Because everyone needs to write about the protest on Prop 8, right?
The boyfriend couldn't make it to Saturday's protest because it interfered with his D&D game. He felt bad about missing it, but I reminded him that a 7th level fire dragon running loose in the fields of the Mystic Realm threatens the sanctity of everyone's marriage, gay or straight, and that seemed to put things in context for him.
I went by myself, assuming that I would just randomly bump into someone I knew. Unfortunately, I was too old to know any of the kids who are still students and too young to know the parents from the local GLBT family centers or the gay wing of the old folks home. I recognized a few cuties from online, but didn't actually know any of them and so I kept my distance. I hope my 'cute aloof loner' vibe was evident.
The only interesting part of Saturday's protest came as we were rallying in the mall getting ready to start the march. It was the last home football game of the season, and we had a large number of drunk students dressed ostentatiously in red and white cutting through our group on their way to the stadium. A relatively cute one yelled out "Whoo! Let's fuck Minnesota up the ASS! Yeah!" No one really knew how to respond, but I thought it was funny and I count him on our side.
The drunk guy was certainly better than our protest's official speaker, who gave the speech at the end of the half-mile march. He was a professor and came across as such and could barely wield a megaphone. I felt as though I should have been taking notes. "On the one hand, the people who are in favor of this amendment want to convince you of X, but if you follow their logic, you get Y, which is in contrast with Z. Z is in response to this philosopher, who was trying to say W, which, of course, contradicts the Bible. But I digress..."
All in all, I don't really know how I feel about Saturday's cavalcade of protests. Ours was pretty unorganized. In one of the various posts in the blogosphere, I read someone's account who said that we should have hired an old hippie to lead our protest, since kids these days don't know how to chant in unison or brave the cold or think up catchy signs and banners. Maybe that'd be a good idea for next time.
