Subject: Dan Savage calls BAR "obsessively out-of-touch"
From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 5 May 2000 16:29:44 EDT

The Stranger (Seattle free weekly)
May 4 - 10, 2000
1122 East Pike St., Suite 1225, Seattle, WA 98122
(E-Mail:  [email-masked] ) ( http://www.thestranger.com )

A MOVEMENT & A MARKET

I Went to the Millennium March on Washington and All I Got was This Lousy 
George Michael Mousepad
by Dan Savage

    Two years ago the largest gay and lesbian political organization in the 
United States, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), along with the nation's 
largest gay and lesbian religious organization, Metropolitan Community 
Churches, called for a national gay and lesbian march on Washington in the 
year 2000.  The Millennium March on Washington, which took place last Sunday, 
was bathed in controversy from the start.  A small group of hardcore gay and 
lesbian lefties fought long and hard to discredit the march.  Calling 
themselves the Ad Hoc Committee for an Open Process, the group churned out 
hundreds of press releases – most demanding to know just what gave a national 
gay rights organization with 300,000 members the right to call a march on 
Washington.

    Now, I'd like to thank the Ad Hockers for their hard work.  They 
complained that decisions were being made behind closed doors.  They 
complained that the march was going to be just a big party.  And when they 
saw how many corporate sponsors had signed on, they complained that the gay 
and lesbian community is a movement, not a market.  Finally, they urged gays 
and lesbians to boycott the Millennium March 
on Washington for Equality.

    As I admire the Ad Hockers' passion, it pains me to report that the 
Millennium March on Washington was a success.  Yes, Congressman Barney Frank 
stayed away [Fenceberry:  Actually Barney was there but left without speaking 
because the rally was so far behind schedule], as did Washington state's Ed 
Murray.  And thanks to the Ad Hockers' efforts, a lot of ink was spilled over 
divisions in the gay and lesbian community.  

     San Francisco's obsessively out-of-touch gay newsweekly, The Bay Area 
Reporter, went so far as to encourage its readers to stay home.  But gays and 
lesbians poured into Washington by the tens of thousands.  I was at the 
marches in 1987 and 1993, and the crowds at the 2000 march were as large or 
larger.  And if we judge this march by the same yardstick used to judge the 
last two – i.e., media coverage – even the Ad Hockers will have to concede 
that the Millennium March on Washington was a success.  Once the media saw 
that the Ad Hockers' dire predictions for the march (No one was coming! It 
was going to be a disaster!) were false, the focus shifted from whether or 
not anyone would be marching to the demands made by the 300,000 or more 
marchers who did show up.  From The New York Times to the Los Angeles Times, 
from MSNBC to CNN, the march got gay and lesbian issues an exhaustive airing 
in the middle of a presidential election year.

    But hey, I don't want to give the impression that the march was perfect.  
There were plenty of perfectly insipid moments.  For instance, when did 
George Michael become a hero in the struggle for gay rights?  Until he got 
arrested with his pants down in a public toilet, George Michael was an 
insipid closet-case, occasionally taunted by that insipid 
out-of-the-closet-case Boy George.  But there he was, at the Equality Rocks 
concert and the march, blathering about gay rights.  George was even on the 
cover of The Advocate's Millennium March on Washington souvenir issue.  And 
at both the concert and the march, Ellen spoke, Ellen's mom spoke, and 
Ellen's "wife," Anne Heche, spoke.  Could someone tell me when the gay and 
lesbian civil rights movement became the DeGeneres' family firm?  Must all of 
Ellen's relatives get their own speaking slot?

    More problems:  Victims of hate crimes were brought on stage at Equality 
Rocks, and we were asked to cheer for them.  ("Good for you – your son got 
killed!")  And the crowd was almost entirely white, with lots of pumped-up 
guys walking around with their shirts off.  When one speaker at the rally – a 
black gay man – gave an impassioned speech condemning "a bankrupt [gay] 
culture of uniformity" and "a homogenized homosexuality," I thought he might 
get booed.  Fortunately, the conforming crowd members – boys in their Gap 
T-shirts, girls in their Gap T-shirts – were ignoring him.  And they ignored 
the next speaker.  And the next.  Only when Ellen walked out did the crowd 
rise and cheer.  Ellen was on TV, and Ellen is famous, and that's all that 
matters anymore.  Ellen gave a rambling, off-the-cuff speech, and the crowd 
went wild.

    Then HRC Executive Director Elizabeth Birch got up to speak – and she 
made a reference to the Ad Hockers.  "Some people did not want you to be here 
today," said Birch.  "But you listened with your hearts ... and you voted 
with your feet."  People voted with their feet during Birch's speech, too, 
marching their asses off the mall and into a huge, fenced, 
concentration-camp-like pen that spread for blocks on Pennsylvania Avenue.  A 
five-buck mandatory donation got you into the pen, called the Millennium 
festival, where marchers could enjoy margaritas, eat barbecue, and buy 
T-shirts.

    In the pen I met a young gay couple from Chicago.  Matt, in a Gap 
T-shirt, and Kirby, in an Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt, hadn't heard anything 
about a controversy.  "We came to the march to show solidarity," said Matt, 
"and because it's a voting year."  The boys felt the march was a lot less 
political than Chicago's annual pride 
parade.  "It's more like Market Days," observed Matt, referring to an annual 
festival hosted by businesses in Chicago that want to appeal to gay and 
lesbian consumers.

    Speaking of which, when my friends and I left the march, we passed an ad 
in a bus shelter near Dupont Circle, the heart of Washington's gay 
neighborhood.  "It's not a choice," read the copy.  "It's the way we're 
built.  Subaru's all-wheel driving system.  In every car we make."  Gay-niche 
marketing drives Ad Hockers and other hardcore gay lefties crazy.  We're a 
movement, they insist, not a market.  But some of us are old enough to 
remember when Ellen DeGeneres, Melissa Etheridge, and George Michael were all 
closeted – way, way back in the late '90s.  Back then, gay lefties complained 
about businesses that didn't market to gays and lesbians.  The beer 
companies, the vodka companies, the cigarette companies – they made a lot of 
money off gays and lesbians, so how come they didn't advertise in "our" 
publications?  This annoyed gay lefties to no end.  Now everyone advertises 
in our publications, and gay lefties are still annoyed.  And really, do we 
have to choose between being a movement and a market?  Can't we be both?

    But the pissing match between the HRC and the Ad Hoc Committee for an 
Open Process wasn't about marketing or process or openness, but about power.  
Who's gonna be in charge?  After last Sunday, it should be clear to 
absolutely everyone that, like it or not, the HRC is in charge.  The crowds 
at the march clearly weren't turned off by the HRC's top-down leadership.  
They want leadership – what they don't 
want is to be drawn into endless, mind-numbing debates about how decisions 
are going to be made.

    And while the great gay unwashed want leaders, the reception that serious 
people like Birch got compared to the reception that morons like George 
Michael got made one thing clear:  Gays and lesbians want to be led by a 
person they've seen on TV – someone attractive, who makes them feel good, and 
who isn't going to ask them to think.  The ideal gay leader for the new 
millennium is not some smarty-pants like Elizabeth Birch or Andrew Sullivan, 
or anyone on the Ad Hoc Committee for an Open Process, but someone like that 
sock puppet in the Pets.com commercials.  He's on TV; he makes us laugh; 
he'll never get old; he doesn't ask tough questions; and he gives us 
permission to shop.  He's too cute and funny not to be gay, so it's only a 
matter of time before the Pets.com sock puppet gets busted in a public 
bathroom somewhere.  Then the editors of The Advocate will put him on the 
cover of their magazine, and inform us that the outed sock puppet is a hero 
in the struggle for gay rights.

    Finally, if I may venture a very specific criticism of the Ad Hockers:  
Telling gays and lesbians to stay away from Washington because the march was 
going to be a big party was a mistake.  Outside of pleasure-hating, 
hard-left, gay political circles, most gays and lesbians love parties.  
Instead of trying to convince people that the march was being run by monsters 
– who happen to be part of a mainstream gay group with 300,000 members, an 
organization that worked hard to make the event as pleasurable as possible – 
you Ad Hockers should've convinced people that you were in charge.  You 
should have told gays and lesbians that the march was going to be an all-day, 
open-process teach-in, complete with diversity training, plenary sessions, 
street theater, and a rally that would go on until the last Latvian lesbian 
leather-daddy got to speak.  People would've stayed away in droves.