Today I, along with hundreds of my gay and straight allies, marched from Florida State University to the Capitol building in Tallahassee, FL. I thought this would be a prominently student protest and maybe around 100 people max. I was pleasantly surprised to see people of all ages and color attend the rally for equal rights. Here's some photos :)
Starting the March from Westcott Fountain at FSU.
The old and the young marching side-by-side for equal rights.
My best friend marching with me :) (In the yellow)
One Love!
Gotta love our straight allies! Thank you to all supportive straight allies out there! Today was for you too :)
What Do We Want? : Equality!
When Do We Want It? : Now!
Hey it's me :) In the grey Hollister lol
Everyone listening to the speakers. They were all amazing and very touching. There's an unlimited amount of heartbreaking and also uplifting stories when it comes to the Equal Rights movement.
I like her poster :)
The Generation of the Equal Rights movement! :D
Yes We Can!
By far one of the saddest moments.. she detailed a young man's struggle. She told his story of how he fought to keep his family together and help make money as his mom was in the hospital with breast cancer. When they discovered he was gay, they kicked him out. He later discovered he had AIDS, and this was in the 70's. He had little time to live, so he called his parents. They still wanted nothing to do with him. But he still told his dad "I Love You." He died four days after that conversation.
Shout out to our Jewish brothers and sister!
The End of the rally.
The day was filled with anger and love rolled into one. We had so many amazing speakers. We had a county commission speak to the crowd, along with a Jewish cantor and a pastor of a local church who are also helping to spread tolerance and equality. We also had a few African-American speakers detail how we need to reach out and find common ground with the Black community.
If I learned anything at all today, it's that we shouldn't judge. Don't judge people based on their sexuality or color. Don't judge someone because of their religion. There are so many Christians, Jews, Muslims, people of all kinds of faiths and backgrounds who fight for Equality. Just because some wingnuts in the leadership of the religious organizations give them a bad name doesn't mean we need to discriminate against everyone who identifies with these religions. And people may blame the African-American community for the passage of Prop 8 in California, but from what I saw, there are many African-American allies with us, and many more that we need to reach out to. We need to work for this.