Gay Community Hopes To Rock The Nation With Massive Saturday Protests

As an angry response to the narrow victory by the antiGay marriage forces in California with Proposition 8, the nation's Gay community is planning to rock the nation with massive Saturday protests. Progressive organizations such as MoveOn.Org which contributed $300,000 towards defeating the measure are urging their 4.2 million contributing members to support efforts to reverse the measure in California, most likely by the state Supreme Court. A number of citizens are complaining that the wording of the measure was confusing, and when some voted "yes" they thought they were voting in favor of Gay marriage and not against it. But it is unclear whether this will be enough to rule the vote invalid or not. Many ballot measures often use confusing language, but have been ruled as valid or constitutional in the past.

The Mormon Church which was actively involved in the "yes" on Proposition 8 campaign, putting around $22 million dollars into the effort is likely to face many of the Saturday protests both in California and nationally. Interestingly, while the Mormon Church did very little to denounce breakaway cult member Warren Jeffs and his illegal polygamy or child marriage, the Mormon Church instead put a huge effort into the antiGay measure claiming that it was important to the defense of traditional marriage, even though polygamy was once an official church teaching. All of this serious hypocrisy as well as so much Mormon money going into funding the antiGay measure has only galvanised support to hurt the Mormon Church with protests or financially to punish their hypocrisy on the marriage issue.

But a major problem for the Gay community in California was that despite a huge 61% vote win by Barack Obama recently, perhaps as much as 70% of both African American and Hispanic voters might have voted for the antiGay measure. The problem is that these ethic communities simply do not view their own civil rights struggles as comparable to the civil rights struggle of the Gay community. So far, the level of acceptance for the Gay community has been far stronger among the White community, where even many Republicans voted against Proposition 8 in California.

The real problem for America's Gay community is that they haven't really sold their case to many Americans yet. With weak support in ethnic communities such as among the African American as well as Hispanic communities, it is really up to the Gay community to better sell their struggle issues to these communities as well as the larger population. And any protests planned for Saturday need to be absolutely peaceful and legal, as any illegal or violent activity will only hurt the cause of the Gay community to sell their case to America as well.

The fact of the matter is that the nation's Gay community really need more time to sell their case to America. Younger voters tend to be far more supportive than older voters as a rule. However. the real hopeful sign is that most antiGay elections tend to trending more closely divided and less lopsided than only a few years ago. If anything that is sign that at least some progress is being made in the efforts of America's Gay community to make their case for equality to mainstream America. But whether Saturday's planned protests will really help to advance the Gay community cause is still a question to be asked.