my really gay day in san francisco

As many of you know, I spent Thursday in San Francisco, where the California State Supreme Court was holding hearing on the validity of Prop 8.

After getting up ass early to catch my 7am flight, I arrived at Civic Center Plaza in downtown San Francisco a little after 9. As I mentioned in a previous post, this is the same location where Harvey Milk gave his famous "Hope Speech" to an estimated 350,000 people at the 1978 Gay Freedom Day parade.

There were most certainly not 350,000 people there on Thursday. In fact, the crowd was quite a bit smaller than I was expecting--I'd estimate about 1,000 from our side. There were also several hundred counterprotesters, armed with GIANT pre-printed signs, and a God-Hates-Fags-esque sound truck that kept circling the park. By the time I arrived, the counterprotesters had completely claimed the steps in front of the supreme court building. Most of the anti-Prop 8 folks had gravitated over to the park, where Marriage Equality had set up a Jumbotron to broadcast the hearings.

While the crowd was not huge, it was all the great things that have marked the other Prop 8 protests: young (many high school and college students, and even a contingent from King Middle School in Berkeley!), diverse, spirited, and delightfully queer. In between paying attention to the hearings, there were plenty of incidents of playful harrassment of the Yes on 8 people scattered in out midst--people chanting, holding hands, kissing and being extra-fabulous right in the face of the Yes folks, having fun making them as uncomfortable as possible. That whole spirit was summed up by one woman who had a sign that said "Fuck Your Discomfort, It's My Civil Rights."

The actual arguments were extremely technical and legalistic, as these things tend to be, and it was pretty hard to tell what the justices were thinking. There was a lot of back-and-forth over whether Prop 8 constituted an amendment or a revision of the constitution (a more involved process that requires a 2/3rds majority vote.) This seemed like a trivial argument to me for most of the three-hour hearing, until it finally sunk in in my head that the constitution of the state in which I live has formally been changed to deny me equal rights. Prop 22, the prior gay marriage ban, which passed in 2000 and was struck down by the state supreme court in May, opening the floodgates for the current round of marriages, was a statute, not a constitutional amendment. Now that discrimination is literally written into the constitution of California, it is going to be much more difficult (although certainly not impossible) to change it.

After the three-hour hearing concluded, the No on 8 folks had arranged to have a press conference on the courthouse steps--which of course the bigot brigade had been surrounding since early morning. But over the course of the hearing, an interesting thing had happened to the composition of the crowd around the steps. Little by little, pods of No on 8 people had crept over there, until the mix of affiliations in the crowd was about 50-50. Then tons of people from the Jumbotron area started coming over, so that by the time the press conference started, the balance of forces had tipped to our side, and, scream as they may (and believe me, they did) the H8ers couldn't drown out our cheers and chants as the lawyers and plaintiffs for our side came out of the courtroom.

There was a press conference, and then a brief but spirited chant war between the two sides, in which we gradually drove out most of the Yes on 8 crowd by attrition. Of course, this was the most fun part in my opinion. Not only does raising your voice with others feel really great, but there was something kind of fun about being able to be face to face with these people--not roped off in separate protest pens, as is usually the case. It gave people the opportunity to say "Really? What is your problem with me, really? I'm right here--explain it to me." Around the edges of the crowd, I noticed tons of conversations and arguments--people actually confronting the H8ers (nonviolently) and trying to change their minds. Of course, the people who came out with signs like "A Moral Wrong Can't Be a Civil Right" were definitely the hard edge of the Yes on 8 movement, so I'm not sure how many minds were actually changed. But maybe a few were, and the rest of them at least had to defend their bigoted position to someone who didn't agree with them. And they had to be in the minority for once, surrounded as they were by a bunch of angry queers, which can only be a good experience for them.

After the protest, I had a bunch of hours to kill before my flight back to LA. I had come up with a few ideas of things to do, but I realized I really only wanted to go hang out in the Castro. I think I'm starting to realize the appeal that this little neighborhood held for the gay refugees who first congregated there in the '70s. There is just something really, really nice about seeing rainbow flags EVERYWHERE (even on the trashcans!) and No on 8 placards in the window of nearly every shop and restaurant. Other gayborhoods, such as the West Village in New York and West Hollywood in LA, seem to have lost that sense of community identity that the Castro has retained, despite the fact that it has been gentrified to all hell the same as these other places have been.

After getting off the F line, the first thing I did was walk down Castro street to number 575, the sight of Harvey Milk's Castro Camera and the shooting location for many of the scenes in Milk. The storefront is now an antique shop. (It was rented out and transformed into the Castro Camera set for the film.) Painted on the building facade above the store is a mural with Harvey's memorable words, "You gotta give 'em hope."

I decided my gaycation would not be complete without lunch at Harvey's (no affiliation with Supervisor Milk, just a laid-back bar and restaurant with good food and delicious pear cider on tap). At the moment, they also have a great photo display of pictures of the Castro in the '70s up on the walls, courtesy of the San Francisco GLBT Historical Society.

The good thing about wearing a t-shirt that says "I Am a Victim of H8" is that everybody pretty much knows your deal. And no sooner had I sat down then two women who had also been at the protest invited me over to their table to have lunch with them. So I ended up having a great lunch and shooting the shit with a couple of lesbian teachers from the East Bay. And after hearing all about SF Gay Pride from them, I feel like us New Yorkers have definitely been missing out!

After lunch, which had become more like lupper by the time we were done, I hopped across the street to check out the new storefront exhibit space of the GLBT Historical Society--fascinating as always; that place is a treasure trove of artifacts from gay and radical history. Then it was time to catch the BART back to the airport.

Perhaps the best moment of the entire day came when I was waiting in line to board my flight home. I noticed a woman sitting in the waiting area who looked really familiar--in fact, I was pretty sure I had seen her on the Jumbotron that morning. It turned out to be Cheri S., who, with her partner Kathy (who was a little ahead of me in line) is a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits challenging Prop 8. And here she was, thanking me for coming to be part of the protest...while I was of course thanking her for being willing to be part of the utterly necessary, but still complex and exhausting, legal process.

And then, a very young looking woman kind of snuck up to us and was like, "Hey, I couldn't help overhearing your conversation. I was at the protest, too!" It turned out she is a high school senior in West LA, is out and the president of her high school's Gay-Straight Alliance, and flew to San Francisco on her own for the protest as well.

Maybe it was because I was really tired at that point, but this little moment nearly brought me to tears. Here I was with this couple who were probably about ten years older than me, and this high school kid who was ten years younger than me, all of us with experiences that were probably really different, but the same in many ways, three generations of the movement together in the San Francisco airport.

Since Southwest Airlines doesn't have assigned seats, Cheri and Kathy invited me to sit with them on the flight back, which was really nice since I'm sure they were exhausted. We talked about the movement, we shared our coming-out stories, and at the end of the flight we all exchanged emails, and then I waited for the high school kid from West LA and got her email too. (As an added bonus, I got a sly "I like your shirt" and a big smile from one of the flight attendants, which made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.)

The next steps for the movement remain to be seen. There seems to be a consensus forming around the idea that the supreme court will *not* overturn Prop 8, but that it will uphold the validity of the 18,000 marriages conducted in the few months gay marriage was legal. But, really, anything could happen. The next major mobilization point seems to be "Decision Day," whatever weekday in the next 90 days the court decides to issue its ruling. It will either be a day of celebration or a day of protest.

But regardless of the court's decision, I think the cat is out of the closet on gay marriage. While it will take significantly more grassroots organization than currently exists to keep the movement going, there are definite signs of positive things to come. I'm particularly excited about this.