My experience at gay conference, Senator Dayton's FMA announcement

[Bill of Rights]

Today was Minnesota's annual Rainbow Families Conference. Rainbow Families is unique to Minnesota and is the largest organization of LGBT families in our country. For me, it was bittersweet because as the Minnesota LGBT Coordinator, my Wes Clark For President table was going to be my primary outreach tool. I had planned to introduce our wonderful General to hundreds of possible supporters. As it was, only the Green party had a table at the Resource Fair. I would have loved to bring Clark into the lives of Minnesotans.

1000 adults and 400 children pre-registered. If you scroll down on this page, you will see a photo from last year's conference: http://www.rainbowfamilies.org/conference.htm

During the Welcome, the conference co-chairs told us that two women had just got back from San Francisco after getting married. The two women stood up and waved to the audience. One of the women was Kelli O'Donnell, Rosie's new spouse. We were sitting quite close to her, so I could see her well. She is petite, and she smiled broadly as she waved. (During the workshop portion, my partner decided to skip a session. While roaming about she ran into Kelli and ended up talking with her for 10 minutes.)

The opening remarks were given by Senator Mark Dayton. Nobody knew whether he would come out supporting or fighting the FMA Amendment. It was shocking, to me, how hard he wanted to fight against the amendment's passage. Senator Dayton was emphatic that this was a new era in civil rights. He also said that Bush was hoping to invigorate his base by taking down gay people.

Minneapolis Mayor Ryback (heterosexual) came on stage to introduce the keynote speaker. Before doing so, Ryback reiterated his support for LGBT familes and told us to contact our representatives to let them know that we live in their districts. He talked about hatred towards gay people and also feels that we are in the midst of a new era of civil rights.

The keynote speaker was the executive director of Lambda Legal, Kevin Cathcart. Lambda Legal is national force with chapters in every state and in many cities. It's goal is to achieve full recognition of the civil rights for LGBT persons. Mr. Cathcart was funny. His first words were, "I had two sets of remarks written on paper. Which set I used depended on what Senator Dayton was going to say. I am pleased to rip up the speech that I really didn't want to give." Mr. Cathcart thinks there is a good chance the amendment can be stopped in the Senate. We need 34 senators to vote "Nay." Right now 20+ have gone on public record in support of the LGBT community. Since nobody knew what our Democratic Senator Dayton was going to say, I'm sure Mr. Cathcart got on his cell phone to tell his colleagues as soon as Dayton went on his tirade.

Mr. Cathcart told us to PLEASE make an impact on our legislatures by putting a face on our families. He told us that a photo studio was set up by the cafeteria. We were to get our family picture taken and have it turned immediately into a postcard that would be sent to our MN legislatures.

We visited the "Face on our Families" booth, and got our photo taken. While Alisa and I were attending workshops, or, in her case, chatting with celebrities, our boys were having fun, too. Brandon, age 13, was in the teen group and got to make a movie. Eugene, age 10, walked on stilts, banged on African drums, and developed a crush on a girl whose number he tried to get.

Notes: Nobody brought up specific Democratic candidates. I wore 5 Clark buttons, on my jacket, of various sorts. When friends saw me, they commented on my regalia. I did not see anyone else wearing candidate buttons and I saw lots and lots of people. The attendees were from Minnesota and Western Wisconsin. There were probably a few activists in the audience. But nobody sidled up to me, admiring my Clark buttons.

LGBT people were confused about what to do. They asked, "Should a big group of us go up to Thunder Bay, Canada, to get married?" "Should we fly out to San Francisco?" The Lambda guy thought the marriages in San Francisco would be ending next week, maybe on Monday or Tuesday. "So don't make any plans." He went on to say that this ambiguity would go on for decades. That it is just the beginning.

[gristy]

1. Thanks for the update on Dayton!

The opening remarks were given by Senator Mark Dayton. Nobody knew whether he would come out supporting or fighting the FMA Amendment. It was shocking, to me, how hard he wanted to fight against the amendment's passage. Senator Dayton was emphatic that this was a new era in civil rights. He also said that Bush was hoping to invigorate his base by taking down gay people.

Though I never saw him on any of the lists DU was making of those Senators opposed to the FMA, I wasn't worried.

[slinkerwink]

2. great post!

[Bill of Rights]

3. Thanks, Slinkerwink!

It's my first one.