PW County, which is where the 13th district is located, is truly an ex-burb of DC. It has a much larger population of African-Americans, lots of single family house with sizable yards, big bible churches. It looks like the “South”. Its an hour plus drive from Arlington and a completely different world.

Arlington looks and feels more like a mix of a highly selective private college campus and a high value business center. Even its physical size is much smaller.

The statement in the post is great, but I wonder if a similar statement from an official from Berkley Ca, Madison WI, or Miami Beach would have been considered noteworthy.

As to your comment, I would say that humans are great at resolving cognitive dissonance. And for every gay person who is out and proud and just doing what he or she does and not giving a crap about what some “holy” book says – that creates cognitive dissonance with the fundies.

Either this person who I know and love and who I know to be a solid human being is a sinful piece of trash, or I’m wrong in my “theology.”

For every single out gay person, we build support. Let’s keep at it :)

I’m not sure that anti-gays will dismiss this kind of protest as pointless — I think it’s the sort of thing that worries them, if only subliminally: we made no progress until we started becoming visible, and the tactic that has worked best has been to put a human face on LGBTs and not let the stereotypes stand unchallenged. And I suspect that it’s the smaller, local efforts that have the most impact: it’s easy to shrug off a demonstration in the streets of another city, but your neighbors at city hall, not so much.

He’s from Virginia’s 13th district and I would post a link to a map of it, but it won’t go through.

We have Bob Marshall to thank for making it illegal for a Virginia based company to give health benefits to gay partners. We have him to thank for the confusing laws that won’t stand constitutional scrutiny but which say that no two people of the same sex can enter any contract that substantially replicates the benefits of marriage.

Well, yes “consider,” but “actually asking” really IS probably going to be much more useful. . . otherwise, lacking telepathy, most people won’t know what we’d like to have.

Upon re-reading I see you are correct.

Hyhybt-

I thought you were saying something else, see Michael C’s answer in reply. :)

Hope everyone enjoys their week-end.

Hyhybt, I agree that most anti-gay people will dismiss this public form of protest as being pointless and silly. That doesn’t make it irrelevant. Some people are anti-gay, MOST people are simply unaware of gay people and what it means to be gay in the United States. Any action to put a face on marriage equality has a positive effect. Every effort to display a societal need for equality brings us closer to healthier and happier lives.

Respectful responses to our community in this fight have been rare by these types of officials, if you can’t see what type of effect that has, then you need to do some research on human behavior. Signs and statments of support have ONLY been helpful in our movement. Dismissing them as “nothing” is to say we don’t need your support, when in fact this is the way we get laws and views changed.

This is a great project, but everyone in Arlington is already on board.