"Queers Are Doin' It For Themselves", April 21, 2005
-- Reese Aaron Isbell, M.P.P.

Annie Lennox and Aretha Franklin would be quite proud of us right now. More importantly, we have every reason to be proud of ourselves. Our movement is coming together like never before, standing on our own two feet, and fighting for our rights with conviction, determination, and good ole fashioned moxie. The evidence abounds.

After an election year in which we were unfairly tainted as the reason Bush was reelected and national Republicans made gains, we could have quietly backed down. And, frankly, it's pretty amazing we didn't. We had everyone telling us our fights for marriage equality and for equal rights in general were turning off voters throughout the country. Even our friends were saying things like 'too much, too soon,' and that we needed to back off.

Instead, what did we do? Turns out, we told them that we'd only begun the fight!

Our LGBT community has been tirelessly at work since the election, much of which has been under the radar. But it is beginning to bear sweet public fruit of the kind we could only imagine even last year. And of which the rest of the country cannot even fathom.

This last weekend was a notable example. Due to the extraordinary work of our local LGBT leaders, the state Democratic Party now includes marriage equality in its official platform. This would not have happened had our community not stood up and fought for it, regardless of the political winds.

Modeled after Assemblyman Mark Leno's (D-San Francisco) Assembly Bill 19, the resolution was the handiwork of local activist and the Democratic Party's Northern California LGBT Caucus Vice Chair Debra Walker who saw it through conception, drafting, finessing, politicking, endorsements, and final passage at the convention. Debra was not alone in this work, but she deserves special mention.

Other local LGBT leaders, including Paul Hogan, Martha Knutzen, Robert Haaland, Scott Weiner, Rafael Mandelman, Michael Goldstein, and many, many left unnamed were all over the convention hall dedicating their time at the convention to our fight for equal rights. Additionally, my boss, Assemblyman Leno reportedly was 'on fire' at the convention, passing out his self-produced AB19 stickers, visiting every caucus/dinner/meeting possible, and working the halls to ensure passage of not just the resolution, but also to win further support for AB19 itself for the halls of Sacramento.

Because of our standing tall, our straight-allies have been given further reason to stand with us, like never before. Local straight-ally David Chiu, the Chair of the Assembly District 13 Delegation, championed the cause with gusto over the last several months locally and statewide via his many networks, and stood side by side with our LGBT leaders handing out AB19 stickers and spreading the marriage equality gospel.

Additionally, Alice A. Huffman, the president of the California chapter of the NAACP, marshaled the resolution through her networks at the convention. She previously has said, "In a place like California, you can not possibly work for rights if you don't work for gay rights. You either believe in the rights of everyone or you are in the wrong business." As such, the Chair of the African American Caucus ended up publicly changing his position in favor of full marriage equality rather than his initial call for a civil-unions-type direction, citing the moving testimony from members of our LGBT community, in particular that of Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles), as helping him make his ultimate decision in support.

As can be seen, this historic stand for marriage equality at the state convention did not come without a huge effort-from the frontline work mentioned above to the dedicated involvement of many others. In fact, local activist Tom Brown 'came out of the closet,' as it were, to show his support for the marriage equality resolution. Tom originally comes to us from the grassroots movement of the Howard Dean presidential campaign. As that generation of activists furthers the building blocks of the 2004 campaign, he created his own network of several hundred of these new Democratic members "who identify themselves as grassroots and seek to reform the Democratic Party from within." Courageously, just before the convention, he wrote openly as a gay man to his fellow activists from around the state and asked their support for the Civil Marriage and Religious Freedom Resolution. Tom should be commended for his emerging role as an LGBT activist.

Robert Bernardo and Andy Wong also need to be commended. Last summer, Gay Asian Pacific Alliance (GAPA) produced a large, vibrant rally in the quiet Westside section of San Francisco entitled the 'Summer of Love.' Originally set to counter a previously-held anti-GLBT rally, they ended up showing the Westside, and particularly the larger Asian & Pacific Islander (API) community, that marriage equality was strongly supported by members throughout the API community. Out of that event, members of GAPA, national Asian Equality, and others began forming an ad hoc group called San Francisco Asians for Marriage Equality (SAME). Convening in the Westside living room of activist Clarence Wong, this new formation of local LGBT API leaders, is organizing a historic event-- the upcoming API Marriage Equality Roundtable. While this obviously focuses on marriage equality, it will also more generally create an internal API dialogue for addressing LGBT people and our issues within the API community as a whole. Local API leaders and their respective non-LGBT-specific organizations (including Phil Ting of the Asian Law Caucus; Brian Cheu of the Chinese for Affirmative Action/Center for Asian American Advocacy; and Gordon Mar of the Chinese Progressive Association) are sponsoring the event and kudos should be given to them their involvement.

Moreover, we owe an extra strong thank-you to our own LGBT community members who have stepped up to the plate within their particular communities to move us all forward. All of these are just a few examples of how our LGBT community members are taking it upon themselves to achieve marriage equality and equal rights regardless of what others may tell us are the political winds.

Our community began our own internal dialogue after the election. It still ripples throughout our national, state, and local movement. From those ripples, we've officially put the country, our friends, and even our own LGBT community on notice. We have no interest in backing down from our fight for equal rights and we're primed to go the distance. Furthermore, we're doin' it for ourselves.

---Reese Aaron Isbell, M.P.P. currently serves as the Newsletter Editor for the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club and as staff for Assemblyman Mark Leno. He can be reached via the web at www.reesesworld.com.