WHY MARCH?:

* Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered people continue to have our rights used as a political football in the national arena. Republicans introduce the federal "Marriage Protection Amendment" which would more or less permanently class us as non-citizens. Democrats, while largely opposing the amendment, are with only a few exceptions, too cowardly to positively endorse full equal legal rights, including marriage. In this, they mirror their cowardice on a whole range of issues, content to take pot shots at Republican failures (many of which they participated in), but refusing to provide an alternative. While the federal amendment won't pass the Senate this year, anti-gay forces are using it to stoke anti-gay opinion and divert attention from their manifest failures on the war, hurricane relief, health care, etc.

* Here in Illinois, far right forces are attempting to put an anti-gay advisory referendum on the November ballot. While the referendum would be advisory, its real aim is to scapegoat gays – to raise the climate of hate in Illinois and set back acceptance of LGBT people. History has shown that referenda like this not only raise hate, they promote violence. In the year following passage of Colorado’s Amendment 2, for example, anti-LGBT violence surged 129% over the previous year. No minority group's rights should be put up for a vote, subject to the whims of sometimes bigoted popular opinion.
* In countries around the world -- Russia, Nigeria, Poland, and Zimbabwe, to name just a few – local authorities are passing laws preventing gay people from gathering in political demonstrations and organizations, and/or are using police and neo-fascist thugs beat up and arrest gay people who attempt to exercise these human rights. Executing or imprisoning gays for long sentences is the law of the land in Saudi Arabia, Jamaica and Iran, and Iraq, the leading shi-ite iman, heavily courted by the U.S., recently issued a fatwa calling for death to gay people, and has already had his wish carried out in some instances.

* With "faith-based" government funding boondoggles increasingly coming out of Washington, Lesbian and Gay people are one of their primary political targets. Anti-gay religious zealots, rarely at a loss for money in the first place, are sucking in abstinence-only "education" tax dollars while scientifically-proven anti-AIDS and other anti-STD programs are defunded. Part of this same far right "scientific" quackery, also seen in issues like global warming and environmentalism in general, is the heavily promoted notion that LGBT people can "change," like that would justify discrimination anyway. Two days after the Pride Parade, the Gay Liberation Network will be protesting against the national convention of Exodus International, the leading promoter of the "ex-gay" fraud. (The protest will be in Marion, Indiana, a little over 3 hours drive from Chicago – the Gay Liberation Network is organizing transportation – for info, email LGBTliberation (at) aol.com.)

This year's Gay Liberation Network contingent in the June 25th Pride Parade will be joined by:

Black LGBT People & Allies For Equality
Chicago Area CodePINK
Chicago ANSWER
Sankofa Way
World Can’t Wait
(list in formation)

If you'd like to join us, all you have to do is show up at 11 AM, corner of Diversey & Halsted. If you're part of an organization that would like to march as a group with us, please email LGBTliberation (at) aol.com for more information (parade organizers have instituted a new rule this year that all organizations must be "registered" with them--yeah, we know this is BS).