For Immediate Release: Feb. 19, 2009
Contact: Andrea Shorter, 415-786-7779
LGBT Civil Rights Advocates Convene Town Hall Before Supreme Court Opening Arguments on March 5 regarding the Overturn of Proposition 8
WHAT: Post-Proposition 8 Community Building Town Hall
WHEN: Thursday, February 26, 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
WHERE: Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, 99 Grove Street, San Francisco
(San Francisco) – A coalition representing a wide array of LGBT community and civil rights groups will hold a Community Building Town Hall meeting to discuss post-Proposition 8 analysis and the upcoming oral argument before the California Supreme Court in the Prop 8 legal challenge.
Cynthia Laird, news editor of the Bay Area Reporter, will moderate a panel discussion with key No on 8 campaign managers and consultants, including campaign director, Steve Smith, state political director Yvette Martinez, and Dan Hawes, field director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Pollster David Binder will present post-election research and analysis. Also present for a Q&A session will be several members of the No on 8 executive committee, including Kate Kendell, Executive Director of NCLR, Delores Jacobs, CEO of the San Diego Gay and Lesbian Center, Tawal Panyacosit, Director of API-Equality, and Geoff Kors, Executive Director of EQCA.
The forum is being co-sponsored elected officials San Francisco Supervisor Bevan Dufty, State Senator Mark Leno, Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, San Francisco Supervisor David Campos, and San Francisco Treasurer Jose Cisneros.
The forum will also feature presentations about next steps from civil rights, faith based, labor and other coalition leaders in anticipation of and beyond the Supreme Court rulings.
This meeting takes place exactly a week before the California Supreme Court hearing on the case to overturn Proposition 8.
Questions can be addressed to event organizer, Andrea Shorter, Director of And Marriage for All at andrea.shorter@andmarriage4all.org. And Marriage For All is a public education campaign that engages communities of color in the marriage equality movement.
The saddest (sickest?) part of it all it that we posit a vote on family rights right next to votes on property taxes, school levies, and HOV lane issues.
We ALLOWED a vote on our family’s legal worth.
We should have rioted in the streets the minute things like PROP 8 appeared, refusing to have our civil rights voted upon. But not enough of us suffer due to inequality; too many of us are VERY comfortable.
I’ll take my fellow gays seriously when they start organizing sit-ins, tax protests, and start blocking traffic and using our very bodies to scream “ENOUGH!” to society and lawmakers.
Until then, we are largely a timid, pathetic bunch who plead and beg for rights as if we don’t believe we actually deserve them in the first place. We feel we have to be “liked enough”, and not appear “too demanding” or “too angry” so we can EARN the right to protect our families from suffering, distress, and harm in times of disease, divorce, and death.
We Don’t Know Any Better.