2/2: Gay Activists Challenge Presidential Candidates on Eve of IL Primary

For Immediate Release: January 25, 2008
For Information: Andy Thayer, 773.209.1187; Bob Schwartz, 773.878.3697


Gay Activists Challenge
Presidential Candidates
On Eve of Illinois Primary
Chicago – Three days before the "Super Tuesday" Illinois primary, gay rights
activists will march through Chicago's "Loop" demanding that all of the
Presidential candidates endorse legal equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and
Transgendered (LGBT) people. In commemoration of Marriage Equality Day 2008,
protesters will gather at 11 AM, Saturday, February 2nd in front of the Cook
County Marriage License Bureau, 118 N. Clark Street, before marching to the
campaign offices of various Presidential candidates.
All of the Republican candidates have repudiated support for gay legal
equality, so the main question is whether or not major candidates from the main
opposition, the Democrats, will offer any alternative. Unfortunately the
evidence shows that while several leading Democrats in the race mouth verbal
endorsement of legal equality for gay people, their public statements and voting
records show that such "support" is mostly public relations rhetoric.
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards all pretend to support
equal marriage rights for same sex couples in the form of civil unions. Never
mind the fact that civil unions exclude us from some 1,138 rights in federal law
that are only available to married couples. Never mind that civil union
"separate but equal" arrangements for gays are inherently un-equal.
Each candidate knows the difference between civil unions and equal marriage
rights (Obama is a former constitutional law professor!). But they play
ignorant and refuse to endorse equal marriage rights, never straying from
carefully scripted, poll-tested responses
. . . and they prefer that we "shut up" about their failure to truly support
equality.
The Saturday, February 2nd protest march will expose the phony "support" for
equal rights that some candidates profess, and reassert the proposition that
equal rights for any group, including Lesbians and Gays, cannot be handed
down "from on high" by politicians, but must be won by the efforts of LGBT
people ourselves.
The march is sponsored by the Gay Liberation Network
(_http://www.GayLiberation.net_ (http://www.GayLiberation.net) ), Chicago's direct action
LGBT
organization. For more information, please call 773.209.1187 or email
_LGBTLiberation [at] aol.com_ (mailto:LGBTLiberation [at] aol.com)

- 30 -