First published in an earlier version on August 22, 2003, in Letters from CAMP Rehoboth.
Forty years ago, when Bayard Rustin was organizing the 1963 March on Washington, his homosexuality was highly scandalous, so he took the title of "deputy director" to downplay his own importance. Yet Strom Thurmond still denounced him on the floor of the Senate as a communist, draft-dodger, and homosexual.
It was thus especially fitting when planners of the 40th Anniversary rally on August 23 in Washington reached out to the gay community. This year, The Human Rights Campaign, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and PFLAG were listed as conveners. Gay speakers Matt Foreman of NGLTF and Mandy Carter of Southerners on New Ground paid tribute to Rustin. Martin Luther King III said, "Homophobia has no place in the Beloved Community." That was nice, but what other messages were gays asked to endorse? The calls for unity and talk of "the cause" concealed the fact that many decent people do not agree with all the organizers' proposals.
The rally saw much talk of the Beloved Community, but it became clear that only progressive Democrats are welcome as residents. For example, Damu Smith of Black Voices for Peace attacked Condoleeza Rice, Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, and affirmative action foe Ward Connerly, describing President Bush as "their master." Even as speakers condemned Republican demonizing of people, they committed the same offense. This reminded me of gays who condemn Bush's opposition to gay marriage while conveniently forgetting President Clinton's ads on Christian radio stations touting his signature on the Defense of Marriage Act.
The march's demands included no gay issues other than bills on hate crimes and job discrimination. It is odd that a fundamental issue like marriage, which is on everyone's lips and in all the news, was too hot for a civil rights march, while the official demands included normalizing relations with Cuba, opposing ROTC programs, and denouncing U.S. imperialism. If the marchers had time to adopt a foreign policy, surely they had time to defend gay families. But wait: one of the organizers, Rev. Walter Fauntroy, is a prominent supporter of the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment.
Several speakers attacked Bush's Middle East policies. Mahdi Bray of the Muslim American Society referred to "this modern-day Pharaoh on Pennsylvania Avenue." James Zogby of the Arab American Institute said, "We promised to liberate Iraq, but we brought them untold pain and chaos." He ignored the tyrant we defeated who gassed Kurds, tortured children, and filled mass graves.
Honoring Rustin and Martin Luther King, Jr. does not prevent us from thinking for ourselves. I shared King's opposition to the Vietnam War, and disagreed with Rustin's opposition to World War II. Sometimes defending freedom requires you to fight, as with terrorists and those who harbor them. Coretta Scott King, though a great friend of gay people, revealed hopeless naivete about the world when she said, "Non-violence must become the basis of America's foreign policy."
Just as all wars are not the same, non-violent resistance is not universally effective. It worked for Gandhi and King because the people of Britain and America truly believed that their nations stood for something better than the brutal suppression their news organizations reported. Had television cameras not been present at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965, the Bloody Sunday attacks by police against peaceful marchers would not have been seen by millions of Americans, and we would not have gotten the Voting Rights Act that year.
It does not honor King and Rustin to misapply their lessons or to use their memories as a political truncheon with which to beat up the current President for taking our national security problems seriously.
So while I appreciate the gay outreach, the protest still left me feeling like an outsider. And that was fine. The Mall sees many rallies, but moments of transcendence are few.
My own commemoration was late at night, when the crowds were gone and I could stand on the very spot at the Lincoln Memorial where Dr. King stood forty years ago and hear his majestic, ministerial cadences in my mind's ear: "It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." Those words still challenge even civil rights workers.