A month ago (a few days after the Nov 15th National Day of Protest), we found out about the planned Dec 10th "Day Without a Gay". Mickey immediately booked the day off so we would be available to get involved.
After a week of waiting to see if somebody would start something, and then another week trying on my own to get something large enough for a group organized, I gave up. Mickey and I signed up (just the two of us) to work as food servers in the Broward Outreach homeless shelter here in Pompano Beach.
The turning point (when I realized that we were going to be on our own) was when Mickey picked up last Wednesday's South Florida Blade (the gay weekly newspaper) and read the following entry to me from the Datebook (community calendar) section:
"Wednesday 12.10.08
T[his will be] the first (and presumably last) "Day Without A Gay", a protest where all gay people are supposed to call in sick, to protest unfair treatment of the GLBT community. On your day off, we are supposed to volunteer for a local charitable organization. But despite the motives, is anyone going to actually do it? We at the South Florida Blade will all be here at work, as we are a gay-owned business and calling in sick would do more harm than good. And honestly, if we did call in we'd just sit at home and watch TV all day, which isn't much benefit to local charities, so...do what you wish, we make no judements either way."
Unbelievable! Don't they have an ounce of imagination? If they would have gone to the web page (http://www.daywithoutagay.org/) they would have found half a dozen alternative ideas for situations like theirs so that their gay owned business would not grind to a halt, but instead they published a high-profile statement that diminished what little effort might have been underway here by people like Mickey and I at the very bottom of the grassroots.
It is at times like this that my altruistic nature becomes tarnished and I move along the spectrum toward being a cynic like so many others before me...like the writers and editor of the South Florida Blade!
Today, in Broward County, because two gay men...a bonafide gay family...were visible outside of the gay community to a dozen other volunteers and a hundred or more homeless people, there is a broader awareness that a gay couple are indeed a family and we participate in the community as such! That is what the people in Florida needed to see more of before Amendment 2 went on the ballot, and it is the only thing that will make a difference for gay families in the future.
In spite of what our local gay paper thinks, two guys did their part today and made a difference for all gay residents in Broward County.
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