I tried to post of pictures of this event from my phone, but flickr is down. 🙁
So a group calling themselves Called2Action took it upon themselves to bring about 100 people – including a bus of 50 guys from Wake County – to Chapel Hill tonight to tell our Town Council to stop supporting the repeal of the “defense of marriage act.” They failed miserably, of course. The Council voted unanimously to uphold their position, and about 100 Chapel Hillians came out in support of gay rights.
We live-blogged the event at Orange Politics, and I posted some pictures from my phone at flickr.
Only about 2 or 3 people spoke in favor of the anti-gay position, and it was not unlike a tent revival. Which may be fun for church-goers, but is extremely inappropriate in the halls of government in a nation founded on freedom of (and from) religion. It was quite shocking. but it was also comforting to see the 20 or so speakers from Chapel Hill who came out to show their support for gay rights.
When it was my turn to speak, I asked any members of the Called2Action group who vote in Chapel Hill to stand. In a room at capacity with 180 people in it, about 8 folks slowly rose. ‘Nuff said.
UPDATE: Anyone want to try google-bombing the term “called2action?” We can send them to Orange Politics or the Human Rights Campaign Fund or Equality NC… I’m going to try it with links to EqualityNC.org.
Actually, what I’m thinking of is more like reverse Google-bombing. The idea is that if lots of people hyperlink a certain term to a particular site, Google will think that site is a good match for that search term. For example: click here to learn more about called2action.
Want to try this yourself? Add the following code to your website:
<a href="http://www.equalitync.org/">called2action</a>Hi, Ruby. Thanks for speaking tonight. When the half-dozen fundamentalists who actually live in Chapel Hill stood up at your request, the look on their faces was priceless.
(I probably should have introduced myself, since I was practically sitting right next to you. But I’m a little shy, so I’m doing it now. Hello.)
Then again, maybe I don’t want to send a bunch of fundies to the Equality NC website. Maybe it should be HRC…
Any suggestions?
Thanks Damon. It’s great to know you were there. More people need to come out and see what goes into the sausage that we call government. Some of it isn’t disgusting, and we need to make sure we reward principled leadership when we find it.