Students participate in city-wide rally against Proposition 8

By Megan Scarborough     11/20/08 6:00pm

Several hundred Houstonians, including a number of Rice students, gathered in front of City Hall last Saturday in solidarity with a nation-wide protest against Proposition 8, the California state amendment banning same-sex marriage that was barely approved by California voters on Nov. 4. Same-sex couples, straight allies and other activists held signs declaring their opposition to the ban and expressing their desire for gay rights.Co-President of Rice's American Civil Liberties Union club Ben Carson attended the rally along with about ten other club members.

"Our group just wanted to show our support because what it comes down to is that we believe the state doesn't have any business regulating marriage, as a religious institution," Carson, a Brown College senior, said.

Among the event's speakers were State Representatives Jessica Farrar and Garnet Coleman, both from Houston, who voiced support for the rally's cause. Both have records of supporting gay rights in the Texas House and voiced strong opposition to a Texan gay marriage ban in 2005.

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John Nechman, a Houston lawyer who specializes in immigration, spoke at the rally. Rice ACLU hosted an on-campus talk by Nechman on Nov. 11, on the topic of same-sex marriage rights now and in the future.

"One thing that really struck me during Mr. Nechman's talk was how he does a lot of work in South America," Carson said. "In the past, other countries always looked up to us as the most progressive nation. Now other countries, like Colombia, are passing much more progressive laws. They're wondering why we aren't blazing the path like we used to."

Bradley Houston, co-president of Rice's Queers & Allies club, also attended the rally along with 13 members of the group.

"It was reassuring to see Rice students who wanted to come out and show their support," Houston said. "It shows how great a place Rice can be and that it's not gay people in one little area and straight people in another. There were so many allied straight people there, who had gay friends or who just cared about the issue."

The rally featured many speakers who focused on the importance of same-sex marriage rights.

Unitarian Universalist minister David Keyes spoke about the hope of holding a rally like this.

"Rallies like this one are a grand way to begin a new national movement for gay rights, and that's why we are here," he said.

Ray Hill, a gay rights activist and radio show host for KPFT 90.1 Houston, delivered a speech about the approaching holiday season and the social implications of refusing to attend gatherings that might disapprove of same-sex couples.

"If you can't take your partner, then don't go," Hill said.

He encouraged gay couples whose families did not approve of their relationships not to sleep at those relatives' houses. Hill, who is openly gay, founded the first gay/lesbian group in Houston in 1967, and has helped to put many hate crime perpetrators behind bars. He also won a landmark First Amendment case about hate speech in the Supreme Court against the city of Houston , and won the Texas ACLU's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.

The rally concluded with a call for couples whose marriages were in jeopardy to stand in front of the crowd. Meghan and Lindsay Baker, who helped to organize the protest, spoke out as a same-sex couple whose recent marriage in California may now be nullified. However, a typical grandfathering clause would prevent a California court from overruling a marriage that was legal at the time of its issuance.

"I believe these issues transcend politics," Meghan Baker said.

She chartered Houston's branch of a grass-roots Web 2.0 organization called Join the Impact, which was largely responsible for organizing the Nov. 15 protests.

Baker declared Houston's protest a success, estimating that there were about 700 attendees.

People gathered in eight countries, 50 states and 300 cities to protest the amendment, largely due to the Join the Impact Web site. The site was created two days after the U.S. Presidential Election on Nov. 4, and enabled protesters to organize quickly and efficiently in the wake of the selection of President-elect Barack Obama.

The protest has met with some disapproval from those on the other side.

In Dallas, counter-protesters demonstrated with crosses and signs in support of traditional marriage, but Houston's protest did not feature visible counter-protesting.

"Obviously the protest wasn't going to have any immediate effect on things, because it's happening in legal arena, but it was really great to see how many people even in the conservative state of Texas to come out and say, 'We don't approve of this,'" Houston said.

Not all members of the Rice community opposed the passage of Proposition 8, however. Laurence Simmons, a trustee of Rice and the chairman of the Council of Overseers at the Jones School, expressed his support of the amendment by donating $25,000 toward efforts to pass it through the Church of Latter Day Saints.

Jordan Smith, the Vice President of Queers and Allies, said, "At university like Rice, which is promoting itself as a progressive institution, with progressive inclusion and anti-discrimination rules, when you get something like this from a high-ranking board member, it's just very disappointing. It was his right to do what he did, but I think it is contrary to the direction Rice is trying to move in.

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