I almost got hit the head with a Bible today in downtown Seattle. WEIRD.




More photos after the jump...

Send me your protest experience here.
Video by Slog tipper Keith.

Send me your protest experience here.
Why are so many voters opposed to same sex marriage, while generally in favor of granting same-sex couples all the rights inherent to marriage?
Richard Thompson Ford, over at Slate, makes a fairly compelling argument: It's all about the desire to have someone at home cooking you dinner and cleaning up the house on the part of elderly and conservative voters.
After all, traditional marriage isn't just analogous to sex discrimination—it is sex discrimination: Only men may marry women, and only women may marry men. Same-sex marriage would transform an institution that currently defines two distinctive sex roles—husband and wife—by replacing those different halves with one sex-neutral role—spouse. Sure, we could call two married men "husbands" and two married women "wives," but the specific role for each sex that now defines marriage would be lost. Widespread opposition to same-sex marriage might reflect a desire to hang on to these distinctive sex roles rather than vicious anti-gay bigotry.
(For the record, I cook, do laundry and clean up for my girlfriend already. If I depended upon her to do so—fulfilling traditional gender roles—I would be hungry, naked and living in filth.)

Send me your protest experience here.
Comedian Wanda Sykes outed herself at the anti-Prop 8 rally in Las Vegas today.
"You know, I don't really talk about my sexual orientation. I didn't feel like I had to. I was just living my life, not necessarily in the closet, but I was living my life," Sykes told a crowd at a gay rights rally in Las Vegas on Saturday. "Everybody that knows me personally they know I'm gay. But that's the way people should be able to live their lives."
Sykes, who is known for her feisty and blunt style, said the passage of California's Proposition 8 made her feel like she was "attacked."
"Now, I gotta get in their face," she said. "I'm proud to be a woman. I'm proud to be a black woman, and I'm proud to be gay."
Now is the time for all of us to get in their faces. Good on you, Wanda.

Send me your protest experience here.
Well, amongst other things: When political attacks are launched from churches, political responses will be delivered to churches. If goddamned McDonald's had organized and paid for Prop 8, we'd be marching on goddamned McDonald's.

"It's freezing cold here," my friend Alice writes. "We all agreed that, in the future, Californians should have the courtesy to be nationally-notable bigots only in the summer months."

Send me your protest experience here.

Send me your protest experience here.
I don't know exactly how massive they were. The police told Dominic that there were about 6,000 marchers. It seemed larger than that to me, but I was in the middle of it for most of the time so maybe my perspective was warped. In any case, here's what I saw, crowd-wise, starting with the absolutely packed amphitheater lawn at Volunteer Park...

...from which people marched past the reservoir and out into the streets...

...down Broadway, down Pine, over Interstate 5...

...and toward Westlake Plaza...

...where it was nothing but people, people everywhere:





Send me your protest experience here.

Send me your protest experience here.
They were, of course, everywhere:

A typical assortment:

Two that I really loved:

One that seemed to anticipate the guys who would end up directly in front of it:

And one that was hard to argue with:

Best I could do while walking:


Send me your protest experience here.

Send me your protest experience here.

Send me your protest experience here.

Send me your protest experience here.

Send me your protest experience here.
"The crowd has dissipated a little bit. I went and talked to the commanding lieutenant Sean O'Donnel. He and other officers were trying to figure out how to open up Fifth Avenue and open up Pine Street again—they're blocked with people. They estimate the crowd at 6,000, but it's hard to say how accurate that is based on everyone who came and went during the march. O'Donnel said, 'The crowd has been very polite and cooperative.' And then he turned to another officer and said, 'We've got to figure out a way to open up Fifth Avenue.' There are still thousands of people here. A lot of them have headed into the Westlake Mall food court, where every table is full. It looks like the Broadway Grill on steroids."
"There's a woman passing out IMPEACH BUSH stickers. Timely, ma'am."


