t use it. That left it wide open for the YES folks to manipulate Obama’s position and add yet another lie — that he supported Prop 8. That was a possibly fatal error and we cannot blame the Mormon Church or African-Americans for it.

One final critique of No ON 8: Never again should our EDs run our political campaigns! Next time, let’s engage our community’s non-profit leaders as grass roots leaders, mobilizing their membership, staff and constituencies, and not as political campaign operatives. I’m a four-time former Executive Director and I believe in long-term institution-building and the need for excellence in EDs. But as one who was also Southern CA Campaign Coordinator for No on 64 (the 1986 AIDS quarantine struggle), believe me, the skill-set of a nonprofit executive is not the same as that required to run a political campaign. We need to hire the best, toughest political campaign consultant and let them go, not constrain them with a web of bureaucracy: No on 8 had a big committee of 93, then a smaller committee of 25 and, finally, an “executive committee” of seven representatives of nonprofit groups. The tragedy is that this unwieldy structure precluded both a topflight political campaign and a powerful grassroots campaign – that is, the campaign structure itself diverted energies from a real organizing campaign.
Celebrate our Successes: API Equality and HONOR PAC:

API Equality
There was a standout model of effective grassroots community organizing in the LGBT community this year; it was part of the No on 8 campaign, but it began autonomously and was a three-year effort: “API Equality.” This campaign should be closely studied as a template for future efforts. Volunteer driven, collaborative, muscular, inclusive and savvy, it engaged and leveraged community-based nonprofits trusted in their neighborhoods and ethnic communities, political allies, diverse ethnic media, and fearlessly confronted homophobic religious groups. API Equality reached their ‘movable middle’ through engaging allies and putting the human face of LGBT Asian Pacific Islanders front and center. The result? 51% NO vote despite fierce homophobic resistance. Let’s celebrate this success and learn from it!

HONOR PAC +++: Latino/a Good Start
The East LA No on 8 office became a hub of organizing in the Latino community in the final weeks, led by some Latina longtime lesbian organizers, and the gay Latino PAC, HONOR PAC…It was too little, too late, but they made a brave start and energized the Latino community, establishing a good platform for a successful future campaign. Arguably, their efforts at mobilizing a NO vote kept the Latino YES vote down to 53%, lower than expected. The Latino community made the most progress of any ethnic group since the 2000 Prop 22 vote, largely due to these community based organizing efforts.

Where To From Here? From Protest To Power

To move from protest to power and guarantee success in the courts or at the ballot box, if it comes to that, and — most importantly– to advance the LGBT and progressive movements, several things are necessary:

1. ANALYSIS: A fearless and thorough analysis of what went wrong and right with the No on 8 campaign. Several of the funders are planning on hiring an independent consultant to review the campaign and the results should be made public when they are complete, probably not for several months. Meanwhile, the more smart analysis rooted in data and experience, and pointing toward the future, the better!
2. STRATEGIC CONVENING – NOW! We are in a “movement moment” of high energy and new activism. It will not last. Most critical is to ride the wave and try to put something in place that will last: new relationships, banks of names and funding for when we know what the path is. And strategy. We need to blog and twitter, yes, but also to convene, retreat, hold summits, strategize – in person as well as online. A few of the good ideas I’ve heard for convenings that should happen as soon as possible:
   1. A People of Color Civil Rights/Equal Rights Summit: Gay and straight African American, Latino and API leaders having a summit and together learning from what worked and what didn’t and intentionally forming a path forward could be very powerful.
   2. Interfaith and religious organizing: Allies from faith communities having conversations with YES on 8 church leaders to listen well and at least begin the conversation.
   3. A cross-generation summit: The young, new LGBT net-organizers holding a meeting with longtime activists who hold many years of movement history and exchanging ideas and questions.
   4. Movement infrastructure and leadership The new activist groups meeting with existing GLBT nonprofit leaders and learning what movement infrastructure exists and how it can be retooled to engage the new skills and talents of younger, new leaders coming up. There may be a shakeout in the months ahead: new organizations might emerge; old organizations might decline – what has power and impact and sustainability remains completely up in the air. (As does the new question, by the way, of the LGBT groups’ ongoing relationship with progressive allies: labor, feminist, civil rights and civil liberties, community-based people-of-color organizations? Who holds and nurtures those relationships on behalf of the LGBT movement?)
3. PRIORITIZE LONG-TERM COMMUNITY ORGANIZING IN LATINO AND AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITIES: Again, we have a superb model in what API Equality did in the Asian communities, over a protracted three-year period. We need to study it, and look at how it can be successfully translated into the African American and Latino communities, given material differences in funding and nonprofit infrastructure, and the fact that the Right has targeted and organized brilliantly against us over 20 years, particularly in the black community. (I recommend Dee Mosbacher and Sylvia Rhue’s film “All God’s Children” about the Black church and homophobia).NEWS FLASH! The good news in LA – central to winning statewide, remember – is that the Liberty Hill Foundation, whose credibility in African American and Latino communities goes back decades, has just made an institutional decision to prioritize funding and training for the next several years on organizing and coalition building on marriage equality in Black and Brown communities. All who want to see that succeed should be writing checks now to www.libertyhill.org. They have a fundraiser December 4 to support these efforts; see their website.
4. LEVERAGE THE NEW PROGRESSIVE COALITION: If we are indeed in a new era of change, then equality is nonnegotiable. Progressive patriotism is ascendant. We have to tirelessly and fearlessly leverage the Obama justice era and deepen the new progressive coalition. From what I understand, the No on 8 campaign raised huge funds from unions, but never formally asked the formidable labor movement, at least in LA, for its real muscle – peer to peer phoning and canvassing; next time must be different.In addition, many of the networks of grassroots folks that scaled up to elect Obama stand ready to be mobilized – while the Obama campaign and the DNC decide how that grassroots power is to be mobilized, there are lots of informal networks of volunteers that we can tap into. Best positioned to link to the progressive online network is the Courage Campaign – they are already linking with MoveOn.org and with key labor leaders, are already hiring organizers and net-organizing to capture the people and dollars that are ready to beat 8.

Conclusion: The New Politics of ‘Yes We Can’

The world turned on November 4. A new movement is taking shape. I was immersed in it for two months and from my 40 years of activist experience, I can tell you the following: the Obama movement is about finding commonality and shared purpose. E Pluribus Unum.

Both pragmatic and idealistic, it is rooted in core patriotic values of democracy, equality and civic engagement. Most of all, this new movement looks at the positive and not the negative traits of our schizophrenic American history, valuing above all the jagged journey toward justice – the progressive American story of ever-expanding “liberty and justice for all.” It brushes aside the culture of identity politics and its tendency for competing victimization: its motto is “Yes We Can,” not “I’m Oppressed.” It has faith that people can change if you treat them with respect; its stated mantra is “Respect, Empower, Include.”

There is no place for inequality in this new era, but after 30 years of Right wing power, America has some catching up to do. Both homophobia and economic inequality have been hallmarks of the past thirty years of right-wing dominance in America, so we will need to do some work to align our different struggles for justice – economic and equal-rights. But it will happen, with faith and hard work. The winds of change are at our back, and when my Obama-campaign friends vow solidarity on marriage equality and defeating Prop 8, I believe them. There is a new and diverse army of supporters out there just waiting to be tapped for us just as we will need to stand in solidarity to restore equal opportunity to economic security and achieve racial justice as we go forward. All in the name of a shared commitment America’s highest ideals.

At last Saturday’s rally, my longtime friend, former boss, and a true brother in solidarity for full and complete equality for LGBT people, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, gave a gorgeous speech about marriage equality that you can find all over YouTube. It included these words: “In the eyes of the law and the eyes of God, Thou Shalt Not Discriminate… This is not just about protest and this is not just about the internet. Let us go back to our homes and into our neighborhoods and start this conversation and take it to the shuls and to the churches and to every civic institution and to City Halls and to the Halls of Congress and all the way to the White House…..”

If we do this, in very short order, we will beat Prop 8. Not to mention help forge a new American movement for democracy and equality that cannot be stopped.

YES WE CAN. SI SE PUEDE!

In Portland, we will be gathering for our silent candlelight vigil at Pioneer Square, downtown.

These are the guidelines from Join the Impact, which we are going to stick to, as much as possible:

Two weeks ago, we were noisy all across the United States.  On December 20th, we will let our silence bring home the reality of lack of equal rights as citizens of this country.

Update
The national Join the Impact site has shirts available to order.  We are talking to folks locally to see if we can get them made here.  Suggestions greatly appreciated.

The national site:

http://jointheimpact.wetpaint.com/page/Light+Up+The+Night+For+Equality

See you on the 20th!

They say:

Many in our community are wondering whether the anti-family results of Election Day and the national reaction that followed signals a new moment for the LGBT civil rights movement. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen so many LGBT people and straight allies registering their anger in the streets, and not just in the states where these votes took place. In hundreds of cities and towns across the nation, people have stood up, marched and demonstrated with their own expressions of energy and outrage.

They ask:

* Is this a new moment–a Stonewall 2.0, as some are calling it–or just the appropriately sized response to the largest grassroots campaign our community has ever run?

* If it is a new moment, what’s fundamentally different from before? How did Election Day change your perspective or the kinds of actions you’ll take to achieve equality?

* If you could help achieve one concrete thing towards family equality in 2009, what would it be and why?

Lindsey and I organized last Saturday’s rally as a call to action.  A call to our community to stand up, be counted, and to get to work on obtaining full equal rights, in Oregon as well as across the country. It is no longer an option for us to depend on someone else to carry the water for us.  If this were a perfect world, we could have marches, rallies and protests every day of every week of the year.  Of course, if this were a perfect world, we wouldn’t be sitting here having this discussion.

Lindsey and I are still in the middle of compiling all of the information we received last Saturday, of people who have declared that they are ready to unite, get to work, and move forward, working for equality.  The news says we had about a thousand people; over half of you signed up for duty.  That is beyond amazing to me.  And like Lindsey and I, most, if not all of you had to get up Monday (or Sunday for some of us!) and go to work.   Have we had time to work for equality?  I would venture that the answer to that, for most of us, is yes.  Why do I say that?  Because since last Saturday, people have been talking to their families, friends, neighbors.  They’ve been talking to co-workers and fellow community members.    I’d bet money people were even talking in church last Sunday morning.

I know that Lindsey and I talk every day about how we are feeling, what we are hearing, and where we want to go next.  We have been in the community, talking to people, to other community leaders, planning.  We made a commitment to our community last week and we are absolutely not going to walk away from that.  After the thrill of rallies, marches and protests wear off, the real equality work begins.  I look forward to it.

We just really want to say thank you to everyone.  Our community leaders who spoke, community members who spoke up (maybe for the first time) and shared their stories.  Not to mention the energy.  A friend of mine mentioned today that he had never been to a civil rights rally before, and had only been to events where anger trumped most any other part of the experience.  We definitely had (and have) some of that, without a doubt.  But what I really felt, along with the positive emotion that always comes about when we come together, was the “ok, this is it; no more excuses, no more playing; what steps do we need to take, and what part do I need to play?” feeling that permeated everything.  A friend made a point to me earlier that, considering what a handful of people around the state managed to pull off, in multiple locations, the thought of what we can do with ALL of us involved, is staggering.  And it is…staggering.  It’s also really exciting and inspiring.  It is time to take this forward, take responsibility for our own equality and our own actions.  It’s just time.

Please read an open letter to all GLBT Oregonians from Basic Rights Oregon Executive Director Jeana Frazzini.

PORTLAND:

10:30 am with Speakers scheduled at noon.

South Park Blocks near PSU

Contact: Debra Porta debraporta(at)netzero.net

Info at: http://pdxjointheimpact.wordpress.com/

EUGENE:

10:30am

Eugene City Hall

777 Pearl St

Info at: www.queereugene.com

CORVALLIS:

10:30am

Corvallis City Hall

120 NW 4^th St

Contact: Faith Reidenbach reidenbach.9(at)osu.edu

Info at: http://jointheimpact.wetpaint.com/page/Corvallis?t=anon

MEDFORD:

10:30am

Corner of East Main St. and South Central Ave.

Contact: Leslie Stone (541) 488-9168 lesliestone(at)ashlandhome.net

Janelle Wilson (541) 552-8328 wilsonjan(at)sou.edu

Info at: http://politigay.posterous.com/press-release-nov-15pdf-adobe

SALEM:

10:30am

Location 1: Riverfront Park in front of the carousel

Location 2: Jackson Plaza at Willamette University

Both groups will march to the Capital Building downtown.

Contact: Michael Miles   blueiceman26(at)gmail.comJoin

Info at: http://www.myspace.com/gaymarriagenow
]]> http://pdxjointheimpact.wordpress.com/2008/11/14/join-the-imapact-rally-information/feed/ 2 goddesspdx marriage http://pdxjointheimpact.wordpress.com/2008/11/14/24-hours-and-counting/ http://pdxjointheimpact.wordpress.com/2008/11/14/24-hours-and-counting/#comments Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:41:01 +0000 oregonian37 http://pdxjointheimpact.wordpress.com/?p=30 ]]> It is hard to believe that it’s only been 5 days since we began planning this thing.  One day left!

The more that Lindsey and I have talked about what our goals are, and our ideas for how to get there, the more excited I get about the possibilities of what we may be giving life to tomorrow.  Our community has been divided and on the defensive for far too long (one follows the other, maybe?  Hmmm…food for thought there) and I think we are drawing somewhat of a line in the sand this weekend. 

A friend asked me the other day, why weren’t we visible a month ago, well in advance of election night?  Why are we waiting until now to actually get up and be visible and vocal?  Well, my question is this:  When Prop Eight passed in California last week, what was the very first thought (or at least the second) that you had?  I would bet money, that it was something along the lines of “It passed in California?  CALIFORNIA?!  But..but…that’s where San Francisco is!”  It has freaked people out…and rightly so.  California is the perfect example of what it looks like to take equal rights for granted.  We, here in Oregon, are on the verge of doing the exact same thing.  And THAT is our motivation for this gathering tomorrow.  We have some amazing leadership in this state, around the fight for LGBTQ equal rights, and they have been on the frontlines fighting that battle for a LONG time.  Sometimes we pay a bit more attention to them than we do at other times, but how much effort do we really put into our daily lives, not only supporting those organizations, but how much work do we put into our daily lives, talking to people, sharing our struggles and listening to theirs?  How much thought and work do we put into really building bridges and making those allies that we need, in order to win this struggle?  The fight for equal rights doesn’t happen only at the periodic rally, or on election day.  It takes WORK.  And that is what Lindsey and I are committing to, and what we are asking you to commit to, as well; for the LGBTQ community, OUR community, to join together and, while honoring our differences, recognizing that we sink or swim together.  It isn’t up to someone else to fight for my rights for me.  It’s up to me.