May 29, 2009  |   By: Amy Cavanaugh  |  COMMENTS   |     |   

Some gay rights activists are calling for a march on Washington to push President Obama to take a more aggressive approach to advancing gay rights initiatives.

Four days after the November passage of Proposition 8, which barred same-sex marriages in California, one of the plaintiffs in that state’s marriage case called for a march on D.C. in 2010.

“In 1978, I called for the very first gay march on Washington,” Robin Tyler said during a Nov. 8 speech in California. “In 2000, I called for the last march on Washington.

“Marches work, not because Washington listens, but because they mobilize youth, and our youth need to carry on the leadership of this movement.”

Gay activist David Mixner seconded the call May 20. Writing on his blog, DavidMixner.com, he called for a march for marriage equality in November 2009, noting that he “can’t stomach any more being told ‘not now.’”

“As this administration sits in offices plotting timeline charts on what rights they feel comfortable granting us this year, clearly it is time for us to gin up our efforts and stop waiting for them to hand us our God given entitlements,” he wrote.

Mixner said that his post resulted in about 4,000 e-mails of support. Cleve Jones, who conceived of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt and co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation in 1983, also wrote a response to Mixner on Towleroad.com, agreeing with the call.

“In my travels throughout California and around the country, I have been stunned and inspired by the determination and fearlessness of our young people,” Jones wrote. “This is the generation that is going to win. This is the time to unite and push — as we have never pushed before — to achieve victory.”

Jones offered several suggestions, including making the march about full equality and not just marriage equality, and scheduling it for the weekend of Oct. 10, which coincides with National Coming Out Day and the 30th anniversary of the first national march.

He also suggested organizing the march “from the grassroots with a decentralized, Internet-based campaign.”

“The primary objective must be to turn out the largest possible crowd,” Jones wrote. “We don’t need elaborate and expensive staging or fabulous dinner parties and concerts — we need a million or more people in the street demanding equality now.”

Mixner has helped organize marches before, including the 1993 gay rights march on Washington, and he called on LGBT leaders to plan the march. But if they “won’t do it,” Mixner called on “our young to come together and provide the leadership.”

“People adore Obama but they’re really upset about the lack of visibility on the issue,” Mixner said. “I think it’s extremely likely that there will be a march on Washington in October.”

Torie Osborn, a former National Gay & Lesbian Task Force executive director said that while there isn’t “a complete blueprint for the fall mapped out yet,” people are “mobilizing very quickly.”

“The momentum is so right for a dignified, powerful statement in the president’s backyard,” Osborn said. “We hope to make a single strong statement for all of it, not just on one issue. It’s not just about DOMA or ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ it’s about equality now.”

In an e-mail to the Blade, though, Tyler expressed a concern that the timeline for a 2009 march would be too short.

“David wants to do it in five months,” she said. “With [the] Internet … it is possible to get a large turnout, although difficult for working class, and non-working people, students, etc., as five months is not enough time to save up.”

Tyler also noted that staging a march in “2009 will do nothing to put pressure on the Democratic Party.”

“My call was for October 2010, right before the Democratic elections,” she said. “If they do not support us in the next year, and the president does not do what he committed to when running [such as repeal DOMA] … our community needs to sit that mid-term election out. Why should we continue supporting the Democrats on a national level, when they do not support us?”

Osborn said the intent isn’t for the event to be an “angry protest,” but a time to tell Obama, “we heard you and we know you’re busy, but we expect you to make good on your promises.”

Osborn said she and Jones are leading plans for the march, and they decided the main principles would be: demanding full equality, recognizing that the fight for equality is part of a broader social justice movement, and aiding the new expression of grassroots organizing and ...