When openly gay Congressman Barney Frank first heard about the LGBT National Equality March in D.C., he was far from thrilled. “I literally do not understand how [this march] will do anything. People are kidding themselves. I don’t want people patting themselves on the back for doing something that is useless.” Rep. Frank encouraged others to stay home, saying that demonstrations would do little to pressure Congress. And he was right.
Unlike the recent tea party protests, the press barely covered the National Equality March (NEM) that took place on October 10th and 11th. Like Frank said, the only thing NEM demonstrators put pressure on was the grass they trampled.
And it wasn’t just the lack of press coverage that made this year’s LGBT March on Washington so ineffective. Perhaps another reason is the national decline of activism, particularly LGBT activism. We can march in Washington once every year to demand rights, but if we are not galvanized as a community—if we are not well-organized—then we cannot grab the media’s attention. While the demonstrators are probably a more passionate group of LGBT activists, they were poorly organized and didn’t say anything new. There was no new platform for LGBT rights; we mainly demanded the same things, such as the passage of LGBT hate crime legislation and the end of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
More so, I think this particular march showed us that the modern LGBT movement lacks not just institutional organization, but organizational personalities—leaders who help bring us together as a community. If you were to ask several ordinary people on the street, “Who are some prominent American LGBT activists?” you would probably get many blank stares. Unlike the Civil Rights Movement, the LGBT rights movement doesn’t have any clear figures like Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X. Our activists are not nationally known. They are people like Cleve Jones, who I had never heard of before he organized NEM or Urvashi Vaid, who heads the the relatively unknown Arcus Foundation. In fact, the most famous person to speak at the rally was Lady Gaga, who is not even an activist. In a way, the gay rights movement is still searching for its Franklin D. Roosevelt, someone who will hopefully unify us with mutual goals and powerful rhetoric.
But I don’t think there can be an FDR for the gay rights movement. There’s an evident internal struggle within the modern LGBT rights movement that is noticeable among different LGBT groups. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Human Rights Campaign both originally put out different statements on whether or not to try and push for a transgender-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act. How can we fight for LGBT rights when we can’t even clearly define what the diverse LGBT community wants and how it wants it?
If there’s anything we can learn, it is that we should try to directly influence the legislative process directly rather than indirectly. By lobbying Congress and establishing allies there, the LGBT community can ultimately see the legislative changes it needs. LGBT people now have a friend in the White House who is open to more LGBT-friendly policies, including the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The LGBT community has gained visibility over the past two decades; now, it just needs people to help move legislation through Congress. For actual results we should take a page from Barney Frank and work with members of Congress and other politicians. Results won’t happen without organization and cooperation. At the end of the day, we need pressure from the grassroots, and not merely pressure on grass roots.
