KU students join march for gay rights
“Today, we are standing on the right side of history!” poet and political activist Staceyann Chin shouted into the microphone to more than 200,000 people in front of the Capitol Building on Oct. 11, 2009.
Chin and 32 other prominent speakers passionately gave their speeches after a mass of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and even straight people marched side-by-side down the streets of Washington, D.C., in the 2009 Equality Across America March, the fifth gay rights march in American history.
The march was organized to demand the repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which discharges openly gay soldiers from serving the country, as well as the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, which limits how state, local, and federal bodies can recognize partnerships and determine the 1,400 rights, benefits, and protections that come with marriage, according to Fox News.
KU’s Allies, the student organization that focuses on GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) issues, invited students all over campus to take part in this historical event. Leaving at 6 a.m. on Sunday morning, 26 KU students joined with the thousands of others from across the country, ranging from young children to proud grandparents, all with a simple goal in mind: full equality now.
KU students marched proudly among the thousands of rainbow flags and homemade signs that flooded the streets of Washington as chants such as, “Gay, straight, black, white! Marriage is an equal right!” and “We’re out! We’re proud! We won’t back down!” echoed loudly throughout the nation’s capital.
“I think that the best part of the march was the overwhelming feeling of support and openness,” said freshman Business major Chris Ford.
The march led to the Capitol lawn where speakers like Judy Shepard, whose son Matthew was beaten to death in 1998 because he was gay; Lt. Dan Choi, an Iraq War veteran who is facing discharge after announcing he was gay; and Cleve Jones, the creator of the AIDS Memorial Quilt and a protégé of the assassinated gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk, demanded that Obama’s administration and Congress work hard on giving equal rights to every American now.
“We’re not settling,” Jones announced in front of the large crowd on the Capitol lawn. “There’s no such thing as a fraction of equality.”
According to CNN, although President Obama gave a powerful speech promising to abolish the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and to urge Congress to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, to the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay and lesbian rights group, he failed to offer a timetable or any other specifics as to how and when his promises will be accomplished.
Despite the uncertainty, KU students walked away from this historical march with a sense of hope.
“I felt that [the march] was a once in a lifetime opportunity and I felt proud that I could be myself,” said Kyriakos Illiadis, president of Allies and a sophomore French Education major. “I came back knowing how many of us are really out there. It was refreshing.”
Although the march was considered by most to be a modern-day civil rights movement, some students believe the media is not giving it enough attention.
“The march was all but ignored by most large news organizations,” said Emily Harris, a junior Professional Writing and Spanish major.
She pointed out that the major network news channels had all spent hours covering the Tea Party March on Sept. 12, but that the march had not received the same attention.
“Fox News didn’t even manage to get a camera crew to the scene, and they have a bureau located on North Capitol Street, a mere two blocks away from the Capitol building where the rally took place,” she said. “The only ‘news’ program that seemed to pay any attention to the National Equality March was The Daily Show.”
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