Source: seaQwa staff, Reuters, New York Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Boston Globe, Wichita Eagle, Fresno Bee, Knoxville News, Florida Times Union, Seattle Times, Missoulian 

Advocates for equality in marriage laws stretched in Seattle from one end of the Broadway business district to the other. Protesters carried banners and colorful signs and waved flags as they marched from Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill to Westlake Park downtown.

It was a scene repeated throughout the country as gay people and supporters gathered in small and large cities to call for full equality in marriage laws.

Tens of thousands of gay marriage advocates held boisterous rallies on across the United States and abroad in a coordinated protest of California's vote this month to ban same-sex marriage, Reuters reports.

The demonstrations -- from a sun-splashed throng in San Francisco to a chilly crowd in Minneapolis -- came 11 days after California voters narrowly passed a ballot measure, Proposition 8, that outlawed previously legal same-sex ceremonies in the state, New York Times reports. The measure’s passage has spurred protests in California and across the country, including at several Mormon temples, a reflection of that church’s ardent backing of the proposition.

Demonstrations had been organized for Saturday afternoon in the United States and elsewhere, including Canada, Europe and Australia, coordinated by a campaign on the Internet.

"From Golden Gate Park to Loring Park, we will step together until this battle is won," Minneapolis City Council Member Gary Schiff told 700 people gathered on the plaza of the Hennepin County Government Center on a chilly afternoon, Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.

"We will not forget the tens of thousands of gay couples who had their loves erased in California," Schiff said

In Las Vegas, the comedian Wanda Sykes surprised a crowd of more than 1,000 rallying outside a gay community center by announcing that she is gay and had wed her wife in California on Oct. 25, New York Times reports. Sykes, who divorced her husband of seven years in 1998, had never publicly discussed her sexual orientation but said the passage of Proposition 8 had propelled her to be open about it.

At Volunteer Park in Seattle, Charlene Strong took to the amphitheater stage and began with a line Harvey Milk often used, "I'm here to recruit you," she said. "All over the country, we're saying, "Oh, no you don't."

Strong became an activist after her wife, Kate Fleming, died in a freak flood that inundated their home. Strong, who gave moving testimony about her experience when the legislature was considering Washington's domestic partnership law, recounted the horrors she faced when a hospital wouldn't let her visit her dying partner, and when a funeral home told her she had no right to make arrangements for Kate. "They said, "Oh, no you don't!'"

"We're tired; we're frustrated; we're angry," Strong said to loud cheers from the crowd. The crowd chanted back the phrase she'd already repeated several times, and which she said LGBT people everywhere must shout out every time people in power try to deny equal rights to LGBT people: "Oh, no you don't"

Mayor Greg Nichols declared Marriage Equality Day in the city, and recalled a vote here in 1978 that stopped a long string of successful ballot initiatives that had stripped LGB protections out metropolitan employment non-discrimination ordinances. "35 years ago, Seattle said 'No!' to discrimination," he said, noting that the large crowd was saying it again. Calling Proposition 8 "a hateful measure that should never even have been on the ballot," the mayor congratulated the crowd for standing against it.

"I just decided we need to speak out," said march organizer Kyler Powell, according to Seattle Times. He organized the Seattle demonstration which, while exuberant, was also peaceful. "We are not going to sit like a lame duck and take the injustice that has been dealt the gay community."

Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, one of the state's openly gay legislators and a longtime leader of the fight for gay marriage in Olympia, said that during the upcoming session of the Legislature he will once again introduce a bill to legalize same-sex marriage, Seattle Times reports. But it is going to take more than a march on a pretty day to get the measure passed, Murray said.

"The challenge is to march by the thousands not just here but in Olympia. Are you willing to do that?" he asked the crowd, which gathered for a rally at Volunteer Park before marching to Westlake Park.

"Are you willing to doorbell in suburbia and rural Washington and seek the friendship of African-American evangelicals, and Catholics and Mormons? If you are willing to do that, you will achieve equality."

In Boston, organizers estimated that about 4,000 people rallied outside Boston City Hall, despite intermittent rain. Boston Police do not make official crowd estimates.

Briellen Daggett told Boston Globe that she and her girlfriend had planned to move to California next year. "I absolutely will not move there," unless the law is reversed, said Daggett, 20, of Middleborough, Mass.

Brightly colored signs and rainbow flags were scattered through the Boston crowd, which gathered around a stage as activists from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and MassEquality spoke, along with state and local politicians.

Ryan Brown, a field organizer for MassEquality, said the rally was organized in just a few days by a handful of people.

Massachusetts and Connecticut are the only two states that allow same-sex marriage.

In Manhattan, where some protesters were offering hula-hoop demonstrations, Sean Petersen, 21, a musician from Brooklyn, called the vote "mean-spirited and divisive", according to Reuters.

In Chicago, Andy Thayer, a co-founder of the Gay Liberation Network, exhorted a crowd that had listened to a gay men's choir sing a peppy version of the hymn "Down by the Riverside" to follow through on the spirit of the protest.

"We can't just let this be a blowing-off-steam rally, as satisfying as that might be," he said. "We're here to win equal marriage rights right here in Illinois."

"I am here to protect my marriage and my family," said 39-year-old Susan Ferris at Los Angeles City Hall.

In San Francisco, a crowd estimated by police at 7,500 converged on the city's civic center, some wearing T-shirts emblazoned with "Milk," a reference to the county's first openly gay supervisor, Harvey Milk, who was assassinated 30 years ago.

Although a march had not been planned, about noon a large portion of the crowd set off along Market Street and split into two, one headed for the Castro District and another for the Embarcadero. Police made several arrests for holding up traffic, but the event was otherwise peaceful, Los Angeles Times reports.

"A turning point has been reached," landscape architect James York, 45, said at the San Francisco rally, according to Reuters.

"It’s not 'Yes we can,' " said Tom Ammiano, a San Francisco city supervisor, at the rally referring to President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign mantra. "It's 'Yes we will.' "

In Los Angeles, where wildfires had temporarily grabbed headlines from continuing protests over Proposition 8, Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa addressed a crowd of about 9,000 people in Spanish and English, and seemed to express confidence that the measure, which is being challenged in California courts, would be overturned, New York Times reports.

"I've come here from the fires because I feel the wind at my back as well," said the mayor, who arrived at a downtown rally from the fire zone on a helicopter. "It’s the wind of change that has swept the nation. It is the wind of optimism and hope."

"It's invigorating and exciting to see us unite as a people," Christine Pease, 39, told Los Angeles Times as she handed out stickers with a yellow equal sign to demonstrators near Los Angeles City Hall. "I hope that it shows there are a lot more people affected by the choices we make on a ballot."

The Los Angeles Police Department estimated that 10,000 to 12,000 people attended the event, well below the 40,000 the department had expected.

A running theme during speeches before the crowd at Los Angeles City Hall was the role of African Americans in the passage of the anti-gay-marriage measure, LA Times reports. An exit poll showed that black voters favored the proposition by a ratio of more than 2 to 1, and many of the proposition's opponents have denounced that support.

Again and again, speakers asked the crowd not to blame the black community.
"We did not lose the fight because of African Americans," said Lorri L. Jean, 51, chief executive of the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center.

Referring to black civil rights leaders, she said, "They have taught us, supported us and stood with us." The crowd cheered.

Elsewhere, about 900 protesters braved a tornado watch and menacing rain clouds in Washington to rally in front of the Capitol and on to the White House, the Times reports. "Gay, straight, black, white; marriage is a civil right," the marchers chanted.

In Cincinnati, a crowd set at "a couple of hundred people" by KYPost.com stood in the rain at Cincinnati's City Hall to protest the passage of Prop. 8. Impact Cincinnati, organized the rally there.

Protesters said the passage of the law in such a liberal state as California was a true wake-up call.

Cameron Tolle of Impact Cincinnati said, "I think today it's time to let our communities know that this hatred and second class citizenship that is being imposed on our laws is not going to be acceptable. And we're no longer going to be complacent and we're ready to start some change."

In Florida, where an anti-gay marriage amendment also passed this month, more than 200 protesters marched around Hemming Plaza in Jacksonville on a drizzly Saturday afternoon.

The peaceful protest included signs with slogans such as "We Wouldn't Vote on Your Marriage" and "Separation of Church and Hate." Many of the signs were left at the entrance to City Hall when it was over, the Times-Union reports.

"We are trying to reach out to people so that they will realize we are people just like they are," said Shane Denmark of Merge Jacksonville, a gay and lesbian support group. "We just want our equal rights. That's what today was about."

Florida Amendment 2, creating a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between a man and women, was passed by 62 percent of the voters. Florida is one of 30 states with some sort of same-sex marriage ban.

Molli Motti of Jacksonville told the Times Union she wasn't surprised the ban passed in Florida, but the California vote caught a lot of people off guard, the Times Union reports.

"It shouldn't even really be an issue," Motti said. "You're not supposed to mix church and state."

But it wasn't just in the big cities that protesters took to streets and public plazas.

A group of about 100 people gathered at Wichita City Hall this afternoon as part of the nationwide protest. They shared the sidewalk with a small group from the Rev. Fred Phelp's Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, who were protesting the protest, but there was no conflict between the two groups, Wichita Eagle reports.

Hundreds of supporters of same-sex marriage gathered at Fresno City Hall, vowing not to back down in their fight against Proposition 8 and urging a boycott of businesses that helped fund the initiative.

Protesters there turned their attention to what comes next. Matthew Payne of Fresno compared the same-sex marriage ban to former laws against biracial marriages and women's right to vote. He and other speakers vowed not to stop until same-sex marriages are legal again in California, Fresno Bee reports.

"We're not going to go back," Payne told the crowd, which a security officer estimated at about 500.

In Missoula, MT, Jamee Greer took charge of a sizable crowd that united and protested Saturday in favor of equal marriage rights, the Missoulian reports.

As happened throughout the country, it was a group pulled together in Missoula by the Internet and text messages.

He gave the group its marching orders, announcing the rules of the road, as the protesters carried signs and prepared to march from North Higgins Avenue to the Missoula County Courthouse.

"This is about basic human rights and civil rights not being met here at home in Montana," said Greer, who arrived at the protest organized by Join the Impact, an Internet-text-message campaign that spurred the simultaneous international gay rights protests.

Down south in Knoxville, TN more than 100 people rallied at the World's Fair Park in a cold wind to peaceably protest passage of Prop. 8.

Rally organizer Jen Crawford, 24, of Knoxville first heard from a friend that rallies were planned nationwide Saturday to protest the constitutional amendment, Knoxville News reports. After considering going to a nearby city for a rally, Crawford decided to start one here.

"I'm happy, as a straight ally, that I can pour into this and show my support," she said.

Knoxville wasn't the only city in Tennessee to rally, according to Knoxville News. Gatherings were held in Memphis and Nashville, according to Todd Cramer, a member of the Knox County Committee of the Tennessee Equality Project.

Source: Seattle report by Robin Evans, seaQwa editor
Gay marriage supporters rally across United States | Reuters
Across U.S., Big Rallies for Same-Sex Marriage | New York Times
Minneapolis rally protests gay marriage bans | Minneapolis Star Tribune
Thousands attend same-sex marriage rally in Boston | Boston Globe
Gay marriage supporters protest at City Hall | Wichita Eagle
Same-sex marriage supporters gather at Fresno City Hall, say fight continues | Fresno Bee
Proposition 8 opponents rally | Knoxville News
Gay advocates protest marriage amendment | Florida Times Union
Thousands rally for gay marriage in Seattle | Seattle Times
Gay rights: Protesters join forces globally | Missoulian

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