Photo by Jimbo3DCSupporters of marriage equality packed the gym at Northwest’s Kennedy Recreation Center Monday night for a “Rally for D.C. Marriage Equality.” The mood was celebratory on the eve of the D.C. Council’s final vote on a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in the District, which is expected to pass easily later today.
Sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign, the rally brought together residents, council members and groups from the African-American and faith communities who have worked to gain grassroots community support for the bill this year across lines of creed and color.
Singers from the Unity Fellowship Choir led the charged-up crowd in song, and Rev. Dr. Dennis Wiley of Covenant Baptist Church and D.C. Clergy United for Marriage delivered a speech drawing parallels to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
“If we fail to see the interconnectedness of oppression, we are fooling ourselves,” he said. “There is not hierarchy of oppression. Suffering is suffering. Prejudice is prejudice. And it’s all wrong.”
Council members Michael A. Brown (I-At Large), David Catania (I-At Large), Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) and Harry Thomas, Jr. (D-Ward 5) were in attendance.
Thomas, whose Dec. 1 vote in favor of the legislation was received with some controversy, reiterated his support for the bill.
“I represent a ward torn on this issue, where people had different views on what marriage equality meant,” he said. “And as I spoke to ANC members today, I reminded them that there are things you must do when justice is at your doorstep. As a straight, African-American man raised in the Baptist Church, I knew the concerns of my community, who I had to take along with me.”
